Looking Back: Part 2

Thank you to all the people who stopped by my blog yesterday! It was fun to see the numbers go up in readership. Shout out to the 3 readers in the Netherlands Antilles, I assume that it is my friends who are still stuck on the rock. Hang in there, you'll get here, it's all about mental stamina.

Memory lane MD2 edition and my wonderful journey for the 4 months that it was. Cue eye roll. 

Christmas break is the longest break that SJSM and most other Caribbean medical school offers, unless you're going to SGU, in which case you get the summers off like US schools. Lucky devils. I had to go home for the holidays, I was so homesick as it was. Now, the wonderful thing about Bonaire is that the only direct flights are offered on Saturdays only, and I thought to myself "EFF THAT!" I was going to risk island hopping again, with oh-so-wonderful DAE. I was supposed to be on a 10:55pm flight to Curacao and then taking American back to the states and home by way of Charlotte and then Seattle. In true DAE fashion flights from 3pm to 10:55pm were all on one flight 8 something at night. Did we have any notice? Did they call us? No? What's the point of asking for our number? Did they email us? Nope. Why ask for our email? Luckily my friend and savior of the day LS came through and let me know that my flight had been moved, as had her's. Most of us ended up meeting up at the airport, most of us SUPER grumpy that no one contacted us. Poor NC had to rush and put his wet laundry in his suitcase and he lives in Canada, COLD Canada which he'd be arriving in with no coat. WAY to go DAE, WAY to go. 

At least lodging was nice. JW happened to call her mom, who then told me about the amazing price that she got for a room at the Floris Suites in Curacao. That hotel is highly recommended by me if you have to stay overnight in Curacao, because the airports close in the wonderful islands, so you need to find lodging our camp outside the airport like a person camping out for Black Friday . . . except it's not as fun as Black Friday and all you'll get is attitude and lip service. UGH! But the Floris Suites Hotel, which is across the street from the Hilton and the Clarion in Curacao was the one bright point in my life that night, never mind the fact that I had to wake up at 5:30am to "make" my flight. My suite, yes SUITE complete with a kitchenette was only $116, JW got her hotel room for $60 for the night. So it's affordable too. I was just so happy to have a HOT shower, you take that for granted. In Bonaire, most places don't have cold and hot water taps, just one tap and depending on the time of day and whether or not it's rainy season the temperature ranges from warm to COLD. Taking a shower during rainy season, which was most of MD2 was my most hated part of the day, anyhow, rambling again. There is no word to describe the amount of joy I had laying down in that king size bed.

The Floris Suites decorated for Christmas, sight for sore eyes!

Break was wonderful, then it was back to reality, and the joy that was physio. Yeah, I've had teachers that tried to intimidate me into believing that their class was extremely hard. So this first day of class speech really just irritated me than made me want to study. Biochem, JOKE! Neuro, the prof is so sweet, and luckily her English has improved and she is genuinely trying to improve her English skills so that the students can get the gist of her lectures.

However, even after all the studying I did for my Block 1 exams, I was pretty upset with how the physio exam went. I left that class questioning myself and how I studied, however the grade was higher than expected. Eye before the storm. Block 2 made me question everything about myself. At first it was the physio exam, but then that Block 2 neuro exam hit. It was so out of left field. THE WHOLE CLASS WAS STILL IN THE EXAM ROOM WITH ONLY 10 MORE MINUTES OF OUR ALLOTTED EXAM TIME! At that point I didn't know if I should cry or laugh, I was trying to figure out some method to answer the questions. It was terrible for the whole class. I believe we got a 25 point curve for our research exam that block as well, the underclassmen now have the knowledge of the website that the exams came from, we didn't have that luxury at the time. The line that they fed us about our neuro exam was that they only allowed her to give our class a 10 point curve. Uh, what?!?! We just got a 25 point curve for our research exam what nonsense are you saying to us now?

I will say February wasn't all bad. The Superbowl happened, and I won some money betting that the Giants would win their game against the Pats again like they did in 2008. Anyone who knows me knows that when it comes to football, I bleed blue and green, SEAHAWKS! Actually, anyone who knows me knows that I love sports. I was the one hooking up all the guys with the site to stream games, and since I am a Seattle fan I have very few games that I can watch on TV over on the island, only when they played Sunday Night or Monday Night Football. So the stream is what I depended on. We had a little Superbowl party, complete with an island style spread. Bonbon kids, you know what I am talking about, we can' find everything we needed to have an actual Superbowl party, but there was beer and MV's amazing fiancee made yummy Giants brownies. I think the most fun I had was filming the last 6 minutes of the game, which was about 12 minutes of footage, for MV's family at home, so many emotions ending with MV's signature, ear piercing "WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" since his team won again over Luscious Locks Brady. 

Yummy brownies

Having finished out the semester, with the bumps and bruises from the Block 2 debacle mostly healed, I thought that I had survived and that MD3 was going to be the semester that changes it all for me. I thought that it was going to be it, I'd finally learn something in class. Boy, did that turn out to be wrong . . .  

In current news, GO SEAHAWKS, show those Dirty Birds who we are. 

Meet our Legion of Boom Dirty Birds!