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!
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
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.
Monday, October 22, 2012
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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