I am queen dork

Something the brighter of you will have figured out by now, and if not, the lego monkey dancing in the last entry should probably clear it right up.

I'm in the much reviled, much despised, much feared fourth term right now...

And was faced with a dilemma. I must study to keep my study on, my grades up, and my loan companies happy, but I must also exercise to keep my mind sharp and my ass from looking like my sofa. In addition to all this, I must, despite my chronic insomnia, sleep.

In fourth term, this leaves you with a significant hours-deficit. Even in the early days. What to do...

A friend of mine hooked me up with a macdaddy (collections of potentially useful files collected and compiled over the terms by upper termers and passed down, usually in exchange for good will, or in some of the clubs cases, 60 EC and a t-shirt) that contains over a gig of board review path lectures on MP3 format.

Oh, dilemma solved! So now, since jogging in a Caribbean country doesn't make me look like enough of a tool, I now do it hooked into my ipod listening to patterns of cell injury in the brain. It's finally the perfect mind/body workout! And as I sat on a rock point staring out at the water as the sun slid down (or the earth slid up; damn heliocentric view of the solar system), I thought "Liquefactive necrosis." And then I thought "Med school is weird". Then I walked home with a strange rotweiller following me until it got distracted by a stray goat. I didn't see the end result of that.

So path lab is going well. I like my group; they seem to rock the house and all, and put me in a position where I feel peer pressured to accomplish what I'm supposed to accomplish but we have designated go getters that ensure I don't have to arrange anything, which is absolutely freaking perfect. Control me, babies. Make me like it.

Path group is kind of a game of 'beat the tutor'. In that, if you know your shit well enough, and you talk fast enough, you can *probably* make it through your presentation without getting your ego shredded, IF you're lucky, and if you were not so unlucky as to have the preliminary slide to something someone else is presenting.

This keeps me on my game of course, because I do hate the blank fish-eyed stare I get when people ask me questions that I not only don't know, but have never heard the words involved before. This hopefully allows to blossom into the other subtype of group member... the bastard. The one that has always cross checked 17 other sources and knits them into a presentation that even the tutor can't find flaw in. And as you smirk and point out the "nontestable but still really important stuff", your group starts surreptiously arranging alibis for when your mangled body is discovered, no doubt with its head beaten in by the "oil lamps" in micro that we're using as bunsen burners. Who knew I'd been camping with a bunsen burner? My food should have been way better.

BUT, by the end of the class, I should know how many things I'm gonna die off after doing :THIS: in Venezuela:



So it's to bed, earlier than usual.

Time Flies...

When you're cramming in your last study efforts in the last week and a half before finals! AIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

I'm feeling PRETTY prepared (not like 'take the tests tomorrow' prepared, but like, I think with another week and a half I can avoid failure), but still trying to avoid the freakout sessions. In the meantime, of course, stuff happens, but I don't blog it because I'm alternating between laziness and productivity, neither of which lends itself easily to blog posting, but let's see....

I went diving on Sunday, and while I didn't get all that much done in the way of getting my study groove on, I did see these little babies!



The vicious, the terrible shark!!! Observe the shark in its natural habitat as it irritably attempts to remove itself from divers and their flashy cameras. Also notable as my first REAL shark (kinda), horn sharks not withstanding, because they're wannabe sharks. Of course, many would state that nurse sharks, despite at least being BIG enough to mess you up, are also wannabe sharks. Phil also pointed out a reef shark during the dive, which was massively cool.

We did our first dive on the Atlantic side and managed to make it to the Hema-001, a ship that went down in 2005. Broken up, but a really cool (and big!) wreck. We backrolled in negatively weighted, swam for the anchor line and then shot down the line before any wayward currents could grab us, and what did we see RIGHT as we hit bottom (around 100')? SHARK!!!! I was an idiot and didn't have the camera settings right for that one, or the other one we followed around the side of the wreck, but Pete pointed out the above little beauty napping under part of the ship, and sure enough, I managed to snap off a few (backscattery) shots before s/he finally got pissed and swam off. Sorry sharky.

Put myself a wee bit in deco, but totally worth it, and I had the air to hang an extra couple of minutes at 10 feet anyway, so my computer (who is SUCH a nag) let me do the next dive.

