Robot

I feel like one - my routine has become mechanical. I can't think of any witty spark to fill this post; I'm quite boring right now, actually. I'm pulled between acid-base physiology, supracolic viscera in anatomy, cranial nerves in neuroscience, and the oral cavity in histology. That's all I am right now - a collection of facts similar to a barely legible notepad, jotted down in a feverish rush lest those precious factoids flutter away like a small flock of startled sparrows. Only I'm not going anywhere, except home to sleep and back to class.

Tract Record.

They want me to be a tutor, and to lend my knowledge to the first semester. I doubt I'll be able to entertain such altruism, due to the simple fact that I've spent a week now on a single lecture: spinal cord and tracts. For the sake of the ascending and descending sensory and motor pathways and external brain anatomy - for the sake of undestanding olives and almonds (nuclei, I swear) and where things go - I have neglected the kidneys and the abdominal cavity. Sorry, first semester.

Count it All Joy

"My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience." James 1:2

James threw that in there because he knows I like to complain. Rather than "counting it all joy", I like to throw around words like "asinine". I wallow in sarcasm - saying that, at my most frustrated, this country can be likened to a dumb blonde: it's sure nice to look at, but it's lazy and not quite there (but that's just some latent bitterness talking). Actually, I think I'm just a little cranky because summer's in full swing and I'm dehydrated.

Needless to say, the print center fiasco is not yet fixed. We're still walking out of the library, after printing, to go stand in a line that frequently wraps around the building, and hopefully pick up our printouts. More than once, I've been given someone else's papers. In addition, all of the hole-punchers have been moved onto a little desk outside of the print window, AND there are no functioning staplers. The library staff, since it's "no longer their problem" are overwhelmingly unhelpful. I hate to say it, but that attitude is part of the reason this is still a 3rd world country.

On a happier note, 2nd semester is going great guns already - it's the 4th day of class, and I'm already battling my way through the varied ascending sensory tracts in the spinal cord on one front, and the loop of henle on another front. Here is my new classroom, where the magic happens:

It's not a shabby-looking room - see all of that technology? This room is actually better than the other one because it's a semicircle as opposed just a big long block. But don't let those plasma screens fool you - it's falling apart. Monday morning, my chair broke beneath me.

Anyway, it's taking me a while to get back into the swing of things - I'm excited about the things we're studying (I might actually be coming around; the kidneys aren't that bad), but I still wish I was in St. Lucia. Here's a picture of Ross from the second-floor of the physiology building. It's a nice looking place, but my brain is still on vacation.

This is one of those posts where I don't have a whole lot to say, and just felt that I should keep up appearances. The dissections begin tomorrow - unfortunately I will not be participating (my group isn't scheduled), but I'll go in for the demo of the anterior abdominal wall dissection. That being the case, there isn't too much new reading to do for tomorrow. I'v been doing a lot of reading ahead, but today I'll be able to do nothing but review (and trust me, we've got tons of stuff already), and maybe I'll squeeze in a trip to the gym.

I'm stealing a quote from Nicole. Aldous Huxley said something along the lines of "I know about love, but I know precious little about the kidneys." HA! I say. I know a lot about the kidneys.

On another note, nearly 100,000 people have lost their lives in the Myanmar cyclone and the earthquake in the China's earthquake. What do the headlines on http://www.msnbc.com/ look like?

"Polar bear listed as threatened species."

"Obama welcomes Edwards nod, even if tardy."

"Giant beetle seized at P.A. post office."

......Seriously? No, really....seriously?

Ready for Round 2?

Yeah? Well I'm not. I need more vacation - this "time-off"/ "three semesters a year" thing is going to seriously cut into a level of summertime enjoyment that I've finely honed over the past 24 years. When you get down to it, we only had a 19-day break which, in years past, would have only served as a warm-up to school-end relaxation, and a short one at that. However, I guess I really shouldn't complain; if I'm going to throw around analogies, I'd have to liken this break to Christmas break, which is normally about this length of time anyway so.....drat. There goes my argument.

Anyway, the big dog this semester is supposed to be neuroscience. I was a psychology major in undergrad and took some interesting courses (one in particular comes to mind, in which I lesioned the dorsal hippocampus of various female Sprague-Dawley rats to test their spatial reasoning), so I've got some familiarity with the brain. Nevertheless, the stuff I've just been reading through to get a head-start on the first days of class is as dry as a keg in a Colorado college town. I can't wait until we get into the agnosias and the aphasias - those are the cool parts of neurology, but until then, I've got to wade through a roadmap/glossary of brain-terms I like to call "neurobabble". It's a little worse than the fetal heart, except, instead of bulbus cordis and sinus venarum, I've got the falx cerebri, a little thing called the vermis, and more gyri and sulci than I can shake a stick at. But you know what? It's going to be great!

