Sixteen Months in Dominica: The brain sucks, but most other things are okay...

Hi all,

As Mark has already said, getting back was NO FUN. I had a post started on my old computer discussing this at length, but since I don’t have that file on my new pretty computer, and Mark has already mentioned it, I will move onto other things.

As mentioned, here is my pretty new computer…

She is so pretty and skinny. She weighs next to nothing, which is good for my back, and allows me to fill my backpack with other things, like 5 shades of lip gloss and 20 coloured pens.

School this semester is kind of lame so far. We are doing a Neurology block (= the brain). Although this theoretically sounds cool, I actually am finding it amazingly boring. There are the occasional sub-topics that I get excited about (like sleep, and bilinguilism), but all in all, looking at picture after picture of the brain and learning where everything is in it makes me want to punch myself in the face. Hopefully, I don’t have too many patients with brains.

What studying neuro feels like.

It also doesn’t help that I am behind (which can be blamed in part on what a mess the first couple of days were when we got back). If you were to ask 10 medical students whether or not they are “caught up”, 9 of them would tell you they’re behind and the 10^th would be a liar. But I am more than just behind at this point…I am behind on being behind. I’ve devised a very ambitious study schedule that should have me caught up by the end of next week. However, I suspect that other things will get in the way between now and then, and I will stay behind for a couple of weeks still. Oh well. As long as I pull it together in time for my exam (February 14^th), it is all good).

Mark and I celebrated 1 month of engagement/2 years and 3 months of dating on the 18^th. Seeing as how there is nothing to do, we just went out for dinner. I had a lab session that night from 7-9pm anyway, so it was pretty much the lamest month-iversary ever. When I got home, we watched Ocean’s 11…and I fell asleep half way through. Like I said…super lame.

Speaking of Ocean’s 11, Mark and I booked our trip to Las Vegas for May! We are going to a friend’s wedding where Mark is a groomsmen. This will be my 4^th time in Vegas and Mark’s first. Mark has this fear that we’re going to be walking down the street and random people are going to recognize me and share crazy stories about my other 3 trips there….I don’t think it will happen…I use a fake name in Vegas anyway...

My favourite city in the world.

And speaking of weddings, we are honing in on a date and venue. It’s pretty hard for me to plan a wedding in Vancouver from down here, but luckily my awesome mom and my awesome maid-of-honour are making the trips around town for me. I trust their judgement completely, so I have no real concerns. Also, I have found the dress of my dreams. It has everything I wanted in a wedding dress…it’s lace, it looks great from the back, and you can see my shoes. Like I said, this is the dress of my dreams and NOT necessarily my dress…I absolutely plan on trying it on though when I go wedding dress shopping. If it looks the way on me I hope it will (and if I can negotiate the price a little), there is a very good chance that this will be the dress.