OMG THIS IS SO FUNNY

Ok, I laughed at this for like ten minutes. It's hilarious! My style o parenting...right after the closet method....

http://xkcd.com/531/

Oh, and here is a token medical fact of the day! Visceral Afferent refers to sensory fibers from the viscera (aka, unconscious sensation).

Update: Medical School Is Hard

The first week of medical school was hard. The second week is harder than the first week. My n value is barely 2 but I'm sensing a trend....

Two words: Brachial PlexusAnd we did this in one of our five anatomy lectures this week. O.o

Study Break!

So, this evening when my roommate and I became completely over studying the deep muscles of the back and what innervates them and where they are attached and going through the seven page list of objectives that we need to know about the back muscles and spine we took a trip down to see the beach at Grand Anse! Hence, STUDY BREAK! The first of probably many (hopefully). I'm already having to remind myself that I currently live in an absolutely gorgeous location and really should take advantage of it at every opportunity. So, above, you can see my toes (the closest you'll get to a picture of me on this blog). The ocean water was quite warm and very nice to walk in!

Here is a picture of some pretty flowers on the Grand Anse campus right before you get to the beach... Which is here:
The sun was falling as we were walking on the beach. Here is a later shot... You can see SGU in the distance!

I leave you with a pretty shot of the sun setting (that's my roommate in the picture). We're going to try and go again tomorrow morning before the anatomy lab opens. Ahh, ocean in the morning, then corpse time! Isn't medical school fun? Oh wait, there are those of you out there that don't get the ocean part of that last sentence....

Just Enough Rope to Hang Myself With

Ok, this will be a short blog - I just felt the need to send out a friendly caution to any of you embarking on your medical school with knowledge in certain areas. FORGET what you know and don't let it dictate how you study! Case in point. I took histology in undergrad and have worked a fair bit in histology the past year. Aside from the unpleasant memories of having to draw every component of a desmosome I came across an additional point. On the powerpoint for tomorrow's lecture it says that for light microscopy that 7 nm is a standard section thickness. Only..I've always cut at 4-5. So I can just imagine myself loosing a point on a test because I remembered the 'wrong' data! o.o If you can't tell, the thought of this causes me no little amount of stress.

THEREFORE! I'm going to take a quote from the Simpson's...

Mark&Amy: "Ok Homer, take everything you learned in missionary school and forget it."
Homer: "Done!"

I'm determined not to hang myself with the little bit of rope I have. Just throw away the rope! Throw it into the abyss!

...oh, and it's quite possible that I'm a tad stressed out from my first days of classes and the sudden realization of how much I'm expected to accomplish in the next week (let alone the whole term). @.@ Yes, I knew before, but now after having sat in classes all afternoon reality is just a little bit more...real.

I'm hoping that I'll slip into some kind of schedule soon before absolute paranoia of failure sets in and causes me to fling myself into the sea (which is conveniently located nearby should such an event become necessary).

In lieu of a pretty picture I give you:
Fun Moment of the Day: In a survey of who'd we want to be as our physician Dr. House (from the tv show) won by an astounding margin - somewhat to the chagrin of our bioethics professor who, I think, was trying to make a point about now matter how good a doctor is they must have a pleasing manner towards a patient - oops, sorry Dr. M! We didn't help you make your point! But I'd want House too! :P

Back to studying!

Nutmeg Factory and the Concord Waterfall

Hello all! First off, here is a picture from campus that I forgot to upload yesterday. Don't you just love how the foliage is in focus and the ocean and boat are slightly blurred? If you can't tell I'm having a love affair with my camera at the moment... :p

Here are an array of nutmeg seeds in the drying racks... Apparenty, nutmeg used to be a huge export item for Grenada (it's even on their flag!) but after Hurrican Ivan a few years ago there are only two large processing plants left.

And here are nutmeg nuts in sacks...

And another shot of the drying racks...
On the way to the falls I snagged the front seat of the bus (mwahahaha!) so here are a few shots from the town of Gouyave (see the backward sign!).

And yet another beautiful picture of the ocean...

It takes a surprisingly long time to go only a few miles on the island since the roads are so winding.

This was right near the Concord falls. See the farming along the cliff? Definitely takes a person with balance... I know I'd be in the river at least once a day!

Ahh, tropical jungle. There isn't anything like it! The vibrant green, the cool moist breeze, the sounds of the birds...

Here is the waterfall! Luckily for me I didn't know to bring my swimsuit... people were being heckled to jump in! There were some pretty impressive dives into the pool at the bottom.

On our way back the guide passed around a coca fruit. THIS is where chocolate comes from people! We were pulling out the seeds and eating the flesh on the outside which looked disgusting but was actually very sweet. Don't bite on the seed though as it is extremely bitter (a brave soul on our bus bit on one just to prove this fact! thank you mr. guinea pig!).

I leave you with a picture of a cruise ship that we passed on the way back to SGU. So, metabolics, when will you guys be docking? :D

Listening to: 「のだめカンタービレ」ドラマオリジナル・サウンドトラック

Greetings from Grenada!

