6 hours for a 1.5 hour crossing without apology. Well done!
Speaking of irritation, not only do we suddenly have mystery clickers with the school, but there's yet another mishap with my loans, which I found out today, so no money for Ishie until I fax something from a youth hostel! Woo hoo!!!
ONNN the other hand, Canterbury, and my current hostel, rocks. More later!
Showing posts with label Prague selective. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prague selective. Show all posts
Aug 13, 2008
Aug 9, 2008
I heart air conditioning
I'm in Dijon, France, at present, trying to deal with yet another keyboard change, which this time involves far more letters than just the "y" and "w", which are flipped in Hungary, Prague, and Germany.
I'm in a hotel tonight, since it was comparably priced to a hostel, and I HAVE A/C!!! The last few nights were so hot, surprisingly, especially in Basel, despite how far north it is. It's a beautiful thing, especially considering the necessity of preserving the Swiss chocolate I got in Zurich. MMMM good, and you pay for the privilage.
What I found of Switzerland is that despite their reputation for being one of the most expensive places you could ever go, they were far cheaper, as a rule, than Italy. Now, if you WANT to spend money, which, as a starving medical student, I don't, you can definitely find places to spend it, and lodging is expensive, but all in all, way fewer unexpected fees, ripoffs, and such, and a rail pass will let you go anywhere, rather than having certain cities fully unavailable unless you're willing to pay a fee.
Yesterday, we were in Bern and quickly saw the sites, including the bear pits, featuring an adorable ursine named Pedro, before heading to France. So far, almost everyone has been really nice, which was very pleasant, because the way France gets built up, I pretty well expected people to start yelling at me the minute I stepped off the train. Fortunately, not the case.
Also saw the kickoff to the Olympics, sans commercials, so that was kind of cool. I'd write more, but the hunt and peck method required for this keyboard is seriously affecting my stream of thought. So is, no doubt, the half bottle of local wine.
I'm in a hotel tonight, since it was comparably priced to a hostel, and I HAVE A/C!!! The last few nights were so hot, surprisingly, especially in Basel, despite how far north it is. It's a beautiful thing, especially considering the necessity of preserving the Swiss chocolate I got in Zurich. MMMM good, and you pay for the privilage.
What I found of Switzerland is that despite their reputation for being one of the most expensive places you could ever go, they were far cheaper, as a rule, than Italy. Now, if you WANT to spend money, which, as a starving medical student, I don't, you can definitely find places to spend it, and lodging is expensive, but all in all, way fewer unexpected fees, ripoffs, and such, and a rail pass will let you go anywhere, rather than having certain cities fully unavailable unless you're willing to pay a fee.
Yesterday, we were in Bern and quickly saw the sites, including the bear pits, featuring an adorable ursine named Pedro, before heading to France. So far, almost everyone has been really nice, which was very pleasant, because the way France gets built up, I pretty well expected people to start yelling at me the minute I stepped off the train. Fortunately, not the case.
Also saw the kickoff to the Olympics, sans commercials, so that was kind of cool. I'd write more, but the hunt and peck method required for this keyboard is seriously affecting my stream of thought. So is, no doubt, the half bottle of local wine.
Aug 7, 2008
Titlis ho!
Yeah, I wasn't going to make the requisite Mt. Titlis joke, but I'm only human, and an immature human at that, so deal with it.
I went to the Alps today! It's weird to type that. Got on the wrong train at first but transferred quickly so no real delay and headed to Engelberg, largely on the advice of a travel magazine we picked up for free in Basel, a town we'd only discovered because there were no hostels in Bern, so we booked the first night in Basel and the second night in Zurich.
Of course, once we got to Zurich, instead of seeing this famed and fabulous city, we immediately booked it into the mountains, though before heading to Zurich to drop off our stuff at the hostel, we did manage to see the Rathaus in Basel and cross the river on a ferry. The ride from Luzerne up to Engelberg and back was amazing: a three car red train through the Alps, punctuated by alpine streams, cows with big traditional bells around their necks, and all the other Heidi stuff. I kept feeling like none of it was real due to the sheer magnitude of the scenes, all with mountains jutting up sheer around it. We walked around, saw the base of Titlis, though no time to take the cable car to the top, and then on the way back, got a thunder and lightning show at dark as the train regularly whistled through the towns. Surreal.
Dijon tomorrow, and we've booked our hostel in London on the 14th, so the only question is what to do between Dijon and London. These are the difficult sorts of decisions that consume us in life... that and "how am I going to pass my 5/6th term classes while being a week late getting back?"
I went to the Alps today! It's weird to type that. Got on the wrong train at first but transferred quickly so no real delay and headed to Engelberg, largely on the advice of a travel magazine we picked up for free in Basel, a town we'd only discovered because there were no hostels in Bern, so we booked the first night in Basel and the second night in Zurich.
Of course, once we got to Zurich, instead of seeing this famed and fabulous city, we immediately booked it into the mountains, though before heading to Zurich to drop off our stuff at the hostel, we did manage to see the Rathaus in Basel and cross the river on a ferry. The ride from Luzerne up to Engelberg and back was amazing: a three car red train through the Alps, punctuated by alpine streams, cows with big traditional bells around their necks, and all the other Heidi stuff. I kept feeling like none of it was real due to the sheer magnitude of the scenes, all with mountains jutting up sheer around it. We walked around, saw the base of Titlis, though no time to take the cable car to the top, and then on the way back, got a thunder and lightning show at dark as the train regularly whistled through the towns. Surreal.
Dijon tomorrow, and we've booked our hostel in London on the 14th, so the only question is what to do between Dijon and London. These are the difficult sorts of decisions that consume us in life... that and "how am I going to pass my 5/6th term classes while being a week late getting back?"
Aug 6, 2008
Completion Bonus
Woo hoo! Got through all five villages and just as the sun was setting with some village eating, sightseeing, and of course, a mandatory dip in the Mediterranean.
Cinque Terre is amazing, as mentioned previously, and I'd never heard of it before Lori told me just how amazing it is, and it still is difficult to be believed until you're here. It's the sort of Italy I've always thought about, the people are wonderful, and the scenery is endlessly breathtaking. I'm really sorry to leave.
We're catching a train to Basel today, which is on a three country border. Our initial goal was Bern, but we couldn't book a hostel, nor could we find one in Zurich until tomorrow night, so fortunately, Switzerland is small enough to train around it, because I needs me some COLD. Italy is great, but predictably hot, and I am by nature, a cold weather creature.
In other news, my apartment is flooded but at least they let me know, so I'm just crossing my fingers that everything's okay, but in the interim, wooooo Switzerland!
Cinque Terre is amazing, as mentioned previously, and I'd never heard of it before Lori told me just how amazing it is, and it still is difficult to be believed until you're here. It's the sort of Italy I've always thought about, the people are wonderful, and the scenery is endlessly breathtaking. I'm really sorry to leave.
We're catching a train to Basel today, which is on a three country border. Our initial goal was Bern, but we couldn't book a hostel, nor could we find one in Zurich until tomorrow night, so fortunately, Switzerland is small enough to train around it, because I needs me some COLD. Italy is great, but predictably hot, and I am by nature, a cold weather creature.
In other news, my apartment is flooded but at least they let me know, so I'm just crossing my fingers that everything's okay, but in the interim, wooooo Switzerland!
Aug 5, 2008
Italia!
Sorry for no updates, but having to pay for every minute of sporadic internet access is taxing to the blog!
So I've now been to Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Venice, Verona, Bologna, and Cinque Terre. Whew! And by way of too many cities to name!
Italy... Italy... Italy... Cinque Terre is probably the most beautiful place I've ever seen and has people that are amazing, food that's fantastic, and views to die for. I am full of gratitude to Lori and Grace for cluing me into this place, because I'd never heard of it prior.
Venice... uh... very pretty canals. The square is amazing... the fact that my friend got screamed at for sitting in front of some guy's plants in a public square, smacked by a woman for being in her way, and so forth shouldn't influence my views of Venice, nor should the billion tourists stands separated only by ridiculously overpriced food, but it totally does.
So despite staying in Venice (Mestre, where the people are marginally nicer) for three days, we only spent one of those days in actual Venice, and spent the other two booking it to friendlier locals. Though our hostel/campground was absolutely amazing, which is why we used it as a homebase.
We found a guy to show us around Verona because he noticed we were wandering around lost. Nice guy from Ghana, showed us all the main sites and then got us safely back to the train station, while the entire time refusing any form of compensation for his efforts. Thank you, Derek, we love you!
So off to the 5 hour hike!
So I've now been to Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Venice, Verona, Bologna, and Cinque Terre. Whew! And by way of too many cities to name!
Italy... Italy... Italy... Cinque Terre is probably the most beautiful place I've ever seen and has people that are amazing, food that's fantastic, and views to die for. I am full of gratitude to Lori and Grace for cluing me into this place, because I'd never heard of it prior.
Venice... uh... very pretty canals. The square is amazing... the fact that my friend got screamed at for sitting in front of some guy's plants in a public square, smacked by a woman for being in her way, and so forth shouldn't influence my views of Venice, nor should the billion tourists stands separated only by ridiculously overpriced food, but it totally does.
So despite staying in Venice (Mestre, where the people are marginally nicer) for three days, we only spent one of those days in actual Venice, and spent the other two booking it to friendlier locals. Though our hostel/campground was absolutely amazing, which is why we used it as a homebase.
We found a guy to show us around Verona because he noticed we were wandering around lost. Nice guy from Ghana, showed us all the main sites and then got us safely back to the train station, while the entire time refusing any form of compensation for his efforts. Thank you, Derek, we love you!
So off to the 5 hour hike!
Jul 29, 2008
Hallo from Hungary
And having left Kate's keyboard behind in Prague, I'm back to mixing my z's and y's and typing extremely slowly. It's like being a kid again learning to type.
Yesterday was my last day in Prague, so na shledanou to the Czech Republic and děkuji for your hospitality. We checked out the Cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul, the St Vitus cathedral, and the tower of the Charles Bridge before racing back to pack up a month's worth of clothes from every corner of the apartment. I also got to experience the Czech postal service in Wenceslas Square, and I'm really hoping my doctor clothes make it to Grenada, because the clerk had no idea where it was even after a drawn map as well as a Pirates of the Caribbean reference, since that worked during my neurosurgery rotation... "Caribbean? Jack Sparrow, yes?" Apparently Johnny Depp is pancultural.
So I got to ride my first night train (insert music) and ride in a couchette, which is like people-storage. But with sleeping pills, a night shade, and earplugs, it's no problem. The number of stars is quite incredible. Unfortunately, when we booked the tickets, our brilliant ticket agent booked our tickets on the 9:53 train and our couchette on the midnight train... not really sure how that was supposed to work, and despite checking our tickets when we boarded, the conductor rousted us at 5 in the morning to charge us 40 euros for being "on the wrong train". So that was fun.
Now, I'm waiting to check into my hostel in Budapest and then go sightseeing. Hard to imagine how fast everything's going. But train is now officially my favorite way to travel. Cramped or not.
