A day in the life of Macsen...: September 2012

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Saturday, 09/22/2012 - Aba Wavine

I have no idea what Aba Wavine means or even what language it's in but it was a pretty cool place! One great thing about this school is there are a million clubs and all the clubs are constantly planning outings and activities. I probably should've studied instead of going on this trip but I felt like I wanted a break and after doing pretty OK on the mini I felt justified.

We were told to meet outside the library at 8 AM - pretty early for a Saturday, haha! I didn't think I'd know anyone who was going, but ran into Jen Noorlander, a spouse from the branch, as soon as I walked up. Always nice to know someone! The church is SO great for that reason! Once everyone was there we piled into the vans and took off. BLESS this countries windy and pot-hole-filled roads!

:-/

I hardly ever got car sick before coming here. I get car sick almost every time I go somewhere on this island. Haha! SUPER fun. I did get to sit next to 2 faculty members on the trip over though - Dr. Costello and Dr. Bianchi. Both women. Both in their late 50's. Both went through the same residency program way back when. And both of them got the travel bug so they decided to come work at Ross for a few years. They help run the Intro to Clinical Medicine curriculum, a big part of which is the HUGE simulation lab the school has set up. They tell us it looks just like a hospital. Can't wait until I get to experience it! Anyway, they were both very friendly.

So we got to our destination about an hour and a half after we left. I'm pretty sure it's maybe 15-20 miles away from campus as the crow flies but the roads wind up and over the central mountains to get to the Atlantic side of the island so it takes forever to get anywhere. At least it's a pretty drive - no matter where you're headed!

Here's a pic from near the top of the trail:

OK, so this hike is pretty much AWESOME! I should've taken more pictures, but I didn't want to hold up the group. No one likes the annoying guy w/ the camera who makes everyone wait. :-) Guess I'll have to go back again. The first little bit is pretty much jungle-style stairs. Someone has gone through and staked in palm tree logs to make the trail more like stairs than a steep trail. I think we would've been slipping and sliding all over the place if it was just a normal trail. Humidity makes everything SUPER slippery. So, there w were, going along and suddenly we come to a cliff drop-off covered in vines and roots..... And over the side the guide went! We knew what was coming but wow! It was something else. Someone has tied ropes in to the trees but I feel like the roots/vines were more stable b/c they didn't move as much.

This picture is pointing straight down!

As if my camera was lying flat on a glass/see-through table.

That's Jen looking up at the camera

Crazy huh?

Then at one point someone put in a rope ladder.

This is Dr. Bianchi that I wrote about earlier

All in all there were 2, 20-30 foot stretches where it was really straight up and down, and the rest of it was on a trail hugging the hill/cliffside which was very-nearly straight up and down. We must have dropped over 200 feet down to the beach below. I'm not gonna lie, my legs were shaking on the way down. Heights don't really get to me, but not being tied in was kinda freaky! Now that I think about it there were so many vines and tree trunks everywhere that you wouldn't really fall very far even if you tried to :-)

The beach was really beautiful - and clean! Not many people go down there so there's not much trash - Perfect! The waves and currents on the Atlantic side are definitely way more powerful than on the Caribbean side where the school is. They'd knock you over if you weren't careful, and the force of the water going back out to sea was equally as powerful. We tried to do some body surfing but they were just coming in too fast and too irregularly. But it still felt great to get in after the hike

First view of the beach coming off the trail. Looking North

Looking south:

That's the hill/cliff we came down on the right there:

Coolest feature of the beach was this waterfall that comes right off the cliff face. It's gotta be about 50-60 feet tall. It is SUPER pretty and feels great too.

I'm glad I wasn't the only crazy photographer there :-)

Jen wasn't quite sure if she wanted to get all the under

This is another faculty member, didn't really talk to her:

But she's married to this guy, who was one of our van drivers:

He was super nice!

Climbed a tree and got everyone some fresh coconut and everything.

I'm glad I went. This trip was put on by the Wellness Club so everyone that came is super active - a fun kind of group to get to know. Two of the girls who came are spouses of students. There's a national trail that zig-zags all accross and up and down the island. I think it's about 120 miles total split into 15 or so segments. They've done almost the whole thing, one segment at a time. I would LOVE to do that during one of my breaks between semesters. Anyone want to join me?!

We got back to campus around 3:00-3:30. After showering I went and hit the books till late. Maybe I should've stayed home and studied but I feel like it was totally worth it! Several of the other 1st Semester students that came shared the same sentiment.

