Teased by Airplanes

It has been a few weeks since I have had the time or the motivation to update my blog.  It has been extremely stressful here on the island and I think I speak for all my classmate that most of us cant wait to go home.  The tests have been very difficult for all and many individuals including myself are feeling very discouraged at this point in the semester.  It isn't really the worry about failing but the worry of knowing we have comprehensive shelves this coming summer and and the USMLE Step 1 at the end of basic sciences......we want to feel more prepared and confident than we do right at this moment.  All of us students want to have the opportunity to obtain a great residency and to do well in our future careers.....hopefully things will start looking up and feeling better for all my fellow classmates.  I think the fatigue is starting to wear us all down.

Living just down the street from the airport I feel teased and torn several times a day when I sit in the lobby of my apartment building and see various airplanes fly (what seems like just a few feet.....in my child like mind) closely over the building.  Liat...... British airways.....Virgin....and the occasional Delta or US airways......It is also very funny when my friends and I head to school in the morning and we always pass under the Bon Voyage/come again sign close to the airport....and then when we come home in the evening we are faced with the opposite side of the sign......welcome to Antigua Barbuda.....ugh!!!  Just want to come home....for a few days.

As silly as it sounds I want to come home and see my cows, dogs, cats, horses and of course my family....I am so ridiculous I know.  But I love my life and the people that I am lucky enough to share my life with.

On a less serious and more fun note one of my best girlfriends and I finally went to the Saturday farmers market in Saint Johns!  What an experience and sight to behold...nothing short of crazy for sure!  There where booths and tables of fruits, veggies, and even some prepackaged items lining the streets and the inside of the a market building.  We found out later on that we arrived to late in the morning to purchase at the fish market across the street but none the less we had fun shopping and seeing all the different produce.  A lot of it looked better than what I could of gotten at any of the grocery stores here on the island.  I hope that we can go again and purchase even more yummy food.






The picture are terrible but you get the neat idea.....produce/fruit everywhere!!!

On an academic not fun but very proud note I accomplished and passed my first patient interview!!!  I am not going to lie.....I absolutely despise my foundations of clinical medicine class.  I felt like that class was an excuse for teachers/professors to ream us for not know things we haven't been taught yet.  Although it took a lot of practice and humiliation I finally know the basics of taking a patients medical history and have a very vague understanding of how to present a patient!  Something that I thought would be easy and turned out to be one of the hardest most difficult things I have done yet in school.  Makes me so nervous just typing about it!  I also did quite well on my lab exam and feel more confident about identifying anatomy in a cadaver vs a plastinated/plastic models.  Hopefully that trend will keep going on into next semester!  Hopefully all this crazy studying will pay off!  

Back to studying for my comprehensive finals!!!  Hope to post again soon!!!

Weekend at Dutchmens Bay!

During my parents stay during white coat they decided to rent a cottage on the beach and it was above and beyond our expectations.  The cottage was cute, quaint, and very cool with the ocean breeze....no need for air conditioning this family!   Because the cottage came equipped with a kitchen, I had the opportunity to take my parents grocery shopping at my favorite yet expensive grocery store on the island.... Epicurean.  I liked that I got to share with my parents how I have to use a taxi to get my food, how to coordinate with a taxi driver, and how MUCH everything cost here on the island....sadly enough my dad didn't get to see any of the goats or cows roaming out in front of the grocery store as usual.  Since my dad is a farmer I thought that it would be interesting for him to see cows, babies and a few bulls roaming the island dragging chains around their necks grazing nasty weeds out of the ditches.....so not how we ranch back in Missouri and Kansas!  According to the owner of the cottages, the cow/goat herds have decreased immensely.  Not sure if I believe the guy!   Below are some of the picture my mom and dad captured during their cab ride and grocery store adventure!  

Yes our cab driver was drinking and driving!

Yes any beef product is very expensive!

Bringing home the BACON????

Below are some picture from cottage that was stayed at and I think they are very neat!

 My dad was told by the owner of the cottages that the guy standing in the boat fishing with the red shirt on was a famous cricketer....not sure if that was here in Antigua or in general.  None the less one can enjoy fun stories. These guys buy the way spent about 10 hrs that day in front of our cottage fishing.  Pretty neat sight.  Dont see fishing like that in Missouri!