Yesterday was my last day in Prague, so na shledanou to the Czech Republic and děkuji for your hospitality. We checked out the Cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul, the St Vitus cathedral, and the tower of the Charles Bridge before racing back to pack up a month's worth of clothes from every corner of the apartment. I also got to experience the Czech postal service in Wenceslas Square, and I'm really hoping my doctor clothes make it to Grenada, because the clerk had no idea where it was even after a drawn map as well as a Pirates of the Caribbean reference, since that worked during my neurosurgery rotation... "Caribbean? Jack Sparrow, yes?" Apparently Johnny Depp is pancultural.
So I got to ride my first night train (insert music) and ride in a couchette, which is like people-storage. But with sleeping pills, a night shade, and earplugs, it's no problem. The number of stars is quite incredible. Unfortunately, when we booked the tickets, our brilliant ticket agent booked our tickets on the 9:53 train and our couchette on the midnight train... not really sure how that was supposed to work, and despite checking our tickets when we boarded, the conductor rousted us at 5 in the morning to charge us 40 euros for being "on the wrong train". So that was fun.
Now, I'm waiting to check into my hostel in Budapest and then go sightseeing. Hard to imagine how fast everything's going. But train is now officially my favorite way to travel. Cramped or not.
Jul 27, 2008
Deck of picture cards
I have two cameras, and I'm using up enough space on their respective cards, of which I have multiple, that I'm going to end up with a sufficient deck of them to play blackjack.
Kutna Hora was awesome. The bone church is incredible, particularly the chandelier and the coat of arms, but the entire experience is pretty breathtaking, though the location is small. The smell is odd... very stale, very cryptlike, yet as Slappy pointed out (yes, she's here now!), then you see children skipping and singing through the smell and the sight, which creates a pretty cool juxtaposition. I thought about having a series of photographs on "Children in odd places in the Czech Republic", featuring all the kids playing in the Piss sculpture, the toddler on his dad's shoulders in the sex museum, and now kids singing in the bone church.
The town itself is beautiful too, with churches rising up, though by the time we did the full walk in, St. Barbara's cathedral was closed to inside tours, but the outside is breathtaking, and per usual, I took a ton of pictures.
The train ride back was really peaceful, and I tried to learn to be functional at braiding my own hair. Between this and actually regularly wearing make up this trip, this is the most girly I've been since I dressed up when I was 6.
It's been a whole interesting experience though, though I am becoming wary of Wenceslas Square. On my language lessons, I thought it was weird that the tutor took two places at seemingly random, namely Vodichcova ulitse and Voclavske Namesti (sp?) otherwise known as Wenceslas Square, and kept using including them in phrases.
So I tried to go out to a club there with some friends on Friday... first, the club was 200 crown cover to play what seemed like flashy boring house music, so I passed, though that was the reason we'd gone out. Then we ended up with a homeless guy threatening us with, of all things, his cane. "Polizie" and reaching for my cell phone made him eventually go away. Then, after all this, ended up with a guy acting pretty inappropriately to one member of our party, necessitating a call to the police. As another friend asked me where we were, I looked up at the bus station and realized we were, of all places, at the Voclavske Namesti stop, just like in the language tutorial, so apparently, knowing the phrase is useful. It also necessitating to translate the entire incident through a fourth party into German at the police station (And to think I promised myself to stay out of them abroad). Gods. So fun night, eh?
So not dissuaded by all of this, we'd found a cool sculpture that somewhat mirrors the main horse sculpture in the center courtyard that features a man sitting astride a dead upside horse and went back yesterday to take a picture of it (none of us had a camera at the time), only to find it surrounded by firefighters, news media and so forth, because apparently part of the building had caught on fire.
I think I'm sticking to the Charles Bridge. Though I won't have to, because we've got a night train to Budapest tomorrow night.
Last night (what, you want this in order?), we toured around Vyserad (sp? Again), which is a really nice place, and allegedly the site where Prague was founded, and at least the two times I've been there, isn't half as packed as many of the other popular sites, yet has a wonderful church, great views, nice courtyards with statues, so it was really peaceful. The night was topped off by a trip to U Sadlu, an excellent, if pretty darn expensive medieval restaurant. Huge portions though, so we offset some of the cost by eating leftovers throughout our day in Kutna Hora.
So disjointed, yes, but it's an update!
Kutna Hora was awesome. The bone church is incredible, particularly the chandelier and the coat of arms, but the entire experience is pretty breathtaking, though the location is small. The smell is odd... very stale, very cryptlike, yet as Slappy pointed out (yes, she's here now!), then you see children skipping and singing through the smell and the sight, which creates a pretty cool juxtaposition. I thought about having a series of photographs on "Children in odd places in the Czech Republic", featuring all the kids playing in the Piss sculpture, the toddler on his dad's shoulders in the sex museum, and now kids singing in the bone church.
The town itself is beautiful too, with churches rising up, though by the time we did the full walk in, St. Barbara's cathedral was closed to inside tours, but the outside is breathtaking, and per usual, I took a ton of pictures.
The train ride back was really peaceful, and I tried to learn to be functional at braiding my own hair. Between this and actually regularly wearing make up this trip, this is the most girly I've been since I dressed up when I was 6.
It's been a whole interesting experience though, though I am becoming wary of Wenceslas Square. On my language lessons, I thought it was weird that the tutor took two places at seemingly random, namely Vodichcova ulitse and Voclavske Namesti (sp?) otherwise known as Wenceslas Square, and kept using including them in phrases.
So I tried to go out to a club there with some friends on Friday... first, the club was 200 crown cover to play what seemed like flashy boring house music, so I passed, though that was the reason we'd gone out. Then we ended up with a homeless guy threatening us with, of all things, his cane. "Polizie" and reaching for my cell phone made him eventually go away. Then, after all this, ended up with a guy acting pretty inappropriately to one member of our party, necessitating a call to the police. As another friend asked me where we were, I looked up at the bus station and realized we were, of all places, at the Voclavske Namesti stop, just like in the language tutorial, so apparently, knowing the phrase is useful. It also necessitating to translate the entire incident through a fourth party into German at the police station (And to think I promised myself to stay out of them abroad). Gods. So fun night, eh?
So not dissuaded by all of this, we'd found a cool sculpture that somewhat mirrors the main horse sculpture in the center courtyard that features a man sitting astride a dead upside horse and went back yesterday to take a picture of it (none of us had a camera at the time), only to find it surrounded by firefighters, news media and so forth, because apparently part of the building had caught on fire.
I think I'm sticking to the Charles Bridge. Though I won't have to, because we've got a night train to Budapest tomorrow night.
Last night (what, you want this in order?), we toured around Vyserad (sp? Again), which is a really nice place, and allegedly the site where Prague was founded, and at least the two times I've been there, isn't half as packed as many of the other popular sites, yet has a wonderful church, great views, nice courtyards with statues, so it was really peaceful. The night was topped off by a trip to U Sadlu, an excellent, if pretty darn expensive medieval restaurant. Huge portions though, so we offset some of the cost by eating leftovers throughout our day in Kutna Hora.
So disjointed, yes, but it's an update!
Jul 26, 2008
Going to Kutna Hora!
So many going-tos; so little sleep.
Selective has come to an end, and I can barely believe it, since it seems like just yesterday I was looking at the outside of my apartment going "uh oh", and now, I'm heading off to Kutna Hora (site of the bone church, to put those anatomy skills to use) before a last day in Prague and a night on a train to Budapest.
Synopsis on the selective... very very cool, but a little organization could be in order as far as who gets what rotations (I got pretty lucky), organizing the final exam, informing hospitals and so forth, but I still got to see a lot of the differences between American and Czech medical care plus some general practice stuff on medical care.
For now, bedtime though. Late night at U Sadlu!
Selective has come to an end, and I can barely believe it, since it seems like just yesterday I was looking at the outside of my apartment going "uh oh", and now, I'm heading off to Kutna Hora (site of the bone church, to put those anatomy skills to use) before a last day in Prague and a night on a train to Budapest.
Synopsis on the selective... very very cool, but a little organization could be in order as far as who gets what rotations (I got pretty lucky), organizing the final exam, informing hospitals and so forth, but I still got to see a lot of the differences between American and Czech medical care plus some general practice stuff on medical care.
For now, bedtime though. Late night at U Sadlu!
Jul 23, 2008
Zebras are reactionary
Speaking of Simon and Garfunkel, "The Boxer" came on in the dermato OR right after a Czech pop song. Weird.
So, yesterday was the Praha Zoo, known as the 6-7th best zoo in the world, and since I never grew out of my little girl love of animals, I had to go.
Very nice, and notably, the whole time we were there, no one popped out of an unseen location and yelled at us in Czech, which doesn't seem like it would be unusual, but I can say there's been a fair part of my European experience that I described as "having someone pop out and yell at me in another language until I wander off". Or in Grace's case, until she produces money to get them to go away.
I went right after my selective, in which we saw a bunch of venous insufficiency ulcers and some contact dermatitis, burned out to the zoo after, in time to experience Prague's extremely temperamental weather. Dress in layers. Bring sunglasses and an umbrella. I needed my whole collection. Joined up with Grace and Neeta once their afternoon session had ended, and we promptly got to work awww'ing at the cute baby animals, snickering at the defecating and fornicating animals, and climbing on the metal statues to take pictures.
Realizing that the zoo was about to close, and we still hadn't seen Africa, we decided to wait around to see what would happen and see as much as we could. My experience in Czech, to date, has taught me that if you linger anywhere up to 10 minutes before closing, you will be chased out physically by security guards, and occasionally have people threaten to call the police if you attempt to inform anyone you have ten minutes left (Grr, I'm looking in your direction).
Not at the zoo.. we just wandered around as it got emptier and eerier, which was a time where we were near the wolves and hyenas, at which point, the zoo saw fit to post "caution: dangerous animals" signs around in English (neglected near the tigers) which increased the creepy. So finally, an hour and a half after closing, we wandered toward the exit, feeling decidedly like we'd gotten away with something, so that was nice.
Grabbed a train station potato pancake that inexplicably had a piece of chicken inside of it, and headed out to the Agharta Jazz Club, which is a very cool, if sort of expensive little place near the old town square. They were playing freeform jazz last night, which is definitely not my favorite, but the whole brick cellar experience was worth it and proved a drastic improvement over the previous night's venture which landed us in the middle of the projects in a club that had been shut down and replaced by a biker bar where as we walked in, not only did a bunch of scary men pull heads up from bar and stare us down, but one of them had a knife strapped to his belt. Eeeeeeeeeeeek. So we proudly sat down in a booth, pushed ourselves to the far back of it, and watched everyone eyeball us as I sucked down a beer as fast as my liver would allow, dropped the money out with a decent tip to the surly bartender in exchange for not having her colleagues beat me to death, and got the hell out of there as fast as possible.
On the plus side, we got to see the crawling baby sculptures on the TV tower at night, back lit by red light, which is creepier than I can even begin to describe. Good times!