What's not going to be great, however, is the load of negative feedback that I feel is stirring off somewhere in the distance, waiting to swoop down upon my beloved med school like ravenous carrion-birds of darkness. First is the mess with the print center - I don't think I've found a more fitting definition of the word "asinine". Last semester, at the back of the main computer lab, two industrial-strength printers were manned by a few library employees behind a desk. These employees, however reviled they may have been for their inopportune and lengthy breaks, neatly stacked up the papers printed out by students, so that, at almost any time, we could go and collect the documents we printed. It was annoying at times, because if they were on break, no printing could be done, but I thought it worked. Now, the administration has seen fit to completely relocated the printing services to another building, accessible only by a teeny window, though which I must present my ID after hitting CTRL+P in the library and taking a lengthy walk. So now, all of that is behind glass - not to mention the staplers an the hole-punchers. Asinine.

Not as asinine (and perhaps downright unprofessional, let alone potentially devastating) as the fact that someone in some office somewhere e-mailed the entire 1st semester final grades which didn't match up to the letter grade. To make a long story short, some people checked their grades over the break, thought they'd passed, and didn't learn the heart-breaking truth until they showed up for registration, where they learned that all of their materials said "SEM 1" and not "SEM 2". I can't imagine how those people must feel - but what's even more difficult to stomach is that there was absolutely no communcation from the administration explaining the discrepancy in the grades. Shameless.

All of that is enough to get a fellow flustered - so I've been doing some Hatha yoga with Nicole. We've gone to two sessions of the Ross yoga thing, and it's honestly not that bad. I'm glad that things aren't so crazy right now, and that I can go to the gym, read a bit for fun, swim in the Caribbean sea (which I did for the first time with goggles the other day - absolutely breathtaking), and walk on the beach, snapping photos, like this one:

All complaints aside, I'm so lucky to be here. If I could go back in time and do it all over again, sure; I'd work harder and plan better. But I get a chance to work towards becoming a doctor, studying under amazing faculty, and do it all on a Caribbean island nation, with the beach a stone's throw from my room? I used to sit in my dining hall in undergrad, sip coffee in the morning and remark "Ahh...life is good" so often that my friends made fun of me for it - but that's how I feel right now.

Cheaper Than a Flight Home

Forgive my recent absence – it was unplanned. I’d intended to blog all through my extravagant St. Lucian vacation, however, on the day that we upgraded from the Bay Gardens Inn to the Rex St. Lucian, I made the discovery that the latter resort had no internet. That, coupled with obscenely high, damn-near random roaming rates from B-Mobile (my Caribbean cell phone provider), left us blissfully cut-off from all forms of outside communication (just about). Though I’d never felt stressed by my e-mails or tied to the phone, I found the whole experience liberating; it felt like an actual, relaxing vacation.

I’m back at school now, and it almost seems like a distant, wonderful dream (that’s actually just my excuse for why I can’t recall the events in the detail I’d initially intended to record everything). I will say this, though – God bless all-inclusive plans everywhere. For students on budgets, it was fantastic – there was nightly entertainment, 3 meals a day, a variety of watersports, and all the drinks I could stomach. I’m not going to say it took some finagling, but there was a certain meticulous attention to detail that helped keep us safe from the incursion of hidden charges. Actually, while we were checking in, some gentleman wasn’t too happy to learn that he’d run up $150 USD in charges on drinks. Apparently, thought he was on the all-inclusive plan, he hadn’t paid attention to the plan’s jurisdiction.

There were actually three resorts in one, all of the them under the Rex umbrella – there was the Pavillion, which was supposed to be more kid friendly; the St. Lucian, with it’s lovely all-inclusive plan; and the Royal, which was by far the nicest and most resembled an upscale resort (although I didn’t doubt for a moment that we’d made the right choice).

As you can see below, it’s really a beautiful hotel – I’ve never stayed quite anywhere like it (except for, perhaps, the Davenport in Spokane, and, of course, everything in Disney World)

The rooms were fantastic and large – and the accompanying view was excellent. In fact, they started us off with a bang – complimentary rum punches!

