Visitors!

Sorry it has once again been far too long since I have updated my blog. For some reason I have not been able to open the blogger website. Every time I have tried it tells me the connection has been reset and the problem seems to only be with this one website.

A ton has happened since my last blog. First off...school is going great. I've had a ton of exams and have gotten really good grades on all of them. On two of them, I beat the class average by more than 20 points. (I think I'm aloud to brag a little because I've been working my butt off.)

This past weekend (thurs-sun) my cousin, Matt came to visit. He is in the army and was home on leave from Iraq. He has been there for the last nine months and will be going back again on the 25th. It has been a year or two since I have seen him and I knew it was going to be a good weekend because he is a character (yeah my family is full of them). I took him to Old San Juan where we walked along the edge of the fortress that was built about 400 years ago. It is beautiful and we had a rip tide warning so the waves were crashing up over the edge of the walking path. We also went to the beach near the Isla Verde area. The waves were crazy big and standing in knee deep water would have knocked me down. The next day we got in the car and just drove. We didn't have any plan or direction, just drove wherever we felt like going. It ended up being a little longer roadtrip than we planned and thanks to Matt's GPS feature on his phone we did make it home (no thanks to the mislabeled map in our car). The whole roadtrip was spent winding around the mountains. The roads were crazy narrow and that didn't motivate people to slow down a bit. Matt started getting a little car sick from trying to read the map as the roads were snaking and his ears were popping. We stopped several times to take pictures out of the car window(see above). We were in pretty rural parts and it was nice to see what Puerto Rico really is, not just the San Juan side of the island. We had a blast until it started raining. Then the water just started pouring and it was like driving through creeks that were rushing across the road. Matt kept telling me that we would be fine, but as soon as we got home, he was telling everyone that he thought that the water was going to move our car sideways. The water wasn't that deep but it was moving pretty quickly. Some of the town we went through were pretty cool. I made Matt roll up his window when we were driving through one of the larger towns. Apparently listening to George Strait with your windows down gives away that you are not a local. Hahaha. We got stared at a lot.

The next night we took him to the El San Juan Hotel. The hotel has a casino (I still have never gambled) and a club and this really awesome open area where they have two bars in the middle and a live salsa band. People go to dance and some of the people are really good. Its fun just watching everyone dance. We have a couple classmates that know how to salsa and they promised to teach the rest of us!!

Overall, Matt had fun which was much deserved. I just wanted him to have a little fun before he had to go back. I was so happy to have him, and sad to see him leave. I'm going to worry about him until he is safely and permanently back in Louisiana. He claims that when he gets back from Iraq, he is gonna visit again.

Lots of Love,
Nik

First off, just wanted to brag a little because my first two exams for Optometry school went really well!! I have plenty more exams to go, but that was definitely a good start. Optics is next, which is my favorite class so far.

I just found out that my cousin Matt is coming to visit me this weekend. He is home on leave from Iraq and is more than deserving of a vacation. He is going to fly in on Thurs and out on Sunday. It worked out pretty well because all of my hardest exams will be done with by then and I will actually have a chance to show him around the island. (Not that I really know where to go yet. I still haven't been here all that long myself.) Either way, it should be a great time!!! It has been a year or two since I have seen him which is much too long. I wish his brother, Cody could come too.

P.S. Are the Packers or the Eagles going to have a team left after this season opener? Easy on the injuries, it is only the first game of the season. Yikes!

Guninea Pigs.

I'm not going to lie. I've been pretty boring lately and I figured that no one except Anna M. would really be interested in knowing what I'm studying. (Mainly Physiology and Anatomy), so I really don't have all that much of an update. Books. School. and a little bit of beach time.

We were recently paired with both a Second Year and a Third Year. As it turns out, not only are we the newbies, but we are also the guinea pigs. Both of my "buddies" seem really nice. My second year is named Abbie and my third year is the third year class president, Gabriel. Gabriel was a little disappointed that I was an emmetrope (I don't need to wear glasses), so I promised that he could practice on my friends and family when they come visit. I guess that means that I won't be the only guinea pig. Haha. It is actually really important to have the chance to practice and I hope that someone would do the same for me when I am a second and third year. It still amazes me how helpful all of the second and third years have been. Almost everyone that I have talked to has offered any help and/or advice that I could possibly need.

Cathleen (the blonde one in all my pics) went home this weekend to surprise her fiance. We had this elaborate plan to get him to go to the airport thinking he was picking up Cathleen's parent's friends and it actually worked. She said he was so excited he almost passed out. I'm so happy it went as planned. It was sort of weird not having her here. We have been pretty inseparable since we got here. (and no Cat, I'm not replacing you). We will all be glad to have her back and not just because we can't watch another episode of Dexter without her. Hahaha.

Only three more power points on the respiratory system to go!!!

Homework and Hurricanes

Not that I'm complaining, I realize that hurricanes can be quite serious and all, but Earl was a disappointment. We never lost power, we hardly saw rain, and the whole next day (with classes cancelled) was all blue and sunny skies. The storm wouldn't even have been bad enough to make the direct TV satelite signal break up at home. In case there is another one, know that I live in a large cement building 20 mins away by car from the shore. I'm about as safe as I can be on this island. The worst part about Earl is that he did damage to the island that we were going to visit over our long weekend (Culebra--look it up it is supposedly one of Travel Channel's top 10 beaches in the world).

School is going well so far. It is intense, but thanks to all of Dr. May's warnings, I was prepared for that. I still think it is kind of weird not having to go to work on a daily basis. I think that contributes to my feeling that this whole experience is more like going to camp than going to grad school.

Brett is about to start middle school. I've been pretty good about not being too homesick, but I really wish I could be there for his first day of school. I can't believe how fast he has grown up. When I'm done with this whole experience, he is going to be driving. I'm not going to be ready for that. The good news is that Dad bought him a cell phone, and even though I think he is too young, I love that he texts me almost everyday. I'm not sure if it is because he misses me, or whether he just likes using his new phone, but I'll take it either way.

My hermit crab is still alive and well. Cathleen found him a bigger shell and we put it in his container. I thought it might take him weeks to upgrade, but he made the big move within a couple of hours. I'll have to take a new picture. His claw is also growing and for some reason has turned bright blue. We named him Corona, because he made the trip home with us in a Corona bottle.

Elizabeth sent me a care package that came yesterday. I was so excited!!! I love surprises and I knew that Elizabeth would send me random things that are very Elizabeth and would make me smile. It took a long time for it to actually arrive, but I ate the cookies in the box anyway...and they were still good! I have the flip flops that were in the box on right now.

Off to class!

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.