Today, meeting the minister of health. Last week, meeting the ambassador of the US to Czech. Tomorrow, meeting my friend Slappy. Three guesses which one I'm most excited about?
So, yesterday was the Praha Zoo, known as the 6-7th best zoo in the world, and since I never grew out of my little girl love of animals, I had to go.
Very nice, and notably, the whole time we were there, no one popped out of an unseen location and yelled at us in Czech, which doesn't seem like it would be unusual, but I can say there's been a fair part of my European experience that I described as "having someone pop out and yell at me in another language until I wander off". Or in Grace's case, until she produces money to get them to go away.
I went right after my selective, in which we saw a bunch of venous insufficiency ulcers and some contact dermatitis, burned out to the zoo after, in time to experience Prague's extremely temperamental weather. Dress in layers. Bring sunglasses and an umbrella. I needed my whole collection. Joined up with Grace and Neeta once their afternoon session had ended, and we promptly got to work awww'ing at the cute baby animals, snickering at the defecating and fornicating animals, and climbing on the metal statues to take pictures.
Realizing that the zoo was about to close, and we still hadn't seen Africa, we decided to wait around to see what would happen and see as much as we could. My experience in Czech, to date, has taught me that if you linger anywhere up to 10 minutes before closing, you will be chased out physically by security guards, and occasionally have people threaten to call the police if you attempt to inform anyone you have ten minutes left (Grr, I'm looking in your direction).
Not at the zoo.. we just wandered around as it got emptier and eerier, which was a time where we were near the wolves and hyenas, at which point, the zoo saw fit to post "caution: dangerous animals" signs around in English (neglected near the tigers) which increased the creepy. So finally, an hour and a half after closing, we wandered toward the exit, feeling decidedly like we'd gotten away with something, so that was nice.
Grabbed a train station potato pancake that inexplicably had a piece of chicken inside of it, and headed out to the Agharta Jazz Club, which is a very cool, if sort of expensive little place near the old town square. They were playing freeform jazz last night, which is definitely not my favorite, but the whole brick cellar experience was worth it and proved a drastic improvement over the previous night's venture which landed us in the middle of the projects in a club that had been shut down and replaced by a biker bar where as we walked in, not only did a bunch of scary men pull heads up from bar and stare us down, but one of them had a knife strapped to his belt. Eeeeeeeeeeeek. So we proudly sat down in a booth, pushed ourselves to the far back of it, and watched everyone eyeball us as I sucked down a beer as fast as my liver would allow, dropped the money out with a decent tip to the surly bartender in exchange for not having her colleagues beat me to death, and got the hell out of there as fast as possible.
On the plus side, we got to see the crawling baby sculptures on the TV tower at night, back lit by red light, which is creepier than I can even begin to describe. Good times!
Today, meeting the minister of health. Last week, meeting the ambassador of the US to Czech. Tomorrow, meeting my friend Slappy. Three guesses which one I'm most excited about?
Jul 21, 2008
Wiener!
Europe is awesome and yet, exhausting. Today, I feel like I'm gonna die, but it's such a good death that I can't help by try and make it out to a punk club tonight just to show that I can. What medical selective?
Got back from Vienna at about midnight last night, crashed and burned and headed out to my first round in dermatovenerology this morning.
Vienna... Vienna. The train ride is very nice, though not anything like Dresden to Prague. We got a second class cabin, which is surprisingly cozy, and cozy in a "cozy" way, rather than being cozy in a "crammed into coach class" way, though I did get stuck across from the overly affectionate couple where the girl insisted on "play kissing" her boyfriend's cheek for four hours, making a 'smacksmacksmack' noise. Ahhhh, twu wuv.
The hostel was awesome. Very different than the one I stayed in when I was in Berlin with smaller rooms, but cozier. They had free instruments in the common room, and really pretty gardens/courtyards with a giant chess set and an all access BBQ grill, which was a nice touch. According to my top bunkie, some people around 4 in the morning were using the garden for more than a stroll, which is freaking hilarious.
On Friday, we checked into the hostel and headed out for Wienerschnitzel and local beer, which was excellent, and we dealt with an exceedingly patient waitress in the process. I was going to go out Friday night, but got held up, so wound up sending Grace off and heading hostel bound with Neeta to hit the bike tour the next morning, which we missed, but rented bikes nonetheless and headed to the flea market/farmer's market to see some real Vienna.
NICE bikes too. When I saw the "if you destroy or lose our bike, we're charging your credit card 500 euros" thing, I balked a bit, but they were really nice, curb hopping, light frame bikes and they got the job done. Definitely the way to travel, and I should have rented one in Berlin. Prague is not as much of a bike city.
At the market, Grace managed to get yelled at by an Austrian vendor, and then we found far nicer ones to sustain us with candied fruit, fresh mango juice, and goat-cheese stuffed olives while I got myself a nice all-over burn due to leaving my sunscreen at the hostel like a complete dumbass.
Then, we joined up for the afternoon's Viennese death cycle... holy crap, what an awful tour. At first, despite the guide's speaking German for five minutes to every one minute of English on a 'bilingual' tour, we were goofing off, having fun, playing bike tag (dangerous, but awesome), hurtling through the woods, seeing the brown polluted portion of the Danube (the guide said when you look perpendicularly down at it, that's when it looks blue, which is not true in the slightest). We crossed a giant bridge that ended in an incredibly fun fast spiral down, at which point one guy on our tour skidded out and had to have his bleeding shoulder tended to by fellow cyclers rather than the guide, who has never heard of the concept of "no man left behind".
Speaking of which, due to the guide's insistence on seeing all of greater Vienna at top speed, we took a wrong turn and got lost for a half hour, during which we saw the blue portion of the Danube with a really cool sort of wakeboarding "ring" going on, during which we also stayed in contact with a friend that had managed to stay with the group, who was also the one that had to come get us, since our guide, while making everyone else stay and wait, wouldn't look for us, despite telling us by phone to stay where we were and he would, all the while telling the group that we were irresponsible, etc. Blech. Then, another member of the group (not ours) had her bike that she rented through the tour (not our shop) break, nope, no helping her, and we continued whipping through the Vienna outskirts without really knowing what we were seeing or seeing the main sites. Blech.
BUT, riding bikes is fun! And we got a good story out of it.
That night, due to missing the previous night, I HAD to go out, so headed to the Gurdel (I think) club district and found an awesome little no-cover grunge place that had really nice music and danced the night away as much as I could.
Next day was really awesome. We took pictures of ourselves doing handstands in the castle gardens, then headed for a walking tour arranged through our hostel. Our guide was wonderful, lingered, showed us all the main sites, and ran the tour as long as we wanted it, and he just enjoyed hanging out with us, so we finally had to leave because we had a train to catch, but it was just fantastic, and I got a ton of pictures, including one with our guide. He also did a bilingual tour (in English and Portuguese!) but it was much more even, and he made sure that both groups got a full appreciation of each place, and while he was doing the other language part, the other group was free to wander around without fear of getting left and buy water, see the sites, take pictures, use the toilets, or whatever. Oh, he also told us that during the World Cup, they put an Austria t-shirt on the giant statue of Anubis that's near the Natural History museum. Oh, to have seen that!
The one thing we were missing was Sachertorte, which we managed to get AT the train station, though according to others that had it at real places, ours was a highly inferior version. We spent the train ride with five of us in a car laughing, dressing up Grace like a ninja and so forth, and one Austrian student who told us a ton about the program she was studying in Czech, her town in Austrian, a Vienna perspective, so that was really cool.
And now, back in Prague! Whew!
Got back from Vienna at about midnight last night, crashed and burned and headed out to my first round in dermatovenerology this morning.
Vienna... Vienna. The train ride is very nice, though not anything like Dresden to Prague. We got a second class cabin, which is surprisingly cozy, and cozy in a "cozy" way, rather than being cozy in a "crammed into coach class" way, though I did get stuck across from the overly affectionate couple where the girl insisted on "play kissing" her boyfriend's cheek for four hours, making a 'smacksmacksmack' noise. Ahhhh, twu wuv.
The hostel was awesome. Very different than the one I stayed in when I was in Berlin with smaller rooms, but cozier. They had free instruments in the common room, and really pretty gardens/courtyards with a giant chess set and an all access BBQ grill, which was a nice touch. According to my top bunkie, some people around 4 in the morning were using the garden for more than a stroll, which is freaking hilarious.
On Friday, we checked into the hostel and headed out for Wienerschnitzel and local beer, which was excellent, and we dealt with an exceedingly patient waitress in the process. I was going to go out Friday night, but got held up, so wound up sending Grace off and heading hostel bound with Neeta to hit the bike tour the next morning, which we missed, but rented bikes nonetheless and headed to the flea market/farmer's market to see some real Vienna.
NICE bikes too. When I saw the "if you destroy or lose our bike, we're charging your credit card 500 euros" thing, I balked a bit, but they were really nice, curb hopping, light frame bikes and they got the job done. Definitely the way to travel, and I should have rented one in Berlin. Prague is not as much of a bike city.
At the market, Grace managed to get yelled at by an Austrian vendor, and then we found far nicer ones to sustain us with candied fruit, fresh mango juice, and goat-cheese stuffed olives while I got myself a nice all-over burn due to leaving my sunscreen at the hostel like a complete dumbass.
Then, we joined up for the afternoon's Viennese death cycle... holy crap, what an awful tour. At first, despite the guide's speaking German for five minutes to every one minute of English on a 'bilingual' tour, we were goofing off, having fun, playing bike tag (dangerous, but awesome), hurtling through the woods, seeing the brown polluted portion of the Danube (the guide said when you look perpendicularly down at it, that's when it looks blue, which is not true in the slightest). We crossed a giant bridge that ended in an incredibly fun fast spiral down, at which point one guy on our tour skidded out and had to have his bleeding shoulder tended to by fellow cyclers rather than the guide, who has never heard of the concept of "no man left behind".
Speaking of which, due to the guide's insistence on seeing all of greater Vienna at top speed, we took a wrong turn and got lost for a half hour, during which we saw the blue portion of the Danube with a really cool sort of wakeboarding "ring" going on, during which we also stayed in contact with a friend that had managed to stay with the group, who was also the one that had to come get us, since our guide, while making everyone else stay and wait, wouldn't look for us, despite telling us by phone to stay where we were and he would, all the while telling the group that we were irresponsible, etc. Blech. Then, another member of the group (not ours) had her bike that she rented through the tour (not our shop) break, nope, no helping her, and we continued whipping through the Vienna outskirts without really knowing what we were seeing or seeing the main sites. Blech.
BUT, riding bikes is fun! And we got a good story out of it.
That night, due to missing the previous night, I HAD to go out, so headed to the Gurdel (I think) club district and found an awesome little no-cover grunge place that had really nice music and danced the night away as much as I could.