I can pretty much break this down into three areas: the meals, the entertainment, and the beach – I’ll start off with the meals. As part of our all-inclusive plan, a buffet breakfast was served at the Monarch restaurant (situated in the Rex Pavilion). After a few days of figuring it out, I eventually settled on a ham and cheese omelet, a few sausages, watermelon, honey dew, and perhaps cantaloupe, coffee and orange juice. Breakfast lasted from 7:30 until 10:00, but no one wants leftovers; so we hit the Monarch around 9ish.

We could have taken lunch either in the Monarch or the Mariner, which was situated on the beach in front of St. Lucian. This was great, because we could walk a few feet from out beach chairs to a buffet lunch, which usually consisted of some chicken dish, lots of fruit, and something starchy. One of the negative reviews concerning the Rex resorts was that the food was sub-par, however, I didn’t think so at all; the food was fine, given that it was buffet style and all-inclusive. All things considered, we ate extremely well – eating healthily and not having to snack once.

Dinner was an event – first of all there was a dress code (of which we were informed by our dancing bellhop as he ferried our luggage from the lobby). There were no shorts allowed, and I believe that only collared shirts were allowed for men. Well, you know me: ties every day, full-windsors all the way! (Well, all except for one day or two…) There were various restaurants available – although, the Rex made it interesting. The first night, we partook in a fantastic outdoor barbecue, set around one of the pools and lit by candle-light. That might have been one of my favorite meals, come to think of it.

The Rex St. Lucian has one very upscale restaurant – the Oriental. This was wasn’t entirely on the all-inclusive plan (the resort gave us a credit, good for one person per meal) , but we figured we’d go for it anyway. The food was fantastic.

Other nights, we had dinner at the Monarch restaurant, since it was easy to do an on the all-inclusive plan.

I believe, on that same night, we walked around the whole resort at night. You see, it was Friday night (maybe – can’t really remember), and I wanted to walk around Castries outside of the resort, and see what the clubs looked like. The night life could only have been described as “too local” – which is something you have to see to really understand – so we made our way back inside the safety and security of the Gates of the Rex. It was after the night-life has ended, so there wasn’t much to do but walk around. We passed through to the Royal, with their huge, magnificent pool, and decided to play around with the night settings on the digital cameras. We were sitting at a table, preparing the camera for a picture, and a very tipsy bride came up behind us, very impressively walking straightly on the walkway behind us.

“You really must keep him awake” she called out to us.

“Huh?” Nicole and I looked at each other. I’d thought she’d said “you really must keep him away, or something of that sort. Then it clicked, and I realized she’s thought I was sleeping while I’d been leaning over the camera.

She told us that she’s been married that very day on a pirate ship in the bay. That’s RIGHT! Married on a PIRATE SHIP! She was very clearly sloshed, but man oh man – what a lucky woman! Anyway, here’s that picture:

On to the entertainment! Every night, the Rex had booked a band or some other entertainment, from 9:00pm until 11:00pm in that perfectly Caribbean lobby. The first night there was some easily forgettable band. The next was this one guy and his keyboard – he wasn’t so bad; he mostly sang love songs. T.E.M (Total Earth Movement) was perhaps my favorite band, and Diamond Steel was a fantastically coordinated steel band.

There were perhaps two very interesting things of note, though – one was the Axis band. They weren’t particularly good; mediocre at best, really, but they worked the crowd like nobody’s business. First, I turned my back on Nicole for a just a second (I swear) to get drinks, and next thing I know, she’s being serenaded by their lead singer – the kid couldn’t have been over 21. Funny thing is, I missed it all. Another funny thing, is that he was singing Lionel Ritchie’s “Hello” – one of the songs that had been sung the night before by T.E.M (there was a lot of repetition). So they’re moving through songs, and they bring the dancers out – I guess this band had dancers. There was a pair of male dancers who tried their best, and then a group of 5 high-school girls came out and did there thing. Somewhere in there, one of them came over beside my chair and asked if I wanted to go up on stage. I was going to say that I’d much prefer the company of my nice fruity drink, but then I figured, why not? So I got dragged up to dance with a bunch of high school girls, and luckily Nicole, and elderly woman, and another kid who looked like he was something between Hispanic and Iranian were dragged up behind me. There was some limboing, there was some dancing in the middle of a circle, and some conga-ing, and then the two male dances came out and did a little fire breathing routine. After their little show, the real band got back up on the stage, and went on singing.

