Critters

Well, this has been the week of critters. One good, one bad. Last weekend at the beach I found a hermit crab which made a trip home in an empty, salt water rinsed bottle of Corona. I’ve managed to keep him alive thus far. Apparently they eat a little bit of everything. I mainly feed him fruits and veggies, but he eats some meat too. Eventually I’ll have to move him out of his tupperwear container and into a real home, but he seems fine for now. He is our unofficial mascot. I’m not really sure what I am going to do with him when I come home for x-mas break, but I think I might have to smuggle him into the continental US. We’ll see what happens.

The other critter, not so welcome in my apartment. A Cockroach. Ick. Cathleen, my roommate and best friend down here, has been complaining about them since we moved in. Her dad saw one in the stairwell when they were brining all her stuff in and she has seen two more. None of the rest of us had seen any until this morning when one crawled underneath my door. Most of you know that I took entomology and typically don’t get too worked up over bugs, but cockroaches are big and ugly. We already told the housing lady about it a week ago, but like everything here, it hasn’t been taken care of yet. I guess they are gonna come and spray or something. We also have the tiniest little ants by our kitchen sink that I have ever seen. I put out ant traps and we clean the counter, but they don’t seem to go away. I wonder what will happen first, getting internet or taking care of the bugs.

We now have a final count on my class-50. The last one arrived late last week. She is from Kansas and is a Badger Fan!!!! It is going to be an interesting four years for sure. We keep talking about how life here is kind of like “The Real World.” They just took all of us from different walks of live, re-planted us on a tropical island, and put us in school. Almost all of my class lives in dorms, which isn’t true of the classes above us. Less than half of the 2nd years live in the dorms and even fewer third years. With this few classmates and the fact that we live in what can only be described as a compound (our campus is surrounded with razor wire and has two guards posted at each gate and another 2 guards full time just for the optometry part of campus), it is going to be interesting how everything plays out. I’m sure there will be plenty of drama, because everyone is in everyone else’s business all the time, but I also think we are going to come out of this being really close.
Back to hours worth of studying.

Beaches and Libraries!

I want to start off by apologizing for not being better at this whole blogging thing. I still don't have internet in my room which is making this very difficult. They told me we were going to have it by Aug 15th, but like everything else here, you can't set your watch by it. I'm still hoping sometime this month, but it could realisitically be another month.

So much has happened and changed since my last blog. I'll try to do a quick recap. First off, I no longer only have one roommate. We came home from a group trip to the mall to find two more people in our apartment without any warning. Cathleen and I were stunned to say the least and more than a little bit pissed off because we were told we were the only two people in the apartment and we had already paid to furnish everything. We realize that it isn't our roommates faults, but it was still pretty frustrating. Our class also grew from the 27 at orientation to 50. The last person just found out she got in on Monday. She is so behind and doesn't even know it yet. I feel bad for her. Our class is really close which is amazing because we all come from such different backgrounds. We have people from Kuait, Somolia, India, Canada, both coasts, and a whole bunch scattered in between.

Classes started on the 11th and since that point we have basically been living and breathing Anatomy. Most of our teachers read straight off their slides, which makes it a little dry, but everyone speaks decent English. We had our Spanish professor quit on us before school even started and he has since been replaced. We have only had one Spanish class so far, and I think it is going to be good for me. I thought that I was going to be way behind everyone else on my spanish knowlege, but as it turns out, our class has more experience with French than Spanish and I have taken more Spanish than almost everyone. Public Health is just review so far. We did mean, median and mode last class. I'm pretty sure my brother did that in 5th grade math. Physiology is interesting, but our Prof keeps making us do group presentations and we all get more out of class when he lectures. Optics is still pretty basic right now too, but I think it is going to be my favorite class. We are also taking the Profession of Optometry. I haven't really formed an opinion on that one yet.

We have been studying hard and have been rewarding ourselves with excursions on the weekends. Last week we went to a club called Brava in the Waldorff hotel in San Juan with some of the second years. The week before that, the second years took us to Senor Frogs (we were the only ones there, but it was really fun) and yesterday we went to the Bacardi factory and to a beach called Punta Salinas. It was beautiful and a very welcome break.

Alright, back to Anatomy and writing a 2 page paper on the azygos vein.

I live in Puerto Rico?

Well, so far so good. I ended up only having one roomate. Her name is Cathleen and she is from a small town about an hour from Lincoln, Nebraska. We have really hit it off and I think we will do just fine as roommates. We have a really interesting class of students. We are the first class ever to not have a Puerto Rican (although they tell us we may still have one coming) and we have three students from Canada, at least three from India, one from Pakistan, and one from Kuait. It is pretty crazy how well we have been getting along. So far we know about 30 kids from our class, they tell us there could be more coming, but we aren't so sure. Of the 30, we had 25 all get together, rent a bus and go to Isla Verde for the day. I think we are going to be a really close knit group which is going to be great because they don't grade on a curve here so we can all help each other out.

We have had a lot of time to kill because we had a two day orientation and a field trip to Old San Juan, but our classes don't start until the 11th, so we have just been getting to know each other. We have a really cool rooftop that overlooks a huge part of the island. The D and C dorms have connecting roofs, so we all meet out there at night, talk, laugh, listen to music and make fun of each other's dialects.

Puerto D.C.?

Yesterday went as well as it could have. We got up at 3 am and went to the airport, got right on our plane and then found our gate to get on our plane from O'Hare to San Juan. United overbooked our flight and offered us $600 in flight vouchers, First Class to D.C. Dulles, the stay at the Marriott, and then first class from Dulles to San Juan first thing this morning. It was perfect. I wouldn't have been able to get into my dorm until today anyway and now I will have a free flight home for X-mas. They even threw in dinner vouchers.

I've always followed the Lombardi principle of "when you make it in the end zone pretend like you have been there before." At the risk of being discovered as a first time first class flier, I took a pic of Wendy on our Boeing 777. The seats completely turned into beds, we had our own T.V., and I couldn't have touched the person next to me if I tried.

Today hasn't been as perfect. The flight was fine. We were in first class again, but we were spoiled from the day before. Once we got to the airport, we found my luggage and went to look for our rental car. Apparently the order didn't go through. We waited a long time to get our car. That really seemed to be the theme of the day. Once we got the rental car we got extremely lost trying to find our hotel. Then we managed to find my school (which is exactly how it looks in the pics on their website) and we waited three hours to get the keys. Then we had a wonderful dinner at a restaurant that we are pretty sure we could never find again if we wanted to, and proceeded to get lost on our way back to our hotel.

Part of the problem is that the streets aren't all labeled, the street signs are in spanish (which I am doing fairly well with), and our GPS won't process some of the street names. It has really been an adventure. We finally got back to the hotel at 9:50 pm. Wendy and I were both so tired and frustrated that we started laughing hysterically, mostly so we didn't cry. Wendy has already threatened to ditch me tomorrow because she doesn't want to drive here anymore. I don't really blame her because not only were we lost, we were surrounded by people who had complete disregard for the street lights/signs. Oh well, tomorrow is a new day and we will figure this city out.

Today wasn't all bad. Everyone was extremely friendly and I was the first person to get to my dorm. There are only 3 of us in a four bedroom dorm. The other two girls that I live with are from Nebraska and North Carolina. Because I was the first one there, I go the biggest bedroom with the biggest closet. It is pretty amazing. I'll post pics as soon as I get set up. As of current, I haven't really taken many pics because I've spent all of my time navigating. I'll try to take some pics and post a few more blogs this week about the whole process.