Next day was really awesome. We took pictures of ourselves doing handstands in the castle gardens, then headed for a walking tour arranged through our hostel. Our guide was wonderful, lingered, showed us all the main sites, and ran the tour as long as we wanted it, and he just enjoyed hanging out with us, so we finally had to leave because we had a train to catch, but it was just fantastic, and I got a ton of pictures, including one with our guide. He also did a bilingual tour (in English and Portuguese!) but it was much more even, and he made sure that both groups got a full appreciation of each place, and while he was doing the other language part, the other group was free to wander around without fear of getting left and buy water, see the sites, take pictures, use the toilets, or whatever. Oh, he also told us that during the World Cup, they put an Austria t-shirt on the giant statue of Anubis that's near the Natural History museum. Oh, to have seen that!
The one thing we were missing was Sachertorte, which we managed to get AT the train station, though according to others that had it at real places, ours was a highly inferior version. We spent the train ride with five of us in a car laughing, dressing up Grace like a ninja and so forth, and one Austrian student who told us a ton about the program she was studying in Czech, her town in Austrian, a Vienna perspective, so that was really cool.
And now, back in Prague! Whew!
Jul 17, 2008
Going to Vienna!
It's a whirlwind, eh??
Sorry not to write, but I'm never in my apartment! Helped largely by the stairs, but also the amazement that is Prague!!! So there'll be an expanded version of events once I'm sleeping off the Europe back in Grenada, but for now... uhh...
Got to be REALLY close to a neck dissection surgery where since I was the only one hanging out for it, the surgeons just chatted with me while showing me everything, including the pulsing jugular vein. Freaking incredible.
Had a talk given by the American ambassador to the Czech Republic in the basement of Dr. S's nightclub. Odd.
Wandered around as much of the city as humanly possible between selective stuff.
Have endured the bite of the green fairy AND have briefly set my pants on fire with it. Yes, only a small spot, and no, it didn't burn me or the pants... which is kind of cool when you think about it. Hmm... holding flaming alcohol on a spoon, which technically is already supposed to be slotted, generally either held over oneself, a wooden counter, a drink napkin, or best of all, an entire glass of potentially highly flammable alcohol. Who came up with this idea?
Have seen a concert in the National Museum where they absolutely celebrated music and have suffered through a concert in the St Salvador church where they murdered Pachelbel and Mozart. I was not the only one looking pained. I'm not sure if the out of tune violin, the lack of technical proficiency, or the fact that they were all playing at such a pace that I figured they had to catch a train right after the show was the highlight, but I did get to sit down in a pretty church for an hour.
Saw the five level nightclub by the Charles Bridge which is so trendy that it has a hired half naked woman that dances on top of a spotlight as a decoration, I was suitably impressed. My normal pre-Grenada haunts largely consisted of used furniture tossed into abandoned warehouses to hear undiscovered bands... which is also nifty and doesn't involve having to wear nice shoes, but it was still cool.
Drank out of the Piss sculpture previously mentioned, half of which was to disturb my friends, and the other half of which is because buying water in Europe is freaking expensive, there aren't any drinking fountains, and half the water you do buy is carbonated mineral water. Ick. And incidentally, I didn't contract any parasites from the sculpture (to my knowledge) and the water tasted better than the 5 dollar stuff, so go nuts.
Went to a brewery at a monastery where I ate goulash soup out of a bread bowl. Mmm... On the food front, also went to a little creperie that has to die for caramel pear crepes.
Walked around the Jewish Quarter marveling at the architecture (which you do in pretty much every part of Prague) and had a guy in a superhero outfit wander by me. I love Prague.
Continued wandering around Old Town and Mala Strana because I've rarely seen anything prettier.
Talked to a patient who knew WAY more English than we thought when we were discussing his case, who then said he liked English because we have limericks and the Czech don't, and said that he was scared because of his cancer. Aw.
Saw ears get drained. Nummy.
Walked through the palace again, and on the way down, wandered through the oldest vineyards in Prague.
And now?? Heading for Vienna! Can't believe how nuts my life is right now!
Sorry not to write, but I'm never in my apartment! Helped largely by the stairs, but also the amazement that is Prague!!! So there'll be an expanded version of events once I'm sleeping off the Europe back in Grenada, but for now... uhh...
Got to be REALLY close to a neck dissection surgery where since I was the only one hanging out for it, the surgeons just chatted with me while showing me everything, including the pulsing jugular vein. Freaking incredible.
Had a talk given by the American ambassador to the Czech Republic in the basement of Dr. S's nightclub. Odd.
Wandered around as much of the city as humanly possible between selective stuff.
Have endured the bite of the green fairy AND have briefly set my pants on fire with it. Yes, only a small spot, and no, it didn't burn me or the pants... which is kind of cool when you think about it. Hmm... holding flaming alcohol on a spoon, which technically is already supposed to be slotted, generally either held over oneself, a wooden counter, a drink napkin, or best of all, an entire glass of potentially highly flammable alcohol. Who came up with this idea?
Have seen a concert in the National Museum where they absolutely celebrated music and have suffered through a concert in the St Salvador church where they murdered Pachelbel and Mozart. I was not the only one looking pained. I'm not sure if the out of tune violin, the lack of technical proficiency, or the fact that they were all playing at such a pace that I figured they had to catch a train right after the show was the highlight, but I did get to sit down in a pretty church for an hour.
Saw the five level nightclub by the Charles Bridge which is so trendy that it has a hired half naked woman that dances on top of a spotlight as a decoration, I was suitably impressed. My normal pre-Grenada haunts largely consisted of used furniture tossed into abandoned warehouses to hear undiscovered bands... which is also nifty and doesn't involve having to wear nice shoes, but it was still cool.
Drank out of the Piss sculpture previously mentioned, half of which was to disturb my friends, and the other half of which is because buying water in Europe is freaking expensive, there aren't any drinking fountains, and half the water you do buy is carbonated mineral water. Ick. And incidentally, I didn't contract any parasites from the sculpture (to my knowledge) and the water tasted better than the 5 dollar stuff, so go nuts.
Went to a brewery at a monastery where I ate goulash soup out of a bread bowl. Mmm... On the food front, also went to a little creperie that has to die for caramel pear crepes.
Walked around the Jewish Quarter marveling at the architecture (which you do in pretty much every part of Prague) and had a guy in a superhero outfit wander by me. I love Prague.
Continued wandering around Old Town and Mala Strana because I've rarely seen anything prettier.
Talked to a patient who knew WAY more English than we thought when we were discussing his case, who then said he liked English because we have limericks and the Czech don't, and said that he was scared because of his cancer. Aw.
Saw ears get drained. Nummy.
Walked through the palace again, and on the way down, wandered through the oldest vineyards in Prague.
And now?? Heading for Vienna! Can't believe how nuts my life is right now!
Jul 11, 2008
Whew!
First trip to Europe is the killer, eh? I still want to see everything and do everything and eat and drink everything, which finally left me at the end of yesterday, having done the selective in the morning with a very cool surgery in the fourth ventricle of an 11 year old, which was fascinating, despite getting a kick in the head from the green fairy the night before at the mixer party (great timing, that), only to go home to take a nap, get ten minutes into it, have Grr call, and go "Want to walk around the castle?" "Dammit... Yes." AND we got our token dorky pictures with the motionless castle guards (like England but no funny hats) AND discovered entrance to St. Vitus Cathedral is free, but they will still kick you out at closing, no Sanctuary!
So this ran me out last night and yesterday, upon not being able to get a ticket to Munich for under 180 euros, forced me to accept staying in Prague this weekend (awww, poor Ishie, eh?), and sleep until nearly noon. Ahhh.. Then to compensate, I walked about five miles uphill into southern Mala Strana, saw and walked up the fake Eiffel Tower, saw the Hunger Wall, had some pivo in a garden on the side of the hill, and went into a Renaissance style fairy art cavern museum that I found along the way before heading back in search of the John Lennon Wall only to overshoot and instead find a famous sculpture called "Piss" in which two computer animated statues piss with their animatronic weiners spelling out famous quotes from Czech literature. Tres classy. Naturally I got a picture of a small child playing in the fountain this display creates. How... cute?
So it's been a good day, and it only took me five minutes to get through all three tricky impenetrable doors of my walk up bombed out flat.
My apartment in Prague serves the function of field sobriety test (useful, considering the location), despite the fact that I love it. There's a huge outer door that opens into a courtyard/place for serial killers to choose victims. Then you go into a stairwell that contains an elevator that doesn't work, or works sometimes, but "works sometimes" is one of those descriptions that causes me to never use an elevator. Then you go up an unbelievable number of stairs. At night, the light is timed so you can flip it on, but it is likely to go out at some point when you are halfway up the stairs. Then you reach the second door, which should ostensibly have your apartment number on it, but doesn't, making it a real treat to find. This door also boasts having kept my roommate out for half an hour on her first day, and me out for 15 minutes last night despite being sober, despite my rising level of profanity perhaps indicating otherwise. The lock is VERY tricky. Then comes our actual front door, which is a little tricky, though pales in comparison to the one that procedes it. The entire process combined with the aesthetics does a decent job of convincing you that you're about to enter a crackhouse, and then it opens into a spacious, clean, high ceilinged, well lit, Ikea-drenched flat. And this pattern seems to be the norm. It's pretty cool.
I've also seen a string performance of, inexplicably, Vivaldi and Gershwin, at the Narodni Museum, which was a definite highlight. Baroque music is far more interesting live in a place with good acoustics. Last night, as stated, I found castle and dinner while my roommates went to the Wu Tang Clan concert. Yes, I'm a dork, but wasn't a big fan of the Wu even when Old Dirty was still alive, so I'm not going to feel too bad. Are the Stones coming back?
I finished the neurosurgery selective, which was really interesting, so will be reporting for ENT on Monday at a different (closer) hospital, and I've heard that particular selective is interesting as well, so overall I should net some good experience. My last week is dermatovenerology, which should be net me a strong stomach.
In the interim, I've been sampling Czech beers, Czech food, Czech streets, and Czech language. I've found that knowing about four words of Czech increases the surrounding population's knowledge of English by about 30:1. When I've seen people ask "Do you speak English?" (like asking for directions), about 85% say "ne rosememe" (I don't understand). When you say "G'daya _______? (where's ______?)", the answer to the question is in English very frequently, or it switches to English the second you try to elaborate. Bizarre. Thank you, Pimsleur language tapes, once again giving me just enough rope to hang myself.
I also haven't figured out if I look really really American or am getting confused for Czech, because while Czech people often figure out to speak English to me in restaurants before I've done *anything*, people keep coming up to me on the street and asking if I speak English. Unfortunately, they then assume that I know something about the surrounding area and can convey something to them other than "I dunno. I'm lost too." We also had a guy approach us asking us to speak Spanish, and as we tried to brokenly tell him about the route of the Number 14 tram, he realized by our internal conversation to each other that we spoke English and fluently switched to that. Speaking of Spanish, I'm discovering I know more of it than I thought I did because about 75% of the time I realize I need to ask someone a question here, I realize I can say it in Spanish but not in Czech. D'oh.
So... I may try to hit Cesky Krumlov tomorrow if I can drag up early enough. Here's hoping!