The Rex resort was, we learned, a favorite of Brits – Nicole and I were probably the only Americans. There for a wedding, a group of fun-loving Brits got down front and danced to some of the bands – doing such hip, happening dance moves as The Moose (don’t ask). That night, though, with the Axis band running the show, we figured that, since we’d already done the limbo in front of the crowd, Nicole and I got up and danced. Maybe it was that we’d been watching the international salsa championships before dinner, but we got up there, and I’ll be damned if we didn’t look like we knew what we were doing! Words of wisdom from my first karate teacher: Fake it ‘til you make it. Here are some pictures from that night:

It was funny – a lot of the bands liked the same songs. Lionel Ritchie’s “Hello” was one, as well as Sting’s “Fields of Gold”, “No Woman No Cry”, etc.

Another cool thing about the entertainment is that St. Lucia is home to a Jazz festival, hosted by the Rex and Digicel (the Caribbean cell-phone provider I’m thinking of switching to). Almost all of the bands we’d seen were actually taking part in the festival, which was to later include such musical heavy hitters as Angie Stone, Anita Baker, Wyclef Jean, and Michael Bolton. Unfortunately, we were only able to catch the beginning of the festival; the late registration fees would have been a little unbearable. Nevertheless – Jazz on the Beach was fantastic! A huge stage was set up just down the beach from where we were staying on the last day, and we took some towels and sat in the sand and listened. We didn’t really have to get too close; they were loud enough to cover all of Rodney Bay.

By far, though, most of the time in St. Lucia was spent on the beach.

We pulled up two beach chairs, stuck in two huge umbrellas, and did lots of reading and watching of the waves. I finished Accelerando and began You Shall Know Our Velocity, and Nicole finished Portait of a Lady and The Bride Stripped Bare. That was perhaps the most relaxing part – just sitting there and watching the waves come in and go out, all cares far, far away. We also managed to get in some snorkeling – I’d never snorkeled before! It was so much fun, although I eventually just stopped using the snorkel itself, because diving and coming up proved too salty an experience for my constitution. Coolest thing about that, though, is that I’m pretty sure I saw a foot-and-a-half long lion fish! (At least, that's what I think it was...)

Another fun thing we did, in addition to snorkeling, was riding the paddle boat around Rodney Bay. Actually, it was more trying than anything else – the rudder was entirely too small, and the paddling somewhat uncoupled from actual nautical motion; we went around in circles, narrowly missing the speedboats that were tearing around the bay, pulling behind them riders on tubes of some sort or other. So it was alright, but by far, the most fun we had was just sitting on the beautiful white sand beach, watching the time pass slowly.

There was a day of shopping, in which Nicole picked up tons and tons of souvenirs for loved ones, and I got some flip-flops and a T-shirt. It was there that we determined that the true definition of a frivolous purchase was something that you wouldn’t really use. We had a fantastic time, and half-considered extending the stay. And so the sun sat on our St. Lucian vacation, but you know what? The St. Lucian sunsets pale in comparison to the ones here in Dominica.

St. Lucia: Day 2

It was great waking up this morning, and not having to study anything - I mean, sure - that's what I've done the past few days in Dominica, but this is vacation. Above is the wall just in front of the hotel where I'm staying tonight (and leaving tomorrow), and I figured I'd get a more memorable impression.

So we got up this morning and had breakfast at the hotel, which (1) wasn't that great anyway and (2) certainly wasn't worth what we paid for, but oh well. The coffee was so-so, the sausages were a little too pink for my tastes, the pancackes weren't nearly as good as the ones I make, but at least the fruit was ok. See those smiling faces? Those are before we received the bill - believe you me. So we struck out on the town.

First things first - we left our little hotel, hung a left, and found ourselves at the closest thing to an American mall I've seen since leaving the US. I can guarantee you that all of these tourists here don't know how lucky they are to be browsing through something like this. If only they knew what it was like back on Dominica - where we don't even have this. The first thing we looked through was a very American-looking grocery store. Didn't really pick up anything, but it was so nice just being in some place that I felt recognized my purchasing, consumerist culture. We walked around a bit, and I ended up grabbing a new pair of flip-flops - Lord knows I needed em. What I didn't know, however, was that in order to qualify for the duty-free prices, I needed to have my passport and proof that I was leaving the country, so I paid a bit more for them. But you know what? I don't care - I'm wearing them right now and they're great.


The most exciting thing I saw walking around this mall, though was the bookstore! I don't know if I've blogged about my fiction withdrawal, but it's really something clearly diagnosable - I mean, it's gotta be, right? However, even though this was like a happy reunion of long-lost brethren, I didn't buy anything - for one, I don't want to have anything to read this semester, because it helps me concentrate. Also, I'm still working through Accelerando, and, the day before we left, Nicole and I picked up some used books in the student government loung - I was lucky enough to get David Eggers' They Shall Know Our Velocity.