Monday, 09/17/2012

First mini (aka midterm) of the semester was given on Monday, 09/17. I was a nervous WRECK! Haha. Seriously, I was stressin! I felt slightly unprepared - even thouhg I had gone through all of the powerpoint slides - along w/ my notes on them - for all of the material we had covered. I felt like I knew my stuff pretty well but still.... You wonder if you're study methods are good enough. You wonder if you hit the material that the profs are going to ask questions on. PLUS it's the first test so you have no idea what to expect when it comes to question formatting and all that jazz. Yeah, I was nervous.
The test started at 8 am, which was nice. I felt like I wanted to vomit right up until getting started but as soon as I read the first question I knew I'd be ok. Super straight forward questions AND answer options. It was just fine. For almost every question I either knew it b/c I remembered studying it or I didn't know it b/c I knew I hadn't spent enough time on it. No surprises at all. I love that! It was timed and they only gave us about 90 seconds / question so that was a bit tough. I had 5 questions left at 4 minutes to go and I missed one of them b/c they called for pencils down before I was ready. I was debating between options D & E and I panicked and put C. DOH! The correct answer was D, which is what I was leaning toward..... better luck next time I guess...
Anyway, I walked away feeling really pretty great about it, which surprised me a lot! It was not at all like most of my undergrad tests, which just about left me in tears and ALWAYS gave me headaches from trying to figure what exactly they were asking in every single question. After finishing the mini I kept thinking, "I feel like I got a B". But that kind of made me nervous b/c everyone always talks about how hard it is. Turns out I got a 79 which is the highest point in the B range. Had I got that stupid last question right I think I would've had an 80 or an 81 and therefore an A-. SHOOT! Still, I'm very pleased - especially b/c the class average of those who passed was a 73. And I know there were a lot of people who didn't pass too. Man, I'm glad I'm not in that boat! Those people now have to do super well on the final at the end of the semester to pass the semester. Talk about stressful!
So we were finished with the exam by 10:30. Almost..... no wait, actually ALL of my peers (except for the branch members) headed for the bars. Seriosly people were getting totally wasted and it was only 11 AM. Stupid. I wanted to enjoy my day off! It was kind of drizzling outside but I hit the beach anyway. A few of the ward members came and joined me. It rained while we were in the water but we were wet anyway so it didn't matter much. The Stenquists let me borrow their snorkel gear. That was pretty fun! I've never really done any snorkeling so I don't have anything to compare it to, but there is a LOT to look at down there! A few of the stray dogs that hang around campus found their way down to the beach and proceeded to dig up and wrestle/fight with crabs. Talk about hilarious! Those crabs were SO angry and the dogs were having the time of their lives! Anyway, It felt great to have the rest of the day off to relax :-)
That night all 8 of us first semester students and everyone's families tried to go out to eat at this really nice place on the Atlantic side of the Island. Supposedly it's this great restaurant that sits on one of the nicest beaches on the island. Turns out it was closed b/c of the poor weather. We hit up a different one instead and it was quite the experience. :-) Let me just start out by saying that my curry chicken was AMAZING! That being said, there was only one waitress and one cook to serve over 20 people. It took like 2 hours to get all our food out to us. Those who got hamburgers got the worst of it. No buns, so they used bread that was about a month old instead. Haha! It seriously looked, sounded and I'm sure it tasted like it had been petrified. Almost everyone ordered their kids a hamburger. The poor little guys couldn't even bite through the bread. Ahahaha! I'm chuckling just thinking about it. It was pretty funny. So, not quite the outing we were hoping for. We were expecting a nice beach and some great food but got a rooftop balcony and some pretty good memories instead.

Here's a few shots of the view off the balcony:

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Saturday, 09/08/12

Had a fun weekend a couple weeks ago - haha! Sorry it's posted so late. Lecture ended early so I decided to post some stuff before the next one starts.
Most Saturdays I go to the market to get fresh fruits and veggies. The people here are pretty shy about getting their pictures taken but I got a few of them to agree. They're such interesting people! Most of them are extremely nice. A lot of the produce is new to me so I always ask how to prepare it. They love sharing their recipes.

After going to the market I went on a Ross sponsored whale watching trip. That was fun! A whole bunch of the branch members went so we had a grand old time. The school rented this huge catamaran which picked us up at a dock between the school and town.
The boat was a little late picking us up so I started taking pictures of random things. Haha!

It's crazy what humidity and salt water does to stuff!

There was this old fishing boat pushed up on shore by the dock. I think it was pushed on shore after the really bad hurricane that blew through here like 30 years ago. I took a bunch of shots of it but I don't feel like I got "the one" - ya know?! I'll have to go back later. It would also be fun to paint! Maybe someday...

That's our catamaran coming to pick us up in the background there

Being out on the water felt SO good! A few people were worried about getting sea sick but it was really calm. LOVE the Caribbean Sea for that reason. While the boat was moving there was a breeze that actually felt GREAT! We didn't see any whales but we had a great time.

Owen and Addi being best friends