The Atlantic side was a bit rough and a guy on board was REALLY feeling it (thank you, seasick patch!), so we opted to do the second dive (after giving up on Fisherman's Paradise) on the Caribbean side, and hit Purple Rain, which is absolutely beautiful. COOL little snake eel and the first one I've gotten a half decent picture of, and a stingray!! Everyone saw a couple squid except for me, because as a photographer, I only see what's through the LCD. D'oh!







As a quick addendum, and to quell my parents (love you guys!!!), a quick photo journey around the mangrove swamps of Venezuela. Yes, in that picture, those things on the mangrove roots are OYSTERS!!! There were also crabs, soft corals, starfish and all manner of life. VERY awesome, and more importantly (since I'm heading to bed), not requiring of a lot of text! Enjoy!



Our chariot awaited!!!!




Aforementioned oysters





Can't beat the view!



Mangrove swamp streetsigns. Also... should it be dedicated to the good sir's MANY loves? That sounds like an invitation to an asswhuppin by some ticked off mistresses.



More of grrr's archnemeses. It's like the island was full of em!!

LOTS of pictures to sort!

Dang, and I'm not kidding either. My new roomie is asleep, so this won't be the longest entry, thus FURTHER dividing my blog into sections because man... Saturday was like a week long vacation packed into a single day... rainforest, boat ride, jeep ride, beach, aquarium trip, more beach, shopping, cute little roadside stand to get Coco Loco (it's a drink, you rampant cocaine addicts), sunset, dinner, strippers... ooh, piqued your interest with that last one, didn't I? That hotel has EVERYTHING!

We got up on Saturday morning, applied COPIOUS amounts of sunscreen and bug spray, packed up our stuff for the trip, which means Nina (Grr) and I had bags, and David *thought* he was just taking a wallet, but as a man, made himself in so doing, the 'spare bag holder', aka man-who-doubles-as-living-purse. Usually, you don't get one of those until you're married, but David is an overachiever.

First off, I discovered that when you arrange a jeep ride... let me retract that. When you arrange ANYTHING, for god's sake, get the name of the guy you talked to and the company, lest you end up in front of the hotel watching the FLEET of jeeps from different companies arrive, and have no idea which one you're booked on, nor where your alleged voucher is or whether you were supposed to get one.

Fortunately, a guy from the awesome hotel ran up and identified us in Spanish, hurriedly handed me the voucher, and vanished. More comforted now, since by that point, I was half-convinced we'd missed our tour, our chariot arrived... a very nice, modified jeep arranged so that people could sit either next to the driver, in a bench seat behind the driver, or sitting across from the other passengers in the back which had an opening one could stand up in and yell "Woo!" at passerbys, which I believe, as translated through the Pimsleur language program means: "I have too much money. Please rob me. I am an idiot American/German tourist..."

Speaking of Germans, there are a bunch of them in Margarita, but not too many Americans, so they seemed to like us largely for the novelty of having us. At least one country doesn't hate us! REALLY wasn't expecting it to be Venezuela, though...

Best yet, unlike the other jeeps that pulled up that were packed so full of tourists, they needed a ring-top to open them, our jeep had only us!!! Not sure how we lucked into that arrangement, except that the guy I spoke to on the phone must have intuited that we were awesome. Yeah, that's it. Or so socially inept as to not be trusted around other people... or the only people on the tour that didn't speak German or decent Spanish... (lots of mainland Venezuela tourists on Margarita too). Whatever reason, it was nice. Private tour!!!!

We met up with other members of the caravan in a little town where we met the main guide, the one who spoke excellent English (and his sidekick, an English guy who spoke excellent German; I didn't ask).

Our guide. Aqui esta George:



He's holding a map of Margarita while essentially saying "Yes, you will be seeing all of this. No, there aren't any hidden charges. Just the 40 bucks... for a 9 hour jeep tour. Yes, gas here costs 60 cents a gallon."

The little town also provided our first of many opportunities to buy muchas cosas, and unlike Porlamar on Good Friday, there were people in the shops!! So prepare for vacation-gifts, family! The town also had the first of three birdie photo ops (also free), providing us with the first glimpse of Grr's hatred of them... tsk... do we now have a vegetarian that only eats parrot?


Polly says: "I'll see you in hell, bitches!"

After Grr's near death experience with the parrot, which consisted largely of her pointing out that birds, inexplicably, have beaks and claws (and feathers), we were off again! (and boy, is Grr going to make me pay for this entry, but not to worry; we haven't gotten to David's hair yet!!)