So we continued walking down the streets of St. Lucia....


















And finally wound up back home, where we retired to the pool, to catch up on some of that reading.




Nicole got into it with a customer service person with B-Mobile, our cell-phone provider, because, apparently they charge something like $8.59 ECD per roaming minute, only the phones didn't let us know we were roaming, and it wasn't anywhere on the literature we received when we signed up. However, I got on the phone and was decidedly not pleasant - so they gave her a partial refund. Thus, when I got my bill for the room with lots of bogus-looking charges, I was ready to go for another confrontation - but, one catches more flies with honey than vinegar, so I was polite; it was all just a misunderstanding (let me say that http://www.hotels.com/ absolutely rocks).

Now it's time for me to go downstairs, cash in my free drink card, and listen to the band rehearse (I don't know if they actually play, but there's a big jazz festival coming up, and they're trying to get ready).

Welcome to St. Lucia!

Today is the 27th of April - the day when it was decided, a few weeks ago, that Nicole and I would go to St. Lucia! After much deliberation (and procrastination on my part), we settled on this lovely island - thus far, it's proven to be the right choice. One would think that the Caribbean is the Caribbean, but lemme tell ya - it's different everywhere. Just when I was getting used to Dominica, we come to an entirely different sunny little rock in a little sea. Here's a little teaser: right now I'm sitting on my balcony at Bay Gardens Inn at Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, and there's a jazzy blues guitar strumming just below me (I'm 10 feet from the live entertainment). I'll get to all of that later, though -it's been a long day already. It started early this morning, as we drove from Portsmouth to Roseau, through winding mountain roads, and arrived at the Roseau Port.

I like to have things planned down to the last detail, but when there's someone else (in thise case, Nicole), who's just as willing to be meticulous and picky, I kind of tend to let mysel relax -thus, even though the ticket and hotel reservations were all taken care of weeks ago, I wasn't exactly sure of when the ferry was actually leaving. Thus, we arrived at the port much earlier than was necessary, and got to hang around the yellow-railed roof of the ferry terminal, chatting with another Ross student. The view from Roseau is entirely different - one can't see the Cabrits, but you can see Scott's head (which shows up in pictures from an earlier post). Here's a view from the top, taking in the mountains in the back, and the sea. I don't know if it's in this picture, but there was an odd-flippered thing that surfaced every once in a while in the sapphire sea - we thought it might be a turtle, but it was just someone diving for something. Not as interesting.

Here's the actual ferry - I snapped a quick pick just after it arrived, and then headed downstairs to where we boarded. Notice the tiny Dominican flag. I think I have a larger one in my room somewhere - I bought it off of a local panhandler earlier in the semester.

I don't think I'm incorrect in saying that God doesn't really like the sea. It's unpleasant and unforgiving, and if you look back in Scripture, you'll see what I mean - Jonah got tossed overboard, Jesus had to calm the waves, and besides - Jesus called His Disciples away from beign fishermen (clearly, He didn't want them out there). What I mean to say is that, despite an early-morning dose of Bonine with the homemade pancakes, Nicole and I both managed to get a little green around the gills on that ferry. Looks big, doesn't? Looks stable enough to withstand the motion of the ocean, don't you think? The thing rocked like a baby in a cradle - once we hit the open sea, the smooth ride was over. Not to mention that the in-flight movie was Ace Venture: When Nature Calls. In French. Seriously.....?

That being said, I wasn't too keen to get up and stretch my legs when we landed on Martinique. What's that? Why didn't I take the opportunity to at least get out and see it - especially since I've never been there, you may ask? Well, I went to the upper deck of the ferry and snapped this shot - doesn't look too different from anywhere else, does it? Trust me - that's Martinique.

So after another two hours, and another movie (The Pink Panther this time, but without subtitles), we finally landed in St. Lucia. It took us a while to get through immigration (which you can always bet it will - not matter how small a country is, they'll put their foot down at the points of entry to keep out the riff-raff), but we finallygot our passports stamped and arrived at the Bay Gardens Inn. We'll be here for 2 days, and then we're going to stay at the St. Lucian, by Rex. We've got an all-inclusive package, so hopefully it'll be a lot of fun. Here's what the courtyar looks like - nicer than I expected, actually. So now I'm here on my balcony, feeling like a beached whale, bloated on a whopper and large sprite (killing the beach-body diet, I know), listening to the band rehearse downstairs. That's right - they're not really playing. In the time I've been writing, this, I've realized that the singer doesn't know any of the words. Nevertheless, I'm really enjoying myself!