So this ran me out last night and yesterday, upon not being able to get a ticket to Munich for under 180 euros, forced me to accept staying in Prague this weekend (awww, poor Ishie, eh?), and sleep until nearly noon. Ahhh.. Then to compensate, I walked about five miles uphill into southern Mala Strana, saw and walked up the fake Eiffel Tower, saw the Hunger Wall, had some pivo in a garden on the side of the hill, and went into a Renaissance style fairy art cavern museum that I found along the way before heading back in search of the John Lennon Wall only to overshoot and instead find a famous sculpture called "Piss" in which two computer animated statues piss with their animatronic weiners spelling out famous quotes from Czech literature. Tres classy. Naturally I got a picture of a small child playing in the fountain this display creates. How... cute?
So it's been a good day, and it only took me five minutes to get through all three tricky impenetrable doors of my walk up bombed out flat.
My apartment in Prague serves the function of field sobriety test (useful, considering the location), despite the fact that I love it. There's a huge outer door that opens into a courtyard/place for serial killers to choose victims. Then you go into a stairwell that contains an elevator that doesn't work, or works sometimes, but "works sometimes" is one of those descriptions that causes me to never use an elevator. Then you go up an unbelievable number of stairs. At night, the light is timed so you can flip it on, but it is likely to go out at some point when you are halfway up the stairs. Then you reach the second door, which should ostensibly have your apartment number on it, but doesn't, making it a real treat to find. This door also boasts having kept my roommate out for half an hour on her first day, and me out for 15 minutes last night despite being sober, despite my rising level of profanity perhaps indicating otherwise. The lock is VERY tricky. Then comes our actual front door, which is a little tricky, though pales in comparison to the one that procedes it. The entire process combined with the aesthetics does a decent job of convincing you that you're about to enter a crackhouse, and then it opens into a spacious, clean, high ceilinged, well lit, Ikea-drenched flat. And this pattern seems to be the norm. It's pretty cool.
I've also seen a string performance of, inexplicably, Vivaldi and Gershwin, at the Narodni Museum, which was a definite highlight. Baroque music is far more interesting live in a place with good acoustics. Last night, as stated, I found castle and dinner while my roommates went to the Wu Tang Clan concert. Yes, I'm a dork, but wasn't a big fan of the Wu even when Old Dirty was still alive, so I'm not going to feel too bad. Are the Stones coming back?
I finished the neurosurgery selective, which was really interesting, so will be reporting for ENT on Monday at a different (closer) hospital, and I've heard that particular selective is interesting as well, so overall I should net some good experience. My last week is dermatovenerology, which should be net me a strong stomach.
In the interim, I've been sampling Czech beers, Czech food, Czech streets, and Czech language. I've found that knowing about four words of Czech increases the surrounding population's knowledge of English by about 30:1. When I've seen people ask "Do you speak English?" (like asking for directions), about 85% say "ne rosememe" (I don't understand). When you say "G'daya _______? (where's ______?)", the answer to the question is in English very frequently, or it switches to English the second you try to elaborate. Bizarre. Thank you, Pimsleur language tapes, once again giving me just enough rope to hang myself.
I also haven't figured out if I look really really American or am getting confused for Czech, because while Czech people often figure out to speak English to me in restaurants before I've done *anything*, people keep coming up to me on the street and asking if I speak English. Unfortunately, they then assume that I know something about the surrounding area and can convey something to them other than "I dunno. I'm lost too." We also had a guy approach us asking us to speak Spanish, and as we tried to brokenly tell him about the route of the Number 14 tram, he realized by our internal conversation to each other that we spoke English and fluently switched to that. Speaking of Spanish, I'm discovering I know more of it than I thought I did because about 75% of the time I realize I need to ask someone a question here, I realize I can say it in Spanish but not in Czech. D'oh.
So... I may try to hit Cesky Krumlov tomorrow if I can drag up early enough. Here's hoping!
Jul 9, 2008
Prague!!!!!!!!!!!
Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooot!!!!!!!!!!! What else is there to say?? yes, I'm getting a ton of pictures. Yes, I'm neglecting my blog because I have too much to do. Yes, neurosurgery is my first rotation. Yes, I've tried absinthe. Yes, I've walked across the Charles Bridge. Yes, things are absolutely amazing and you should totally do it. Yes, you should do the selective when given the chance. Yes, I'm going to bed before I die.
This whole Europe experience is amazing beyond what I can express, particularly when combined with living in the Caribbean less than a month ago. My life has become surreal.
This whole Europe experience is amazing beyond what I can express, particularly when combined with living in the Caribbean less than a month ago. My life has become surreal.
Jul 2, 2008
Top o the mornin
From Dublin airport!!!!
This has been quite the hectic week. Thank you out there to all of you who offered support during fourth term. Despite the nastiness of it, I feel really good about how it went, and will be careening back in for fifth to finish off these bad boy basic sciences before they let me go practice being a real doctor.
Oh, and a big thank you to those of you helping me out at Banana's last Friday. You know what I'm talking about. Jumbie Juice is a killer. I don't even know what's in it. Jumbie may not.
So now I'm doing the joint whole backpack through Europe/Prague selective thing without trying to decrease the overall perception of Americans any further, so I wonder how that'll go... I've got my boxer shorts, but fishing hat, my "I'm with Stupid" t-shirt with the American flag on the back over which is emblazoned an eagle with the words "These colors don't run, but people from your country do", so I think I'm all set. Either that or I'll go with "I'm from Canada. Er... Eh." or I'm from Grenada. Er... Mon."
So what to do in Dublin for the next four hours until my flight boards? I'm thinking of trying to score an Irish breakfast outside the airport without risking a missed flight to Berlin, where I get to demonstrate how little German I actually speak. I've preconverted some dollars to Euros (HOLY )(*)(£*)(*)(*)(")*"( WHAT THE HECK HAVE YOU GUYS BEEN DOING WHILE I'VE BEEN GONE??????), and I'm raring to go. Hostel is arranged, Lonely Planet book is bought, and so I'm hoping to get my food, walk, talk, doc, and drink on. Probably in that order.
Europe!!!!!
This has been quite the hectic week. Thank you out there to all of you who offered support during fourth term. Despite the nastiness of it, I feel really good about how it went, and will be careening back in for fifth to finish off these bad boy basic sciences before they let me go practice being a real doctor.
Oh, and a big thank you to those of you helping me out at Banana's last Friday. You know what I'm talking about. Jumbie Juice is a killer. I don't even know what's in it. Jumbie may not.
So now I'm doing the joint whole backpack through Europe/Prague selective thing without trying to decrease the overall perception of Americans any further, so I wonder how that'll go... I've got my boxer shorts, but fishing hat, my "I'm with Stupid" t-shirt with the American flag on the back over which is emblazoned an eagle with the words "These colors don't run, but people from your country do", so I think I'm all set. Either that or I'll go with "I'm from Canada. Er... Eh." or I'm from Grenada. Er... Mon."
So what to do in Dublin for the next four hours until my flight boards? I'm thinking of trying to score an Irish breakfast outside the airport without risking a missed flight to Berlin, where I get to demonstrate how little German I actually speak. I've preconverted some dollars to Euros (HOLY )(*)(£*)(*)(*)(")*"( WHAT THE HECK HAVE YOU GUYS BEEN DOING WHILE I'VE BEEN GONE??????), and I'm raring to go. Hostel is arranged, Lonely Planet book is bought, and so I'm hoping to get my food, walk, talk, doc, and drink on. Probably in that order.
Europe!!!!!
Jun 7, 2008
Still crazy...
Nope, not from panic attacks. I like to mix up the crazy so no one knows what to expect. No one likes a predictable crazy person. It makes them seem almost sane.
Nah, this is more of the internal-doubting myself as a person form of crazy where I end up thinking strange things, and stranger than "electrical banana"... quite rightly
Today, despite the nutrition final on Monday, I've been procrastinating like hell (who me?) doing those last four lectures, which I chalked up to me being back to normal, so no harm no foul.
Until FINALLY, after like 8 hours to get through 4 lectures, not for the normal reasons but because my brain kept wandering off (also not unusual), I finished and figured I should try to stay on top of my path lectures so I don't wind up way behind right after the nutrition final.
*That* held my attention. And I was trying to figure out why... was it because I started path later and tend to thrive better in the late at night? Was it the fact that I don't have an exam on it on Monday so it (theoretically) doesn't cause as much stress because it's not directly hanging over me?
Nah, it's because it's more interesting. Yes, that's right... nutrition, which I almost get 10 extra credit points on just for being female, since we're taught from birth to be obsessed with our weights, is WAY less interesting than endocrine pathology. To a point, where I couldn't even pay attention to it and resented the parts where it even got remotely difficult, yet path stays difficult, and MUCH better time getting through it. Maybe it's the threat of death.
What's doubly unfair in this is that though nutrition tends to be one of those subjects I'm suspicious of due to a nasty predilection to make things up without any kind of statistical support, they actually addressed and acknowledged that problem and presented areas where the research was sketchy, gave values on good studies, and all that stuff that perks me out of the "bad science" irritation I felt for most of public health (did you know that secondhand smoke kills over 10 billion orphaned periplegic nuns per year??). They even addressed that whole correlation not equaling causation thing that drives me absolutely bonkers.
I think the wonderfully impending Prague thing is also impinging on my minimal attention span. I bought my backpack, am checking out luggage cubes, am thinking of what stuff to bring, to pack, to eat, to be merry, whether I'll sleep on trains, or with earplugs and whether I'm going to be able I'll be able to muster enough broken Gerglish to buy a train ticket to Prague when I'm in Berlin. Are my vaccinations up to date enough? Will they penalize me for my body's stubborn refusal to develop varicella titers despite the fact that I was never able to get chickenpox as a child despite parental efforts, and have now gotten shot up with the vaccine about 5 times? Will the doctors like me? If a bleeding patient is screaming at me in Czech, will they be comforted by my ability to say "I'm American! I speak a little Czech! What time would you like to go to lunch?"?
Ya know... the important questions, unlike questions like "I wonder how badly I can tank a one unit class if I'm thinking about German beer during the final exam?"
Nah, this is more of the internal-doubting myself as a person form of crazy where I end up thinking strange things, and stranger than "electrical banana"... quite rightly
Today, despite the nutrition final on Monday, I've been procrastinating like hell (who me?) doing those last four lectures, which I chalked up to me being back to normal, so no harm no foul.
Until FINALLY, after like 8 hours to get through 4 lectures, not for the normal reasons but because my brain kept wandering off (also not unusual), I finished and figured I should try to stay on top of my path lectures so I don't wind up way behind right after the nutrition final.
*That* held my attention. And I was trying to figure out why... was it because I started path later and tend to thrive better in the late at night? Was it the fact that I don't have an exam on it on Monday so it (theoretically) doesn't cause as much stress because it's not directly hanging over me?