This time, after getting permission from our driver to stand up in the back of the jeep and yell "Woo!", we were whisked off and up into the mountains, through little towns where people waved at us (even when we were woo-less) and smiled and generally acted like they were glad to see us. Hooray for Margarita people!

We first stopped at a national park that featured mangrove trees, a short hike, and a really pretty view overlooking Porlamar. Observe:







We got drinks with the Caravan, and then back into the jeep to zoom along the Venezuelan highways and backroads until coming to another little vendor area... or so I thought.. turns out it was the dock to our cruise!!! Boat ride through the mangrove swamps, and those little boats were VERY close to the Jungle Cruise boats at Disneyland, but with some horsepower! Yet AGAIN, the three of us were treated to a private vehicle...


Aren't they cute???

But alas, not everyone could go...



Having seen what water does to a midrange Olympus digital camera, I don't even want to CONTEMPLATE what it would do to that thing.

So we'll end here for the night... you don't get to find out about the mangrove swamps yet (or if a hippo rose out of the water and wiggled its ears, indicating we had certainly taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque). Ha ha!!!

In the meantime, my laziness means we're racking up other events... curses!!!

New roommate is one of the St. Vincent 6th termers displaced by the recent crime wave. She's cool, and tends to dispense wisdom about what to expect, which is a DEFINITE plus. She's also from San Francisco and likes the room at subarctic temperatures as I do. No power bill until next term and I wants my moneys worth of my housing cost! Bwa ha!!

Lyla/Leila/Lana lane, but never Layla, which means "sheep" in Arabic thus she doesn't appreciate my singing Eric Clapton songs at her, had her magic 21st on Wednesday! Which we ignored to take her out to dinner on Sunday, because that's how med school works! We WANTED to take her to Margarita with us, but someone wanted to be responsible, stay home, and study. Feh. She also got robbed of her legality milestone since I think the drinking age in Grenada is 18. Poor thing. But I gave her a Venezuelan mask with a vertebrae (not human) stuck in it, so hopefully that'll make her feel better... some chicks like diamonds... I'm partial to dry bits of animal carcass, and I project that love onto others. Be advised if you ever want a present from me...

And speaking of birthdays (and mom's is on the 18th with her unbirthday on the 17th, so don't you THINK that I forgot you and rip out the mom guilt on me), Grrr celebrated turning the ripe old age of 26 on Friday, which she only did so she could be more like me... heh heh... she's going to hit me really hard in class on Monday for this blog entry.

For Grrr's 26th, we all went out to... uhh... expensive hotel across from Spiceland Mall. I don't think that's what's written on their welcome sign, but that's what it's called now. VERY nice restaurant in there, great ambiance, bug spray provided upon request, steel drum player more than willing to play happy birthday, NICE, TIMELY waitstaff who were also willing to ice a cake for the birthday girl, and (drumroll) lambi (conch) that wasn't chewy and steak (David's order) that wasn't the consistency of toothpaste! Damn, there's a reason they're expensive! Though actually, Grr's order wasn't outrageous. I'm going back there soon for that creme brulee with nutmeg ice cream though. When I saw that listed as a menu item, I thought any minute I was going to end up in my biochem exam in my underwear and then I'd wake up with a start...

And speaking of waking up, one cannot wake up without first going to sleep. Adios and goodnight!

Queremos comprar muchas cosas...

So, I have these Pimsleur language tapes that crack me up, because while they are good about teaching you some really useful phrases and doing so in a manner that aids memory, they also tend to teach you things, in stilted language no less, that will either get you mugged, laughed at, or slapped.

Some examples. For starters, both the Czech and Spanish lessons spend an awful lot of time trying to teach you how to pick up women, including women that are reluctant to talk to you. It also teaches a woman (need to be equal opportunity and all) how, upon meeting Juan, who asks her out to a bar and orders three beers for breakfast, to go about discussing his drinking problem ("Bebe usted demaciado!" or "Sir! (formal) You drink too much!"). Yes, having an intervention with a stranger in a foreign country in a language you aren't fluent in is a great idea. What could possibly go wrong?

Also, the translations aren't always spot-on, and they tend toward the lofty. For starters, referring to Spanish as "Castillano" in Mexico or Los Angeles seems vaguely insulting.

With Spanish, at least I have enough training to somewhat moderate the language tapes as in "Hey, wait a second." In Czech? No telling. I can't WAIT to get my ass kicked in Prague. "Please no! I just wanted to know how to get to Voditchkova St!!"

