Thanksgiving Revisted

So I changed my mind and decided to say a few things about this last Thanksgiving with pictures:

It began with a quick drive up north Thursday morning and a lovely Thanksgiving Christmas service. Then we all geared up for the aunts, uncles, cousins, grandma, and various students to come over and join for the FEAST. It was especially wonderful because as you might guess, my cooking is not quite like Thanksgiving-quality. The picture above is of the oldest and youngest cousins.

The following day we continued the tradition of going to downtown Seattle for the Macy's Parade. Jess brought a few international students home with her, and so it was fun to share Thanksgiving and what that means to us and then the after-Thanksgiving mayhem of downtown and American-style parades. When Santa arrives they spew all this confetti-snow out on the street and the kids bask in it (see picture). We even went to Golden Gardens afterward for a chilly afternoon at the beach where we roasted hot dogs and flew my dad's trick kite. That evening we hauled out the MOUNDS of Christmas decorations from the attic. The girls were so amazed, their eyes as big as saucers, at how much Christmas stuff we had! They also were quite fascinated by having an attic! We decorated the tree together and hung garlands and set up the Nativity--the family, the boyfriends, and the students all together with barely enough room to fit in the living room with all that stuff. After we cleared the table of Christmas decor, we gladly baked gingerbread and sugar cookies (mom had made the dough and icing! such a sweetheart) and gave them their due artistry. Joe even tried to make a gingerbread man with a nearly-amputated leg (using red icing) in my honor :) Those cookies were really good--I don't think many lasted the weekend.

In all, it was quiet a busy weekend with people coming and going, but it was nice to see the family, and most importantly, to express thanksgiving to God for His copious blessings on our lives. On that Sunday, the pastor at my parent's church gave a really neat message sharing the Thanksgiving messages of our forfathers--they were amazing! George Washington and Abraham Lincoln expressed as leaders of our country gratitude to God, an acknowledgement of sin and our need for repentance (as a nation), and encouraged people as individuals to look to God and give thanks. They defintely would not have been "PC" in our day. My drive home was rather uneventful, thankfully, as we had snow at my parent's house a bit the night before and they got a LOT of snow that afternoon and in the days following. And then it was back to school...but I'm very thankful to be here!

The Latest Adventures

So this last Saturday I went with a friend from school to down town Portland to Pioneer square where they hold annually "TubaChristmas" (http://www.tubachristmas.org/) and it was so fun! About 200 tubas/baritones/euphoniums/sousaphones/weird tubas from all ages join to play Christmas songs and other tunes. One of the baritone players even sang for several numbers, and the audience sang too. It was so neat to hear the PUBLIC of Portland singing about Truth--about Jesus, His birth, and reason for coming. I don't know how much they believe it, and as liberal as Portland is, I'm glad there wasn't more resistance there. The director was an 89-yr old man with a lot of SPUNK and whit. Not only did he direct, but he gave quite the lecture in between songs on the tubas, composers, and other random facts/puns. You could tell that he lived for that time and that he will probably direct as long as he lives. Someone else recently told me that he played for the Oregon Symphony for 50-some-odd years and of course, still teaches tuba. Did you know that the double-belled euphonium was outlawed? Did you know that John Phillip's first sousaphone was actually called the "Raincatcher?" Dr. John Miller actually owns the first one that was made! Anyhow, it was a really neat event--the tuba makes an actually a calm and soothing sort of sound I think.

But I've been doing more music trombone myself as well--last week I went to a Christmas party for CMDA and we had our own little caroling accompaniment ensemble made up of a couple med students, 1 med-student-wife (she's a music teacher), and a doc. The cast included a trombone, flute, cello, guitar, and piano! Thankfully it came off as a success! Then that Friday we held a memorial service for the families of the body donors from gross anatomy to honor them for their anatomical gift and sacrifice. It was quite a moving service, and I am so proud of how our class put it together--the programs/booklet of memories, slideshow, speakers, music, and reception afterwards. I played a trombone duet for the program with a second year medical student and everyone seemed to enjoy it, and some were a little tickled because they had never heard a trombone duet before (and probably didn't expect me to be playing it). One of our classmates played AMAZING jazz piano to a slideshow "monatge of memories" and the some of the families spoke about their loved ones. I just have 1 more t-boning event to do which is tomorrow our trombone trio is going to do our own Christmas caroling--we're meeting before school to serenade our classmates and so that should be fun as we blast the basic science building with brass Christmas!

Histology or herstology?

Well, it's been crazy these past few weeks, hence, why I have not posted. Let's see, the last time I posted was before thanksgiving, but most of you who read my blog saw me at thanksgiving, which is one reason why I didn't have a huge incentive to post.

So we just completed our 5 or so week tour of histology, AKA microscopic anatomy. Histology looks at the major tissue/cellular components of the body and how they are organized to create organs and muscles and all the big stuff we saw with the naked eye during gross anatomy. It also meant hours of peering into a microscopic at slides so ancient that even our anatomy professor (who is retiring this year) used them when she was in school here! The key to histology is pattern recognition and that comes by careful observation and looking at the (many times) subtle differences between how things look--their color, organization, structure, size, etc. and a LOT of repetition. To say the least, I COULD NOT be a histologist and do this every day for my whole career. In our tests the prof would flash up a random picture and have us identify the organ or cell type. Lemme tell ya, it was a whirlwind tour. I think the most fun lab was on blood where we got to prick each other's fingers (and thankfully I had a little experience from last summer, even though I had to prick the guy twice--he just wouldn't bleed enough!) and do a hematocrit and blood smear (put the blood on a slide, stain it with chemicals, and then count all the different kinds of white blood cells which actually look pretty cool).

Now we've moved onto biochemistry, which is mostly a review for me because that was my major in undergrad. It is CRAZY though, the pace we are going at! We have had 4 hrs of lecture a day, covering 200pgs I think in 1 week. In undergrad, class was 3 hrs of lecture a WEEK, and so we cover in 1 day what we covered in undergrad in a week! However, it is on a somewhat more superficial level, but not that much so. I'm glad I like this stuff!

I will make another comment about school that I've been meaning to share for a while now.
So you see, when I was in undergrad and even in high school with some classes, a lot of the learning I did was foundational. That is, it taught me how to think, basic ways to think about the world and how it works. But pretty much, I will likely never remember or fully use all that time I spent in physical chemistry learning about statistical mechanics or wave-functions. I still remember a lot of what I learned in the sciences and in math and writing and such (or I wouldn't be here!) but the details of the fungi life-cycle I don't remember. Percentage-wise, for the number of hours I spent in class I remember very little. The focus of learning seemed to just be to get through the next test and then to finals, get a good grade, and hopefully take away something on the grand scale that maybe you'd use in the real world. But med school is different because now I know I will actually have to know this stuff and be able to use it, which is both exciting and scary. The professors often comment on how "you will want to know this because..." and "just keep this in the back of your head." That's why I'm glad there's a lot of planned redundancy in the courses, and each course builds on the previous, allowing us to slowly put the pieces together. By the time we get to 3rd year we're supposed to know this stuff, but I hear that THAT is when the learning really begins. Anyhow, it's something I've been thinking about, and it's definitely an added motivator so that I don't try to just rush through this stuff by sheer memorization but actually try to understand and know it.