Nah, it's because it's more interesting. Yes, that's right... nutrition, which I almost get 10 extra credit points on just for being female, since we're taught from birth to be obsessed with our weights, is WAY less interesting than endocrine pathology. To a point, where I couldn't even pay attention to it and resented the parts where it even got remotely difficult, yet path stays difficult, and MUCH better time getting through it. Maybe it's the threat of death.
What's doubly unfair in this is that though nutrition tends to be one of those subjects I'm suspicious of due to a nasty predilection to make things up without any kind of statistical support, they actually addressed and acknowledged that problem and presented areas where the research was sketchy, gave values on good studies, and all that stuff that perks me out of the "bad science" irritation I felt for most of public health (did you know that secondhand smoke kills over 10 billion orphaned periplegic nuns per year??). They even addressed that whole correlation not equaling causation thing that drives me absolutely bonkers.
I think the wonderfully impending Prague thing is also impinging on my minimal attention span. I bought my backpack, am checking out luggage cubes, am thinking of what stuff to bring, to pack, to eat, to be merry, whether I'll sleep on trains, or with earplugs and whether I'm going to be able I'll be able to muster enough broken Gerglish to buy a train ticket to Prague when I'm in Berlin. Are my vaccinations up to date enough? Will they penalize me for my body's stubborn refusal to develop varicella titers despite the fact that I was never able to get chickenpox as a child despite parental efforts, and have now gotten shot up with the vaccine about 5 times? Will the doctors like me? If a bleeding patient is screaming at me in Czech, will they be comforted by my ability to say "I'm American! I speak a little Czech! What time would you like to go to lunch?"?
Ya know... the important questions, unlike questions like "I wonder how badly I can tank a one unit class if I'm thinking about German beer during the final exam?"
Apr 14, 2008
Dr. Acula, at your service...
Or MS2 Acula, to give my actual rank, but then the joke doesn't work!
Today felt like a *real* medicine day rather than a "Let's see how much we can cram down your throat and then test you on further minutia we barely touched on".
First was physical diagnosis lab (not including those lecture things I've heard so much about), where we got to peer at each other's ears, nose, and sinuses. Patient interviews are fine and all, and yield less testable material, but I do sure enjoy this way more, because you get to learn how to make your friends feel insecure about their minor asymmetries.
It was also a fairly short lab, allowing me to run to the bookstore just in time to realize that the "pen light" I'd been planning to buy was actually a keychain. Doh.
Path lab took a turn from "go through intense amounts of material while presenting slides" to "no new material except stabbing your classmates, looking at your blood under a microscope, and confirming your blood type." Yup, still A+. Always good to have that backup info.
So got my stab on, and since you stab members of your group, you get to see your handiwork the next day, so I hope I didn't leave too big a hematoma on my lab partner. For me, I've got two new holes in my elbows, and I can say they were done with a lot more finesse than my second to last professional blood draw before I came to SGU. I think that chick nailed an artery. Or an artery wrapped around the nerve. Or bone. I don't know what she was doing. Neither did she.
Then, in case the day wasn't going well enough, we got to meet with some people who did the Prague selective and get some more info. OH, for a chilly summer! And a bike ride to a castle church. And dollar beer! And Medieval restaurants! The list goes on and on. Still scoping out places to stay, hopefully in Prague 1. Need more roommates!
In other news, I'm STILL behind in micro, and need to do some blood stuff for path. But this term does feel like real doctoring, I have to say. Well, until test time. Then it feels like battery.
Today felt like a *real* medicine day rather than a "Let's see how much we can cram down your throat and then test you on further minutia we barely touched on".
First was physical diagnosis lab (not including those lecture things I've heard so much about), where we got to peer at each other's ears, nose, and sinuses. Patient interviews are fine and all, and yield less testable material, but I do sure enjoy this way more, because you get to learn how to make your friends feel insecure about their minor asymmetries.
It was also a fairly short lab, allowing me to run to the bookstore just in time to realize that the "pen light" I'd been planning to buy was actually a keychain. Doh.
Path lab took a turn from "go through intense amounts of material while presenting slides" to "no new material except stabbing your classmates, looking at your blood under a microscope, and confirming your blood type." Yup, still A+. Always good to have that backup info.
So got my stab on, and since you stab members of your group, you get to see your handiwork the next day, so I hope I didn't leave too big a hematoma on my lab partner. For me, I've got two new holes in my elbows, and I can say they were done with a lot more finesse than my second to last professional blood draw before I came to SGU. I think that chick nailed an artery. Or an artery wrapped around the nerve. Or bone. I don't know what she was doing. Neither did she.
Then, in case the day wasn't going well enough, we got to meet with some people who did the Prague selective and get some more info. OH, for a chilly summer! And a bike ride to a castle church. And dollar beer! And Medieval restaurants! The list goes on and on. Still scoping out places to stay, hopefully in Prague 1. Need more roommates!
In other news, I'm STILL behind in micro, and need to do some blood stuff for path. But this term does feel like real doctoring, I have to say. Well, until test time. Then it feels like battery.
Feb 2, 2008
I'm going to Berlin!
Hey, why fly directly into a place when you can fly into a place that's in another country? I'm planning on using as many passport pages as possible!
So I booked my plane tickets to "Prague", meaning, I booked a plane ticket to Berlin and out of London, so I'll have three days to hang out in Berlin before taking the train to Prague, do the selective for three weeks, and then about two and a half weeks to make it to London.
Ooh, so excited!!! The booking of the tickets makes it finally seem real. I'm gonna study medicine in Prague, get clinical experience in Europe, and some pretty hefty vacation on top of that! Hardcore stuff, but from what I understand, I'm gonna need it after fourth term.
Third term is still going well, and I've been studying like crazy for it, since the psych section has gone into some neuro territory, so I want to make sure I stay on top of it. Tonight, I took a break to go to La Boulangerie with some friends and devour half a calzone. They're actually not bad, and when I need someplace that isn't as expensive as Banana's or De Big Fish and I want my food within an hour, I go there. Their pizza isn't bad, their calzones and pastas are actively good, I think, depending on what you order. Now... to partake in the tempura shrimp from the sushi place next door.
But back to the point, Europe!!!
It's bedtime now, so here's another random Grenada picture:
Mrs. Patel, in the flesh; the first termer's answer to 3 PM lecture-slump.
All right; all right, one more:
That's the walkway in upper campus, though this was before I left for the summer break.
So I booked my plane tickets to "Prague", meaning, I booked a plane ticket to Berlin and out of London, so I'll have three days to hang out in Berlin before taking the train to Prague, do the selective for three weeks, and then about two and a half weeks to make it to London.
Ooh, so excited!!! The booking of the tickets makes it finally seem real. I'm gonna study medicine in Prague, get clinical experience in Europe, and some pretty hefty vacation on top of that! Hardcore stuff, but from what I understand, I'm gonna need it after fourth term.
Third term is still going well, and I've been studying like crazy for it, since the psych section has gone into some neuro territory, so I want to make sure I stay on top of it. Tonight, I took a break to go to La Boulangerie with some friends and devour half a calzone. They're actually not bad, and when I need someplace that isn't as expensive as Banana's or De Big Fish and I want my food within an hour, I go there. Their pizza isn't bad, their calzones and pastas are actively good, I think, depending on what you order. Now... to partake in the tempura shrimp from the sushi place next door.
But back to the point, Europe!!!
It's bedtime now, so here's another random Grenada picture:
Mrs. Patel, in the flesh; the first termer's answer to 3 PM lecture-slump.
All right; all right, one more:
That's the walkway in upper campus, though this was before I left for the summer break.
Jan 31, 2008
I make negative money
While it's definitely hard to forget how much debt we're going into over here, nothing quite hits it home like filing your "income taxes", just to make sure the IRS doesn't make some stunning oversight and hit you as having not filed just because, you know, you don't have a job.
Now, I did my taxes last year from Grenada and grabbed a neat little return from the previous year's labor. This year?
Ishie's income for 2007, as reported to the IRS: -$69.
Yowch. Yup, I made negative thanks to student loan interest before everything was deferred. What's the poverty line?
I suppose it's strange because though I don't have a job, medical school is *way* more work than almost any job I would be in, thus I feel like, even though intellectually, I know I'm going into so much debt it makes my neocortex ache, it doesn't quite hit home that *I'm* paying to do this (eventually) until I file that 1040. Nor did the fact that I live out of the country. That should be obvious every time I walk outside and forget which way I'm supposed to look before crossing the street AND making sure there aren't any cows in it, but it's when that question came up of "Have you spent more than half of 2007 outside the US?" "Yup." And will spend even more of 2008.
Crazytown! Speaking of "outside the US", I'm starting to lock in that schedule for this summer, with probably deciding on flying into Berlin, staying for a couple of days, taking the train to Prague, doing the selective, and then flying out of London. Now, all I have to do is learn German, Czech, Italian, French, and English. By English, I mean "English", not the "like, dude" varietal that I speak. I've got my work cut out for me.
But school... first exam was on Monday, and I'm pleased with the result. I thought it was pretty fair, and it's strange to have a statistics exam so short on numbers. The wonders of the "no calculator" rule.
Now, we're going into more neuro-based psychiatry, as well as some math-based epidemiology, so I'm making damn sure I keep up on those and don't get too complacent. But so far, third term is pretty much going as promised. I'm also LOVING the afternoon small groups, like I did in second term. Not necessarily loving them as in "loving the content at all times", but loving it as in "opposite of first term's bright/early labs where I was NEVER awake for anything". I am so not a morning person. If they had exams start at 1 am, I'd have straight A's in medical school. I wonder if that counts as a learning disability...
Well, speaking of such, back to psych, a class that gives you so many disorders to remember, you can't help but diagnose yourself with 6 or 7 of them.
And now, a random Grenada photo:
Addendum: In the "Analogies that don't work" category:
Comparing the lack of ambient neurotransmitters in the brain to the amount of gas in a carburetor. I can honestly say I know more about brains than I do about cars, since I usually attribute the functioning of the latter to leprechauns living under the hood.
Now, I did my taxes last year from Grenada and grabbed a neat little return from the previous year's labor. This year?
Ishie's income for 2007, as reported to the IRS: -$69.
Yowch. Yup, I made negative thanks to student loan interest before everything was deferred. What's the poverty line?
I suppose it's strange because though I don't have a job, medical school is *way* more work than almost any job I would be in, thus I feel like, even though intellectually, I know I'm going into so much debt it makes my neocortex ache, it doesn't quite hit home that *I'm* paying to do this (eventually) until I file that 1040. Nor did the fact that I live out of the country. That should be obvious every time I walk outside and forget which way I'm supposed to look before crossing the street AND making sure there aren't any cows in it, but it's when that question came up of "Have you spent more than half of 2007 outside the US?" "Yup." And will spend even more of 2008.
Crazytown! Speaking of "outside the US", I'm starting to lock in that schedule for this summer, with probably deciding on flying into Berlin, staying for a couple of days, taking the train to Prague, doing the selective, and then flying out of London. Now, all I have to do is learn German, Czech, Italian, French, and English. By English, I mean "English", not the "like, dude" varietal that I speak. I've got my work cut out for me.