I do like Slappy's idea of learning how to say "Pardon me, but my language tapes have made me inexcusably rude" in every language I plan on attempting with native speakers. Come to think of it, I should have employed that strategy when coupling cognates, training, and Babelfish (ah, Babelfish) at Annexcafe.

But what does this have to do with the cost of piranha teeth on Margarita Island?

Well, we'll start, as is common (unless you're in a Tarantino movie), from the beginning.

Something you should know about Margarita Island aka an island off VENEZUELA if you do not want to end up like the pissed off Ozzies at the end of the trip frustrated that no one spoke any English: They speak SPANISH, people. They will TRY to meet you halfway, but start with an "hola", would you?

Flew in via Conviasa, which is apparently the new official airline of Venezuela, which I thought would mean new airplanes because I'm a moron; however, having flown Southwest MANY times, old rickety airplanes do not bother me, and the service on them was good.

Oh, and note to little Grrr... grabbing for the drink cart to read what "Sprite" sounds like in Spanish is muy malo!!!

Getting through Point Salines airport (Grenada) wasn't too bad. They don't have a Conviasa counter well marked though, because the flights only leave once a week. They also wanted some little form they gave us when we got here, that we were allegedly supposed to hang onto.

I laughed at this assumption, since I'm the most disorganized person on the planet (thus perfect to be a doctor), but laughed again at thwarting myself since as it turns out, I DID have said form... why? Because I haven't cleaned out my passport case in 3 months! I trumped lazy with lazier! It all goes full circle someday, babies. Found the voucher for my laptop import tax too, since I thought my dumb ass had lost it and would have to pay 50 bucks again when I come back to the country.

Boarded the plane and had relatively uneventful flight. Of course, the fact that it was a 40-50 minute flight jazzed me, because I STILL can't believe that I'm only an hour away, tops, from such an exotic place. The entire time, I insisting on annoying fellow passengers by sing-songing "going to Venezuuuueeelllaaa".

Plus, I got a stamp on my passport, BOTH entering and leaving and a new Grenada stamp when I re-entered, and that kind of insanely geeky stuff appeals to me.

Landed at the airport and went about the process of trying to secure an ATM since I haven't had US dollars since a week after I got to Grenada and the Venezuelans are so very uninterested in our pretty Caribbean money.

The conversion rate is around 2200 Bolivar to the dollar. I mention this to make brief fun of ATM paranoia, which I have previously only experienced in Mexico, and hardly to the same degree. ATM paranoia is when you are standing in front of an ATM having a panic attack at the prospect of taking out $200,000 from ANYTHING, as if it's going to fake out to American dollars and your bank won't call you saying "did you authorize a charge for 195,000 more dollars than you've ever SEEN?"

So got a taxi and that is when we discovered the relevance of those language lessons I mentioned above. You see, the only word of "English", the cab driver knew was "Hotel", which is cheating since "Hotel" in Spanish is "El Hotel" (love me, love my cognates).

On my language lessons, I was bemused when it stated "Yo tengo demaciado dinero. Yo quiere comprar muchas cosas." Supposedly this literally means "I have too much money. I want to buy many things." I always translated this phrase as: "I am a complete frigging idiot, aka an obnoxious flamboyant American tourist. Please mug me. Leave me for dead in a ditch. No one will miss me."

Until... leaving out the first part, you realize you want to go somewhere to shop, but you have no idea WHERE. The largest city on the island is Porlamar, which is a proper city in its own right. Unfortunately, it is such a proper city that it has an airport, incidentally, the one we flew into, thus saying "Queremos ir a Porlamar, por favor) (we want to go to Porlamar, please) when you are already IN Porlamar, is confusing.

We settled on "queremos comprar muchas cosas in la ciudad, por favor" (We want to buy many things in the city), and were whisked off to the shopping district, though unfortunately, not the big time shopping mall, since none of us could remember how to say "mall" in Spanish.

The drive was pretty darn cool, and though this segment is desolate, in places really reveals the area around Porlamar as being quite developed:



You know what isn't a wildly good idea? Going shopping in a Catholic country on Good Friday. Observe:



If you press your ear to the screen, I think you can hear crickets chirping. Or perhaps not, because they were probably also in Mass.

BUT it gave us a cool chance to wander around the city without being packaged in huge crowds. Fortunately, I insisted on dragging our luggage around a little longer so that we could explore (since our hotel was 40 minutes away on Playa El Aqua), thus we not only found an open shopping district with stores and living breathing people selling things (like sandals! Beautiful beautiful, I haven't worn socks in three months level sandals!), but check out this beauty!





