i'm alive, i promise

You would think that with two weeks off from school and an extra day for the Ice Apocalypse that I would have updated you, but there really wasn't much to say. I went home, slept, watched TV,read normal books, spent a couple days at the cabin, slept, watched TV, read more books, saw friends when State went back to school. Neither super-eventful nor super-productive, but wonderful. Friends, family, food, reading, sleep...these are the things I needed. I had a great Christmas with fun presents, as always, and I hope you did too. But we now return you to our regularly-scheduled programming.

Physiology is the name of the game now, which is wonderful. It's an engineering class! There are graphs and charts and vectors, things that are comfortingly familiar. We're studying the heart and cardiovascular system right now, topics I learned under Dr. Cathcart in bioengineering. If I saw him in the near future and it were socially acceptable, I would kiss that man. The only reason my brain isn't already on overload is his teaching. It helps that I really like the subject, but I think that's thanks to him as well. Plus, our current teacher, Dr. Manning, is precious. He takes 1-2 minute breaks in the middle of each lecture to show pictures from his vacations so we can rest our brains. And today we went along the Columbia River gorge, down which our family drove during our trip to Oregon when I was in high school. He showed a picture of the bridge over Multnomah Falls and I got really excited because I've been on that bridge!

Photo: multnomahfallslodge.com

Unfortunately, these trips through Wyoming, British Columbia, Washington, Nevada, etc., make me extremely jealous. But tomorrow we're venturing through Utah, so I'm looking forward to that.

Have I told you about my Spanish class? There is a group called La Sociedad de Español Médico (Medical Spanish Society), and of course I was all over that. I joined the advanced class since I have a Spanish minor from State, and it has been so fun. We had several meetings last semester, and last night we met to review the things we learned. Basically, we've gone over how to interview a patient. Not having known how to do this in English, I've learned way more than just Spanish so far. I feel like I now have a pretty good grip on what to ask of a patient in both languages now, so hopefully I will be more comfortable with that M3 year. The club recently received a grant to turn it into an actual class, including an opportunity to do a rotation in a Spanish-speaking country, which is really exciting.


In other news, I've apparently lost all ability to keep food upright. Monday, my Diet Dr. Pepper flew right off my tray onto the cafeteria floor, spilling on both tray and floor, and generally causing problems. The food remained untainted, however, unlike today. Today, we were trying to fit too many people around the table, and my tray was hanging dangerously far over the edge. Soon thereafter, said tray flipped over said edge onto ME. There was gravy involved. And more DDP (that's what we call Diet Dr. Pepper on the street). Fortunately I had on a cardigan-type garment that I used to cover up this little mishap. I hope I haven't developed some sort of nervous condition. Maybe that will be a symptom when we get to psychiatry. "Dangerous around food. Do not let patient use cafeteria trays." Maybe next week will be better. Incidentally, that's how I view all symptoms of any illness I have. I go all Scarlett with my, "I won't think about that today. I'll think about it tomorrow."


I just realized I've missed fifteen minutes of Friends! It's a miracle I can watch it on my $5 cable, so I try to take every opportunity so they don't take it away from me. Until next time,


Erin