Beautiful huh??!?!?!  It was a great weekend enjoyed by all.  While here on the island I got to take my parents shopping and even took them to the downtown St. Johns and we even purchased a few souvenirs.  I came away with 2 awesome paintings that my mom brought back to the states and will be getting framed for me.....I am sure that I wont have a place to hang them for a long long time!!! I am sure that I will have more pictures and more to write about when we finish our next exam in a week and we being to move into our new house.....pictures soon to come!  

White Coat Ceremony

This past weekend was the very "exciting" white coat ceremony.  Although several of my close friends in med 1 decided they didn't want to participate the majority of the class did, making for a very long long ceremony!  It included speeches from our dean, provost, and our student government council.  Because there were so many students, the students that had guest had first priority with sitting in the Flex room where the actual ceremony was taking place.  However, if you didn't have parents/guest at the ceremony you were shunted to another large classroom where the ceremony taking place in the Flex room was "suppose" to be streamed live on a screen......that didn't happen.  So, if you were unlucky enough to get placed in classroom 5 you didn't get to see or hear anything, you were just brought back up to walk across the stage and that was about it.....many students are not very happy about that.  Waste of good study time as far as they were concerned.  Despite some angry student I had a good time and enjoyed spending a lovely evening with my mom and dad.  It was exciting to introduce my parents to my good friends and my mom was glad I have such great people to share my medical school experience with on the island.  The school provided a beautiful evening on the school lawn with a steel band and tons of delicious food and drinks.  I just feel so very very special that my parents took the time out of their busy schedule and spent their hard earned money to come and spend that landmark evening with me!  I also have to mention that I have had several students come up to me or Facebook message me mentioning that they met my parents and how nice they were.  Made me very proud to have such kind and wonderful parents.  Below are just a few pictures from the evening and I will probably post a few more within the next day or so. 

As you can tell it was a beautiful evening with beautiful people.  A great time was had by all and for me it was also great to meet the parents of some of my friends.....very amazing.  Wish I could do it again!  Graduation perhaps? YES!

Long time no see!

It has been quite a while since my last blog post as you all can tell.  It has been a very busy and eventful month with 2 birthday celebrations, an exam, house/apartment hunting, white coat ceremony, and the arrival of my parents on the island.  First off we celebrated the birthday of two of my "bestest" friends on the island!  Although there is nothing quite like home, we all did our best to make their birthdays super special and thoughtful.  During our first birthday celebration the six of us ate dinner at the beach side Italian restaurant, Bussola!  It was amazingly beautiful the food was delicious and it was great atmosphere to celebrate a wonderful young mans birthday.  The pictures below are not the pictures we took that night ( I will post them soon I promise) but from the internet.






That following week we also had cake and presented the birthday boy with some special gifts from the island.  As you can tell from below it was a fun and special day.

Yes he was sleeping when we rolled into his bedroom with a cake!  No rest for the guy!

In this picture above we are feeding the birthday boy!  In the Indian culture you all take turns feeding the person cake......learn something new every day around here.....even fun non science stuff!

Because going to medical school isn't all fun, games and birthday parties we also had another set of exams!  Yikes!  It seems like all of us students are on the 2 and 2 schedule.  For two weeks we can leisurely study but for the two weeks before the exam we don't go or do anything other than study.....most of us are not even fit to be around to be quite honest.  Although we are all are very grateful to be here, it is nothing short of hell for many of us. For me personally I left my apartment only sparingly over the course of the 4 days before the last exam.....I had a med 2 student who also lives in the building come over and check on me to make sure that I was still alive. Exams in most classes went well for most individuals in most classes. However, it seems like human structure and function is still giving many individuals including myself tons of fits.  No matter how much you study and answer practice questions you don't really feel prepared.  Hopefully everything will start to look up for everyone in med 1.  But, I think that I speak for everyone....we are sick of hearing about the dreaded USMLE STEP 1!!!  Dunt Dunt Dunt Du!!!  And the scores we need to get placed into a decent residency.  Pressure, pressure, pressure!!!! Yikes!

As I said earlier we had two recent birthday on the island.  The most recent took place last week and below are picture from our tiny pre-mini party for my good friend.  We shared cheesecake and I got to watch a bunch of dude trying to assemble the birthday present we all pitched in on....a cruddy looking hookah.  We would of purchased something else nicer but they we not getting another shipment in for a months.  But it works all the same....I think!

