almost home

I can't say how much I wish I was home already. Finals week always sucks, but for some reason this one is worse. All I can think about is getting on that plane. Being gone a whole semester is far too long. I miss everyone like crazy and it seems like I'm so close to being done but have a ton left to do. My empty house is more than a little depressing too. Brett and I have a count down. Five days til I get to see little man. I made it four months, but the last week is the worst.


On a much better note, the proficiency that I thought I screwed up didn't really go that bad. 94.7%. I can live with that, it just felt much worse as it was happening.

Alright back to primary eye care. See you all soon!

New Home!!

I am not homeless!!!! Thank god. Cathleen, Sundeep and I are moving into an apartment that currently has three third years in it. They will be leaving to do their rotations and won't need it anymore. It is amazing!! I couldn't be happier and the whole situation has worked out really well. The apartment is fully furnished and really cute!! It is a penthouse with a huge roof that is half covered. The guys that live there now won't be moving until July, but they let us move all of our stuff in early to make it easier for us. It was still a huge pain in the butt to move in the middle of finals week, but I would have had to pack and move down to the first floor even if we weren't moving out of here. It is comforting knowing that we are living in a place with wonderful landlords (that invited us out for dinner when we get back in Aug) and in a place where there are not problems. As it turns out, Steve O and his family lived in the apartments that we are moving to, just a few years ago. I know my phone photography skills leave much to be desired, but this is a little bit of an idea of what it looks like.

Bachelorette Party

The ladies and I threw my roommate Cathleen a bachelorette party last night. It was a success. We had so much fun! We had a limo, ate at a great restaurant on the ocean, danced our butts off and stayed out way too late. We played a scavenger hunt game where we had two teams and had to take pictures doing silly things like taking a picture with a cop, or kissing a guy on the cheek or my personal favorite, taking a picture of a shirtless man wearing the Travis mask (Travis is Cathleen's fiance). There are some really funny pics from the night, but most of them are under lock and key due to some inappropriate bachelorette memorabilia. Cathleen's fiance is here visiting (and to help us move) and all of our boys here took him out for a bachelor party of his own. They had a crazy night too. I thought I would share some of the ok pics. It is sad to think that this was the most fun we have had all semester and it is also our last day of fun. Now it is nose to the books.

Closer to home.

Ugh. I actually have news to report and most of it isn't exactly good news. My proficiency didn't go as planned. I didn't have my SOSH card (which we rarely use because it is for people who can't see the big E on the chart.) I was so flustered, but I borrowed one from Cathleen right at the beginning of the proficiency. It shook me up so bad that I never fully recovered. I passed, although I still don't know what my grade was. It should have been an easy A for me, instead I was shaking like a leaf the whole exam and struggled to give my instructions in Spanish because I couldn't calm my nerves. Awful experience. And worse because I know I am capable of doing everything correctly.

The other fun news is that our housing people are jerking us around again. They want to make us pay for the unused rooms in our apartments unless we want to move everything we own down two floors into another apartment. It wouldn't have been a big deal had they told us this when we moved in, but we were told that we could pay $100 a month to keep our stuff here when we were gone. Then we were told last week that we would have to pay the full $500 a month while we were gone. Now it is up to $1000/month while we are gone if we chose not to move all of our things into an apartment with everyone else who lives in our building. This is really just because they are going to let high schoolers live in our apartment while they are at NASA camp. I probably would have moved my things without complaint had we been given notice, but we are about to enter finals week and I don't have time to deal with all of this. I am leaving here on May 28th, my last final is on May 27th. Had she given us some notice I would have stayed longer to move after finals. It pissed Cathleen and I off enough that we are going to move out of the student housing. I'm sick of surprise roommates, not getting my mail when it arrives and getting jerked around.

Winding down

The school is finally winding down and I'm ready for it!! I have one last exam and Proficiency before we hit finals week. Proficiency is where we are tested on our ability to perform all of procedures that we have learned in Primary Eye Care. Basically it is all of the pretesting, which isn't really a problem for me. I don't think I would be as nervous about it if we didn't have to do it in Spanish. We have to take the patient's history (both medical and ocular). Even though we worked on it in Spanish class, it is 100 questions long and I'm worried I will miss something. We have to ask all of the questions that would be on a health history form, without the form. In real life, you fill out the form, we review it and ask any questions that require clarification. We also have to perform all of the procedures while giving instructions and explanations in Spanish. I'm sure I'll be fine, I know it all, I just don't want to blank under pressure. We also have a time constraint of 30 mins start to finish. In the real world, I would probably get fired if I consistently took 30 mins to do the tests that we are performing, but everything we do here is manual, nothing is automated, so it does actually take a lot longer than it should. Wish me luck!!

I apologize to all of you who read this for not writing more lately and probably only adding a few more posts before I go home. I honestly haven't been doing anything other than studying. It is hard to find something exciting to say about that. The rest of this month will only have 2 days of fun. One is this Saturday when I go to watch the Mosley vs. Pacquiao fight, and later this month for Cathleen's bachelorette party. If anything else exciting or noteworthy comes up, I'll be sure to post it, but seeing as the spot where I study in the corner of the couch is starting to get a butt dent, I'm not holding my breath!