Weekends, work and worms

Well, time for a brief but intense update on my life. I am almost done with my first year of medical school! Simply amazing. I began this blog with the White Coat Ceremony andgross anatomy, and now we are back to the gross parts of medicine, and I mean gross as in kind of yucky. We've been learning about infectious diseases, and get to see all those kinds of nasty photos that appear in textbooks of pus-leaking lesions, worms 10 meters long that live in your gut, worms that are tiny but have enormous consequences for the body (just look up the term "filariasis" and "elephantiasis"), and sexually-transmitted diseases that are REALLY unpleasant. We also are doing microbiology laboratories, the first of which we were supposed to bring in samples from our own bodies to demonstrate "normal flora" (that is, bacteria that normally colonize our bodies, of which we have A LOT!). In other words, the lab lady told us to bring in samples of poop and pee (and "not the whole thing" she warned us! LOL!). The morning of the lab I chuckled to myself as I walked down the street thinking to myself, "Guess what I have in my backpack!" That day we cultured the samples and tried to grow up some of the stuff. Interesting what lives on and in your body, and some of it is rather good for you!

We just had our last PCM session for today. Things have been interesting this quarter--we've talked a lot about end-of-life care and such. Kind of tough too. I'm also finishing up my medical spanish class which has been a lot of work for 1 credit, but I've learned a TON.

Well, that's been school. In other news, a couple weekends ago I went on a retreat for the trip to Indonesia I am taking this summer--we went to Lake Merwin and had a time of language training ("Sakit apa?= What is wrong?), cultural training, worship, team-building, and listening to missionaries who have served there, which I think was one of the most interesting things. This is going to be one AWESOME summer!

I also went to see my sister's final music project in which she produced a MASTERPIECE! She presented great dramatic fashion "Mr. Gumphilini's Garden," which was an allegory with AMAZING drawings, and she composed this 11-part piece which correlated characters with different musical themes to go with the story (kind of like Peter and the Wolfe). I was SOO proud of her!! She is amazing.

I've also been doing a little running--I wouldn't call myself a "runner" because that's a whole subculture in itself and implies a certain seriousness, but I have done 2 races now, and that's totally new for me. The last race I did was this Sunday called the "Rhody Run," which was 12K. I even saw one of my good friends from college there who is this super-runner and he got 3rd place! I just ran for fun and to finish. And you get a cool shirt.

That brings me to probably one of the most important things going on in my life. Yes, if you haven't heard, the rumors are true...I do have a significant friend. We have been going out now for a couple months and he is wonderful. He's in my medical school class and a great Christian man. We had a lovely afternoon awhile back at the Tulip Festival down in Woodburn. The tulips were incredible, but they also had fun activities--parrots that sit on your shoulder, old steam engines that still work, rides for kids, etc. A beautiful day to take pictures as well.