Settled

Sorry I haven't posted yet. In true PR style, I just got internet today. We've supposedly had it for over a week, but nothing is ever that simple. The school's network blocks blogger.com, so I had to wait to make a post.

My trip back was fine. No big complaints other than getting up at three in the morning and then taking a tour of the airports in the US before getting back to my apartment at midnight. I flew from Madison to MKE, to Laguardia to Philly to PR. and it wasn't even cheap. Oh well, I made it.

After my first week of school, I am already a little stressed out. My classes are going to be challenge and more than that, it seems like we are always in class. Our Wednesdays are 12 hour days. It is just hard to maintain focus for that long, but you don't have a choice because we have so little time outside of class to study, so you really need to get something out of lecture. That is sometimes easier said than done. We have one professor that we think is Haitian who has a really thick accent. He is almost harder to understand than the professor who actually lectures to us in Spanish.

Other than that, all is fine here. Nothing newsy. I'll try and post some pics of my new apartment soon. And hopefully a new car. I'm in the process of shopping for one right now.

Texas and Back

I can't believe how many states I am visiting in such a short period of time. My flight to Texas wasn't exactly how the crow would do it. I flew to Philly first and then to Dallas. Two 4 hour flights. I stopped in O'Hare on the way home and now today, I will be driving to Nebraska. I was really glad to be back on the mainland. My family reunion was a blast. I saw a few cousins that I haven't seen since I was a kid and a few others that I may have never met before. We camped out on the family property and got caught up with everyone. Dad did a ton of fishing. I love to fish and would have had fun going with him, but they have water moccasin's and they freak me out. For some reason snakes scare me more when they are in the water. Brett rode around on his cousin's dirtbike and went to a waterpark one day. He also got a haircut and a cowboy hat. Dad gave him his cowboy boots and now Brett thinks he is a real cowboy. He still has a thing or two to learn about riding, but he just might get there.

The last night we were in Texas, we all stayed with Cat and her Dad. It was so good to see Cat, Steve, and Jill. I wish Laurie would have been there too. Laurie was on a business trip to Chicago. Dad and Steve hit it off and talked about cars most of the night. I wish we would have had more time, but we got stuck cleaning at the reunion (it was amazing how fast everyone disappeared when it came time to clean up) and Dad and I didn't want to leave Grandma and my great aunt to do all of it. Even if it was a short visit, it was wonderful. I miss my Catherine! I was struggling toward the end of the night. None of us had slept more than four hours the whole time we were in TX and it caught up to me. We were all talking and I kept doing the head bob. Somehow I managed to make it until about 1:30, but we were up to go to the airport at 4:40 am. I honestly don't remember taking off from Chicago to Milwaukee. I woke up as we landed. Dad was struggling to stay awake the whole drive home.

I only saw Wendy for about an hour when I got back. She was heading out for a horse show in Roscoe, IL. They will be there all weekend. I still haven't seen Dean at all. I think he went straight there after he was done with calls. Nicole is here all weekend taking care of the farm and working. Nicole, Jim, Brett and I went to go see Pirates of the Caribbean last night. It feels so good to be home. ...for a day anyway.

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!