Booyah! It was gorgeous inside as well, but there was a service going on, and while I felt comfortable enough (the locals are REALLY NICE) to go inside and stand in the back for a little bit, I was not about to start snapping pictures.

Then it was time to hail a cab (which is really easy, and tends to run 30 thousand Bolivar, or circa 15 bucks, for a 30-40 minute ride for three people combined) and hit the hotel:





I was thinking the price on the hotel was a bit steep, not realizing that not only was it all inclusive with some surprisingly decent food (particularly compared to the on campus fare), BUT was a pretty decently sized resort that came complete with at least 5 pools, a stage with nightly entertainment, a playground, a little garden, and a pathway that involved crossing ONE road and you're on the beach! Dang!

Plus our hotel room was really nice, not only sporting a killer bathroom (don't ask):



But also, a sweetass balcony that wrapped all the way around the corner.



Our first course was to check out the beach, which had vendors galore as well as bars and restaurants that are usually COMPLETELY slamming (still were, to a lesser extent), but had been quelled to some extent by the Easter alcohol ban.

Then sunset:



Then DINNER!! This sure beats the hell out of Pearl's!



I'd read on Virtual Tourist that the Jeep safaris were pretty cool, so wanted to arrange one for the next day. Managed to convey that in broken Spanish to the desk clerk (though actually a good number of them spoke functional hotel English and were very accommodating), and the guy called up someone, put me on the phone to a man that spoke excellent English, and offered us a 8-9 hour jeep safari including full circuit of the island, ride up to the rainforest, boat cruise through the mangrove swamps, lunch, trip to the beach, offroading across the desert, and another trip to the beach for sunset. This, he told me almost apologetically, would cost 40 US dollars a person.

Oh. Baby. I love this country!!!! So booked that ASAP and bedtime. Rest of the story (and the best pictures!) come later!!! And you thought you'd find out the origin of the parrot picture. Silly readers!

Arrrrrr Matey!

Predictable, but meh...

Ohhh, you wanted to hear about Margarita Island, right?? Well, that's later, and let me just tell you, frigging FANTASTIC, by the way. And though there's almost no English on the island, they don't hate Americans! Hooray!!!! And between three people, we can speak enough functional Spanish to do quite well, though I'm sure we amused them by collaborating like we were on Family Feud before saying something.

But I promised you pirates, so pirates you'll get, thus I won't try to do some major megablog that incorporates both, particularly since I have so much Venezuela stuff that I'm probably just going to be dropping pictures in here and there. For now, we'll go with pictures of pirates at the Lance Aux Epines party and a couple pictures of the afterparty at Banana's, because if there's one thing we know how to do, it's drink!!!

For reference, here's what Ishie SHOULD have been doing instead of partying... or instead of going on vacation, really:



But instead...





We were not the only ones to abandon studying. The concept of it left some pirates more vehement than others:



Now, I felt pretty tricked out as a pirate, despite realizing that I wasn't dressed ALL that different from how I normally am. Argh. Or Arrrr.... yes... bad pirate humor. You can't escape it. However, once I found myself among other wanderers of the sea, I discovered that some take it VERY VERY seriously:





So seriously, in fact, that I did not bother to enter the costume contest, but merely vehemently cheered for the dear captain with unbridled glee, since he so richly deserved it just for having the brass cohones to take the real sword and not real pistol through customs and explain them.

As the party started to wind down, having sucked down plenty of grog and sulked that the people at the entry gate stole my kickass "P" stamped on the arm ala Pirates of the Caribbean idea and were drawing on on EVERYONE as an entry pass, I headed to Banana's with fellow pirates (Hawaiian pirate and Sublime t-shirt pirate) over to Banana's.

Banana's is the local watering hole for students, stays open until frick-knows-when, has cheap beer, is on the bus route, and is conceivably in staggering distance of campus, though they recommend not careening through the dark at night while inebriated. I've mentioned it before, but here's pictures:





So there you have it!! Next blog... we begin our trip through Isla Margarita con no margaritas! Muchas gracias, Senor Chavez! But here's a taste of what's to come:



Look! It's a birdie!! We'll get into why Little Grr is the only vegetarian on the planet that hates animals such as birdie in our next blog, though perhaps only Grrr could tell you for sure.