OK guys! I am HERE and CONNECTED!!! *cue happy cheering* First, sorry for taking so long to post even though I promised pictures sooner! But I couldn't get connected to the internet until my second day here (note: the SGU IT department is awseome!).

I've composed no less than twenty different titles for the post over the last few days so I settled on the generic one I chose. Here are a smattering of the others that were in contention:

"hot, Hot, HOT!" (the weather that is)

"chivalry is dead...sorta"

"um...are you sure that you can drive there?"

"cue ocean noises"

"wandering aimlessly is fun!"

So, I will start you out with a beautiful picture that I took while walking around on campus:This was taken right near the library. Pretty huh? So I guess I had better give a summary of what I've been up to the past few days. My flight was long, very long, however, at the end of it was a warm ocean breeze! We disembarked right onto the runway. It was dark so I couldn't really see anything but you could definitely feel the ocean nearby. Unfortunately, this was following by a really long line through immigration with a chaser of another really long line ending with being hit up for money to bring your laptop into the country. >.<

WARNING: SD1 (where I live) has no elevators! Which is really unfortunate when you have two pieces of 50 lbs luggage, a carry on piece and a really heavy laptop bag to carry up the stairs. The security guy finally helped after I obviously was taking way too long to laboriously pull each piece individually up each painful stair, heh. But I made it to my new home in one piece!

Here are pictures of the room before I had everything set up. I tried to get a panoramic view by taking multiple pictures so you can get a good idea of what it's like:

Here is the view outside our window - see the blue behind the trees? That's the ocean!

There are a few pictures I snapped today while walking around the south side of campus (still have yet to explore the north).

I'll post the pictures from my trip to the nutmeg factory and the concord waterfall tomorrow!

7 1/2 Days

Ok Guys. We are down to a week give or take a few hours. A week. O.O That's...really soon. I think it's possible that the enormity of what I've committed myself too is just starting to sink home. You know, like a poor defenseless mammal sinking into a pool of quicksand. *cue sounds of tortured screaming*

Hmm. Maybe that's a bit dramatic. Maybe.

I received some of the review materials I ordered from amazon today. Netter's flashcards and the BRS book for Embryology. I'm still waiting on the BRS for biochemistry. I really hope that it comes in on time. Otherwise that'll be the first casualty on the 'have to ship' list. V_V I just have this sinking feeling that my luggage is going to be over the weight limit. Ah well, it's still a better bet than paying for shipping heavy items. It was pretty fun though to flip through the flashcards, they are quite colorful and shiny. No doubt I will have much less, ah, friendly thoughts towards them in the coming months. So I should enjoy them now before I start to hate them right? The flashcards are very pretty though. They are also bringing back unpleasant memories from A&P in undergrad. Not that it's a surprise. Out of my classes for term 1, gross anatomy is going to be the most difficult for me. I just hate route memorization.

WAIT.

What's medical school again?

All together now, "ROUTE MEMORIZATION!!!"

Aaand we bring you back to small screaming mammal scenario that we started the post with:

As you may have guessed if you managed to read this far I don't really have any to say, I just wanted to post since I'm feeling impatient. No necessarily to go, and not to stay, just like I want something to happen already - the anticipation is killing me! Bring on the studying! Let's go!

Listening to: AKIO DOBASHI feels 夜桜四重奏

Pic: http://outside.away.com/outside/magazine/0996/9609wild.html

On Comments

Ok, since I received several complaints such as:

"What have you done to your blog?" -p

"No comments?! Evil, evil girl!" -e

"No comments? Jerk! And after I went through the trouble to write so many!" -s
(You guys know who you are. :) )

^_^' Ok, ok! I turned them on! However, with a caveat because...

First, let me explain why I turned them off in the first place. Eventually, most of the people that read this blog will be those looking for information on being an SGU student - which is half of the reason why I started it in the first place - the other half being to keep friends/family updated on the life that is me. With that in mind and how recent issues of people being identified in 'real life' from their 'internet life' such as blogs and trouble arising I wish to remain anonymous to strangers reading my blog. I'm somewhat of a paranoid individual (and I'm ignoring all of you that are laughing at me right now) which is why I don't have a facebook account or a myspace or anything along those lines.

ANYWAYS. I turned the comments back on so you guys can leave your two cents or even five cents if you're feeling generous (because I really love getting comments! and I haven't even left for the island yet - my internet contact with friends will keep me going in the future). I set it up though so none of the comments are posted - but I will get them and keep them I assure you! You just won't seem them published on the page. This protects you guys as well.

So thank you in advance! :) ありがとうございました！Hopefully this hasn't completely discouraged anyone from commenting. *looks pitiful*

Here's a comic for reading all the way to the end of this somewhat lengthy and boring post...

Who's on your sticky note o' goodness? ^_^

Happy New Year's!!! Hello 2009!

新年明けましておめでとうございます！

Listening to: お伽草子～音楽集 壱～/お伽草子 音樂集弐