As you can tell from the above pictures we are extremely fancy dancy!!!!!  It was fun to watch the guys assemble the Hookah and get the everything ready....including one of my friends heating the coals on the the electric stove and teetering them over on a dinner fork from across the room.  It was a fun evening but it was short and sweet considering a few days later we had an exam.  However, we more than made up for it on Monday night by going to the Water front bar and grill.  It was again another beautiful and amazing location in Antigua.....and again these are some picture from the internet!!!  Oh how I love google images!




After an interesting and rainy evening at Waterfront the following evening we went to dinner and a movie as a group.  We ate dinner at the Big Banana in St. Johns and then went to the movies to see  Taken II.    Needless to say it was my first experience in an Antiguan movie theater and they laughed at every cheesy line in the movie....and I thought the movie was suppose to be serious.  None the less I had an amazing time going to the movies with 13 or 14 of my closest friends....and yes you can cram that many people into a taxi!  haha






I promise to keep updating the blog more regularly and will probably have another post within the next few days...hope you all enjoy my cool journey.

All things strange and "natural" in Antigua

I really love Antigua, and everything about the island.  However, there are just some things that I must mention for the sake of humor about this little piece of land.  One of my friends was nice enough to put a copy of the first season of the TV show How I met your Mother on my external hard drive.  During the first season there was an episode where Ted's talks about how is mother always said, "nothing good happens after 2 a.m. Well the same thing applies to Antigua also....nothing good happens after 2 a.m........and if it does its funny!  On Saturday evening my group of friends convinced me to go out with them to a place called Rush. Which pretty much is just a small ashtray of a bar in the back of a little casino.....enough said right?!?! No not really, it was yet another fun time spent dancing and another experience with a weird cab ride and some intoxicated people. On our way back to our apartment our cab driver (whom looked no older than 23) informed us that he has 6 children by 4 separate women which are spread out over two continents and two islands.....what a prolific guy!  One of my friends was concerned and wanted to know if he was still with the women he had the last 3 children with....and he was thank goodness.  This particular friend also told him that back home in America that kind of stuff wasn't acceptable and it wasn't good to have that many "baby mammas".  He said what she said didn't apply to Antigua.  Here you have your babies first (or in his case a whole clan) and then you marry because it is "natural".  My friend didn't agree.  Our cab driver also gave another friend words of wisdom about not having a motorcycle! Sharing several gory stories about all the nasty motorcycle wrecks he has seen on the island....he was a little too vividly descriptive.  WOW!!!  It also seems that one cabdriver we have here in Antigua always seems to be drunk, high, or both when he comes and picks us up at our apartment.  Plus there is always an open bottle of beer in the cup holder between the driver and passenger seats.  Surprisingly enough he is the most dependable, nicest and best driver we have had.   None the less what I have learned from my two late night cab rides is that, it is ok to cheat, drink and drive, spread your seed and never ride a motorcycle......the end. 

However, the fun doesn't end there!!!  Earlier that day two of my girlfriends and I decided to take a different cab driver than usual to a different grocery store than usual on the other side of the island......not the best choice us girls have ever made.  First off the guy was late picking us up (island time....duh!!!) and then after an hour or so shopping the guy never picked us up.  After an hour of waiting and several phone calls with him saying he is almost there we decided to take a different cab.  However, that wasn't the craziest part of the day. While we waited for our cab a screaming match took place outside the grocery store where all the words the two large men screamed at each other sounded like gibberish mixed with the excessive use of the word F***.  Men, women, and children leisurely strolled by as these two men verbally ripped each other apart.  Guess you can add verbal altercations to the list of natural here in Antigua.  Not going to lie, I was pretty scared to watch those two people yell at each other.     

Oh, and all the lovely animals of Antigua!!!!  Oh how you roam free all over the island grazing in ditches and walk through grocery store parking lots......Yes there are is a small herd of momma cows, with babies and a few bulls that roam in front and beside my apartment complex and at least a few times a month they slow down traffic crossing the pavement.  So strange considering how fast and crazy the people drive here on the island.  Back home someone would hit a cow on the side of the road...weird!  This picture is one I found on the Internet and strangely enough is just right down the street from my apartment. 

  Also, it isn't unusual to have a whole flock of goats grazing across from the Epicurean...I mean like a 100 of them grazing across from the Epi.  I find this to be funny because the Epi is a better grocery store than what we have back home and we don't have goats grazing in front of our grocery store.  Again....strange!!!! 

As promised I pictures from my relaxing evening at Bay House....also a strange thing for a medical student. 

We are a cute bunch!!! Smart and fun too!!!  Look out Mom!