But school... first exam was on Monday, and I'm pleased with the result. I thought it was pretty fair, and it's strange to have a statistics exam so short on numbers. The wonders of the "no calculator" rule.
Now, we're going into more neuro-based psychiatry, as well as some math-based epidemiology, so I'm making damn sure I keep up on those and don't get too complacent. But so far, third term is pretty much going as promised. I'm also LOVING the afternoon small groups, like I did in second term. Not necessarily loving them as in "loving the content at all times", but loving it as in "opposite of first term's bright/early labs where I was NEVER awake for anything". I am so not a morning person. If they had exams start at 1 am, I'd have straight A's in medical school. I wonder if that counts as a learning disability...
Well, speaking of such, back to psych, a class that gives you so many disorders to remember, you can't help but diagnose yourself with 6 or 7 of them.
And now, a random Grenada photo:
Addendum: In the "Analogies that don't work" category:
Comparing the lack of ambient neurotransmitters in the brain to the amount of gas in a carburetor. I can honestly say I know more about brains than I do about cars, since I usually attribute the functioning of the latter to leprechauns living under the hood.
Nov 9, 2007
Czech it out
Oh, bad and easy puns. You can tell it's 3:30 in the morning.
Prague meeting!!!! On Wednesday, there was a meeting for all the people that got into the 2008 Prague selective, and we got to talk about how awesome Prague is going to be, ask questions, and meet Dr. Stransky, who not only runs the selective but owns the local bar. Now, that's handy.
If you want all the official info, and not my "never been to Europe before OMG" gushing, go here.
If you want to hear from someone who's smarter than I am, and a better writer than I am, and has actually *done* the Prague selective, go here.
Still around? Suckers.
The meeting didn't tell me all that much I didn't already know, but just sitting around with other people confirming that this was actually how we are going to spend our summer was awesome. Also got a little more elaboration on the selective itself, such as students being able to do anything from observe the goings on to scrubbing in and holding retractors. Whoa. I cannot contain the potential awesomeness of that. While, of course, being in Prague.
The selective will be from 8-12 five days a week, with two afternoon seminars a week. I want that schedule when I'm a real doctor. Dr. Stransky also cautioned us that if/when we take weekend trips to Berlin, Vienna, or Budapest, we should be careful to make sure we're back in time for Monday morning rounds because the trains can get delayed.
There was also a segment on consulting local consulate/embassies, oh, and we'd be meeting the American ambassador, etc, and it was around this point (and the whole "be careful not to get stuck in Hungary over the weekend" thing) that I realized I was hearing all this while living in Grenada, closer to Africa than I am to California. I spent last Easter on a weekend trip to Venezuela. I was inconvenienced by having to sit on the floor of an airport in Jamaica, and I'm getting home for Christmas by way of Trinidad.
A year ago, I had been to Canada as a baby, border cities in Mexico, and one dive trip to the Philippines that was under the protection and arrangement of my friendly local Sacramento shop.
So it's become bizarre. A really awesome, mildly scary "wow, I feel like a globetrotting rich kid despite buying lentils because meat is too damn expensive" bizarre, but bizarre nonetheless.
Before I came to Grenada, I always had this "ooh, ah, how incredible" for the people that went to this school and were constantly flipping between countries, and thought their lives were so infinitely fascinating to listen to, and couldn't understand why none of the students seemed to think of it that way. And it's funny how quickly a lot of weird stuff becomes standard (hey, don't you hate it when stray dogs run at you?; Oh wow! You have a blender???), and then every so often, it slaps you in the face just how far removed from your normal dynamic you are, and the Prague meeting was one of those moments. Heh. It is surreal to me that in eight months, I may be trying to mangle "Where is your pain?" in Czech.
Prague meeting!!!! On Wednesday, there was a meeting for all the people that got into the 2008 Prague selective, and we got to talk about how awesome Prague is going to be, ask questions, and meet Dr. Stransky, who not only runs the selective but owns the local bar. Now, that's handy.
If you want all the official info, and not my "never been to Europe before OMG" gushing, go here.
If you want to hear from someone who's smarter than I am, and a better writer than I am, and has actually *done* the Prague selective, go here.
Still around? Suckers.
The meeting didn't tell me all that much I didn't already know, but just sitting around with other people confirming that this was actually how we are going to spend our summer was awesome. Also got a little more elaboration on the selective itself, such as students being able to do anything from observe the goings on to scrubbing in and holding retractors. Whoa. I cannot contain the potential awesomeness of that. While, of course, being in Prague.
The selective will be from 8-12 five days a week, with two afternoon seminars a week. I want that schedule when I'm a real doctor. Dr. Stransky also cautioned us that if/when we take weekend trips to Berlin, Vienna, or Budapest, we should be careful to make sure we're back in time for Monday morning rounds because the trains can get delayed.
There was also a segment on consulting local consulate/embassies, oh, and we'd be meeting the American ambassador, etc, and it was around this point (and the whole "be careful not to get stuck in Hungary over the weekend" thing) that I realized I was hearing all this while living in Grenada, closer to Africa than I am to California. I spent last Easter on a weekend trip to Venezuela. I was inconvenienced by having to sit on the floor of an airport in Jamaica, and I'm getting home for Christmas by way of Trinidad.
A year ago, I had been to Canada as a baby, border cities in Mexico, and one dive trip to the Philippines that was under the protection and arrangement of my friendly local Sacramento shop.
So it's become bizarre. A really awesome, mildly scary "wow, I feel like a globetrotting rich kid despite buying lentils because meat is too damn expensive" bizarre, but bizarre nonetheless.
Before I came to Grenada, I always had this "ooh, ah, how incredible" for the people that went to this school and were constantly flipping between countries, and thought their lives were so infinitely fascinating to listen to, and couldn't understand why none of the students seemed to think of it that way. And it's funny how quickly a lot of weird stuff becomes standard (hey, don't you hate it when stray dogs run at you?; Oh wow! You have a blender???), and then every so often, it slaps you in the face just how far removed from your normal dynamic you are, and the Prague meeting was one of those moments. Heh. It is surreal to me that in eight months, I may be trying to mangle "Where is your pain?" in Czech.
Sep 5, 2007
I'm Going to Prague!!!!
Wahoo!!!!! Yes, so that's where I've been. Not Prague... signing up for Prague, yes, nearly a year in advance, but so worth it.
SGU offers a summer selective in Prague which is coordinated through other schools with a doctor in the Czech Republic, where you get to experience medicine in another country. It's essentially glorified shadowing, but I thoroughly enjoyed shadowing this summer anyway, AND you get to, as I just said, witness medicine in another country, and hey, not so insubstantially, Prague... which is said to be an awesome city even for people who have been to Europe, which I haven't. Here's an awesome report (and blog) on the selective.
Because I'm incredibly OCD and once missed out on an EMT class at the time I wanted to take it, because I didn't show up early enough the NIGHT BEFORE (got it the next time around), I decided to do the Uberdork thing and camp out for it, since it's an extraordinarily popular selective, and I've wanted to do the selective since I first read about it, which was before I actually applied to the school. There's also an overflow Pilsen selective (city about an hour away from Prague), but it has even fewer slots and fills up with the people that almost made the Prague selective but just missed.
So I was making damn sure I got it, though to redeem myself on the dork scale, I have never camped out for toys, games, science fiction movies, tickets to see a Stephen Hawking lecture (as some of my colleagues at UC Davis did), or rock concerts. There are worse things to camp out for than a three week medical selective in Europe (like a spot in an EMT class)...
The initial night I pictured was being alone, miserably hot, and camped out on the step of Caribbean House, possibly covered in roaches (I actually haven't really seen many roaches this term, though I know they're out there, but I'm afraid of them, thus paranoid), and getting yelled at by security.
Not to be. First of all, David and Laila both wanted the selective as well, so "camped out" with me. We did rationalize staying on campus by the fact that only Laila lives on campus, walking from Cool Runnings to campus in the middle of the night (or dark of midmorning) isn't the best idea, and the buses don't start running until early morning, by which the line would surely be out the door (which it was, but people got in anyway).
Second of all, I had awesomely forgotten that while the library closes at 2 am (not bad), the relatively air conditioned study rooms are open 24/7. SWEET! And we managed to get into one that not only had ethernet and the rest of it but one that had a window overlooking Caribbean House so we could make sure that 80 students didn't magically make a run on it at 3 am and squeeze us out.
Had a nice study night surrounded by good company, then meandered over to the un-air conditioned stairwell of Caribbean House around 4:45 am, where about 4 first termers, diligently studying their Netter and Rohan anatomy atlases, had actually beaten us.
Which actually kind of illustrates some suckage. You see, the first termers who are starting now got the start of their third term moved up, so that now the start of their classes conflicts with the dates of the Prague selective... a fact they were not aware of until AFTER they'd stayed up all night, camped in the un-air conditioned stairwell, paid their 200 bucks (which HAS to be in US dollars; no checks/cheques, no EC), and the rest of it. And since the 2009 selective won't start until after their second year, that means they're closed out. So despite my own fortune in getting the selective, I will extend genuine and heartfelt sympathy to you first termers who went through all that.
Not sure if this will be a problem for August start first termers in the future, thus locking the Prague/Pilsen selective to only the January starters in their second summer, but the school seems to be scrabbling to find other summer selectives, and already have a Honduras selective (which has mixed reviews) and a Thailand selective, which is too new to have too many reviews, but I know at least one person that did it, and she loved it.
But anyway, we're going there, and, in a stroke of luck, Nina and Jay, who came later in the morning, got in as well. I think Jay was number 79, though that's not including the spots opened by the first term spots that were lost after initial registration.
Hmm... in other news... I've been napping during the last two days after lecture, to make up for the night of missed sleep, which doesn't seem like a big deal, but with my sleep problems, it's always been virtually impossible for me to nap, which is a crucial skill in medicine, so that's a really happy thing for me.
But I finished parasitology and genetics (and am very happy with both, and both exams were extraordinarily fair to even being on the easier side of fair), and I'm now into physiology, neuroscience, and community health.
We'll start with community health. Hey! A class as useless as first term Ethics/Clinical Skills! They seem to have replaced C/S for second term, at the last minute, with a one unit community health class, and no word on whether the C/S for last term will count for anything (since it was supposed to run for two terms with one grade). This seems to be a last minute thing, with the C/S lectures actually scheduled in our original syllabus.. it's kind of a shame because I've read that like last term, as C/S drastically improved with patient history and interviews, second term clinical skills is/was far preferable to the first half of first term Aristotle murdering.
I'm not sure if this is a result of being cobbled together at the last minute, but community health/preventative medicine seems like a topic that *could* be really important and relevant if it were handled a bit better and may be in the future. Unfortunately, so far, the first lecture was given by the guy that did the main part of the dreaded drug seminar and is done in the same sermon-style redundancy. Preventive medicine is good. No, really. In a lot of ways it's better than clinical because you don't have to treat patients who are demonstrating pathologies because you keep them healthy to begin with. Did I mention it's good? Did I mention you should go into it? You know it's really good? ARGH. WE GET IT. Get to how it's done. Oh, and heart disease kills a lot of people. In fact, it's the leading killer... something I've inexplicably known since the 8th grade...
Hopefully it'll get better though, because unlike having to learn the history of philosophical ethical theory to practice medicine, community health/preventive medicine deserves attention. Now, I'm being redundant. Wait, I've always been redundant, but this is not a required one-unit blog.
Onto the meat-classes: Physiology and Neuroscience. Immunology will start up as well, but hasn't yet.
Neuroscience is cool, and I swear I'm not just saying that because one of the professors is named "Dr. House" and put up his name as the House, M.D. logo but with PhD instead... I'm not that shallow... wait, yes I am.
Neuroscience is the class that seems to be freaking people out, which concerns me more that I'm not, because so far, it involves a ton of anatomy, most of which I don't know, but I like anatomy, it's not that difficult for me to pick up, and squishy brains are cool. I think it'll get a lot harder for me as we break into chemistry and physics, but in the meantime, it's fun and interesting. I was a little skeptical when our intro lecture was a poor-audio digital video from Norway (a fact that the Physio professor busted on, which was pretty funny, by noting on the first day that we must be brain fried after our "virtual professor), but as of the second lecture, we got a real prof who is pretty good at presenting the material, so no complaints.
Physio has the potential to be really awesome because it tells you the whys of everything in the body, but in a sense it frightens me because I'm not spectacular at physics, and there seems to be a lot of it, even if it's not currently *too* difficult (though I think right now it's harder for me than other people, with the reverse being true of neuro). Membrane potential, osmotic pressure, that sort of thing... The professor is good, and this is a class where in lecture we tend to go over the pictures extensively, so it's one where pre-reading the lecture notes is a real benefit, and I think the lecture notes are also good. Even better, they've now posted videos of the lectures, so you can specifically review the lecture material. You can also conceivably skip lecture (though the prof warned us that sometimes the videos had broken audio or whathaveyou, but except for the morning of registration for Prague, I'm not that bold. Good prof + hard class = Ishie Goes to Lecture.
The instructor for Physio is Australian, thus punctuates sentences with "okay?" and "yeah?" rather than "uh", which I like and involves me more than most lectures because there's a pseudo-participation, even though he's not really asking us anything. I don't know if that makes any sense. The instructor also confirmed his Australian-ness by using a shark biting off your leg as a demonstration of homeostasis, which seemed like a somewhat arbitrary, though certainly elucidating, example. This was particularly hilarious to me because I'd been swimming at the beach the day before with friends and discussing what in the water could kill you and that most of it was confined to Australia, so the fact that one of the first things out of his mouth involved getting half-eaten by by sea-hungries caused me to probably laugh more than I should have.
It's about bedtime, which I can tell from the fact that this is a particularly long and rambling sleep deprived entry. We're going to try for Fish Friday again, barring interference by what seems to be developing into quite the nasty hurricane season. It's surreal that Felix formed essentially on us, as what was primarily an inconvenience, and now I'm reading about it being an extremely devastating hurricane hitting central America. I was just worried about getting minor flooding. Yeesh. Enough, weather gods! Enough!
SGU offers a summer selective in Prague which is coordinated through other schools with a doctor in the Czech Republic, where you get to experience medicine in another country. It's essentially glorified shadowing, but I thoroughly enjoyed shadowing this summer anyway, AND you get to, as I just said, witness medicine in another country, and hey, not so insubstantially, Prague... which is said to be an awesome city even for people who have been to Europe, which I haven't. Here's an awesome report (and blog) on the selective.
Because I'm incredibly OCD and once missed out on an EMT class at the time I wanted to take it, because I didn't show up early enough the NIGHT BEFORE (got it the next time around), I decided to do the Uberdork thing and camp out for it, since it's an extraordinarily popular selective, and I've wanted to do the selective since I first read about it, which was before I actually applied to the school. There's also an overflow Pilsen selective (city about an hour away from Prague), but it has even fewer slots and fills up with the people that almost made the Prague selective but just missed.
So I was making damn sure I got it, though to redeem myself on the dork scale, I have never camped out for toys, games, science fiction movies, tickets to see a Stephen Hawking lecture (as some of my colleagues at UC Davis did), or rock concerts. There are worse things to camp out for than a three week medical selective in Europe (like a spot in an EMT class)...
The initial night I pictured was being alone, miserably hot, and camped out on the step of Caribbean House, possibly covered in roaches (I actually haven't really seen many roaches this term, though I know they're out there, but I'm afraid of them, thus paranoid), and getting yelled at by security.
Not to be. First of all, David and Laila both wanted the selective as well, so "camped out" with me. We did rationalize staying on campus by the fact that only Laila lives on campus, walking from Cool Runnings to campus in the middle of the night (or dark of midmorning) isn't the best idea, and the buses don't start running until early morning, by which the line would surely be out the door (which it was, but people got in anyway).
Second of all, I had awesomely forgotten that while the library closes at 2 am (not bad), the relatively air conditioned study rooms are open 24/7. SWEET! And we managed to get into one that not only had ethernet and the rest of it but one that had a window overlooking Caribbean House so we could make sure that 80 students didn't magically make a run on it at 3 am and squeeze us out.
Had a nice study night surrounded by good company, then meandered over to the un-air conditioned stairwell of Caribbean House around 4:45 am, where about 4 first termers, diligently studying their Netter and Rohan anatomy atlases, had actually beaten us.
Which actually kind of illustrates some suckage. You see, the first termers who are starting now got the start of their third term moved up, so that now the start of their classes conflicts with the dates of the Prague selective... a fact they were not aware of until AFTER they'd stayed up all night, camped in the un-air conditioned stairwell, paid their 200 bucks (which HAS to be in US dollars; no checks/cheques, no EC), and the rest of it. And since the 2009 selective won't start until after their second year, that means they're closed out. So despite my own fortune in getting the selective, I will extend genuine and heartfelt sympathy to you first termers who went through all that.
Not sure if this will be a problem for August start first termers in the future, thus locking the Prague/Pilsen selective to only the January starters in their second summer, but the school seems to be scrabbling to find other summer selectives, and already have a Honduras selective (which has mixed reviews) and a Thailand selective, which is too new to have too many reviews, but I know at least one person that did it, and she loved it.
But anyway, we're going there, and, in a stroke of luck, Nina and Jay, who came later in the morning, got in as well. I think Jay was number 79, though that's not including the spots opened by the first term spots that were lost after initial registration.
Hmm... in other news... I've been napping during the last two days after lecture, to make up for the night of missed sleep, which doesn't seem like a big deal, but with my sleep problems, it's always been virtually impossible for me to nap, which is a crucial skill in medicine, so that's a really happy thing for me.
But I finished parasitology and genetics (and am very happy with both, and both exams were extraordinarily fair to even being on the easier side of fair), and I'm now into physiology, neuroscience, and community health.
We'll start with community health. Hey! A class as useless as first term Ethics/Clinical Skills! They seem to have replaced C/S for second term, at the last minute, with a one unit community health class, and no word on whether the C/S for last term will count for anything (since it was supposed to run for two terms with one grade). This seems to be a last minute thing, with the C/S lectures actually scheduled in our original syllabus.. it's kind of a shame because I've read that like last term, as C/S drastically improved with patient history and interviews, second term clinical skills is/was far preferable to the first half of first term Aristotle murdering.
I'm not sure if this is a result of being cobbled together at the last minute, but community health/preventative medicine seems like a topic that *could* be really important and relevant if it were handled a bit better and may be in the future. Unfortunately, so far, the first lecture was given by the guy that did the main part of the dreaded drug seminar and is done in the same sermon-style redundancy. Preventive medicine is good. No, really. In a lot of ways it's better than clinical because you don't have to treat patients who are demonstrating pathologies because you keep them healthy to begin with. Did I mention it's good? Did I mention you should go into it? You know it's really good? ARGH. WE GET IT. Get to how it's done. Oh, and heart disease kills a lot of people. In fact, it's the leading killer... something I've inexplicably known since the 8th grade...
Hopefully it'll get better though, because unlike having to learn the history of philosophical ethical theory to practice medicine, community health/preventive medicine deserves attention. Now, I'm being redundant. Wait, I've always been redundant, but this is not a required one-unit blog.
Onto the meat-classes: Physiology and Neuroscience. Immunology will start up as well, but hasn't yet.
Neuroscience is cool, and I swear I'm not just saying that because one of the professors is named "Dr. House" and put up his name as the House, M.D. logo but with PhD instead... I'm not that shallow... wait, yes I am.
Neuroscience is the class that seems to be freaking people out, which concerns me more that I'm not, because so far, it involves a ton of anatomy, most of which I don't know, but I like anatomy, it's not that difficult for me to pick up, and squishy brains are cool. I think it'll get a lot harder for me as we break into chemistry and physics, but in the meantime, it's fun and interesting. I was a little skeptical when our intro lecture was a poor-audio digital video from Norway (a fact that the Physio professor busted on, which was pretty funny, by noting on the first day that we must be brain fried after our "virtual professor), but as of the second lecture, we got a real prof who is pretty good at presenting the material, so no complaints.
Physio has the potential to be really awesome because it tells you the whys of everything in the body, but in a sense it frightens me because I'm not spectacular at physics, and there seems to be a lot of it, even if it's not currently *too* difficult (though I think right now it's harder for me than other people, with the reverse being true of neuro). Membrane potential, osmotic pressure, that sort of thing... The professor is good, and this is a class where in lecture we tend to go over the pictures extensively, so it's one where pre-reading the lecture notes is a real benefit, and I think the lecture notes are also good. Even better, they've now posted videos of the lectures, so you can specifically review the lecture material. You can also conceivably skip lecture (though the prof warned us that sometimes the videos had broken audio or whathaveyou, but except for the morning of registration for Prague, I'm not that bold. Good prof + hard class = Ishie Goes to Lecture.
The instructor for Physio is Australian, thus punctuates sentences with "okay?" and "yeah?" rather than "uh", which I like and involves me more than most lectures because there's a pseudo-participation, even though he's not really asking us anything. I don't know if that makes any sense. The instructor also confirmed his Australian-ness by using a shark biting off your leg as a demonstration of homeostasis, which seemed like a somewhat arbitrary, though certainly elucidating, example. This was particularly hilarious to me because I'd been swimming at the beach the day before with friends and discussing what in the water could kill you and that most of it was confined to Australia, so the fact that one of the first things out of his mouth involved getting half-eaten by by sea-hungries caused me to probably laugh more than I should have.
It's about bedtime, which I can tell from the fact that this is a particularly long and rambling sleep deprived entry. We're going to try for Fish Friday again, barring interference by what seems to be developing into quite the nasty hurricane season. It's surreal that Felix formed essentially on us, as what was primarily an inconvenience, and now I'm reading about it being an extremely devastating hurricane hitting central America. I was just worried about getting minor flooding. Yeesh. Enough, weather gods! Enough!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
