2010 -- Full of New Beginnings! :)

So the new year has finally started! I've been waiting for this one for awhile and I'm excited that it's finally here :)

The New Year started off with a bang as Mumsy and I were in Paris! We had an awesome time, leaving the day after Christmas and staying til the 2nd of January! It was cold but we bundled up and hit the streets of Paris and even spent New Years Eve with a bottle of chanpagne at the Eiffel Tower!! So all in all it was a super awesome week! AND we even got bumped up to Business Class on the flight home!

Ready for the New Year!
Mumsy and I and Mona!!

So we got back Saturday night and Sunday morning I went to LA to see Megan and Evgeniya and Andrew (Megan's brother) and have breakfast for Evgeniya's birthday, then Megy and I drove back up to Vallejo and Monday was back to class from 8-5 (including a 3 hour anatomy cadaver lab). Our classes this semester are Cardio, Respiratory, and Renal, starting with Cardio (which we have an exam on a week from today--eek!).

Getting ready for anatomy lab! (OK so I don't acutally where my white coat to lab--EW--but Megy wanted me to put it on for the picture :)

Tuesday Megy left :( and since then it's been back to the grind. We have much more frequent anatomy labs than we did last semester (when we did the back in August then that was it for the entire semester). Last week we opened the chest and took out the lungs and this week was the heart. Our cadaver is especially interesting for two reasons. One, he has a second vena cava on the left side (normally you just have one on the right side to drain blood from the head and upper extremities), as well as several other extra veins in other locations. In 11 years our anatomy lab instructor has only seen one other left vena cava and even then it wasn't as large as the one that our cadaver has......so our experience has been more watching a dissection of the heart and thorax, rather than doing it ourselves so that we don't mess anything up, as well as lots of photography by the doctors and anatomists. So its actually really neat. The other interesting thing about our cadaver is that he died of B-cell lymphoma and has a huge tumor on his chest that goes down through the ribs, pressing on the lungs, as well as other smaller tumors throughout his mediastinum (and probably other places too, once we dissect more). So anatomy has been really neat. We also have started to have more standardized patient encounters. Today, as a team-based learning group, we took a history and physical of a standardized patient that we're going to be seeing all semester that we can already see is going to soon present with hypertension, related to what we are studying (he doesn't acutally have hypertension that we know of, just playing a role for us to start practicing on).

In terms of non-school stuff, this has been a fun weekend....Friday night was a PJ party (thrown by the same house who had an Ugly Sweater Party--they're very creative with their party themes) and Saturday was a Winter Gala for the whole school!

At Robins house, getting ready to go to the Gala!The roomies and I (plus our friend Sibyl)!
Mumsy, I put this one up for you....this is our 'all the single ladies; if you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it' pose!!! :)

But now its back to hardcore studying (so hardcore today I didn't even come home for dinner!), and training for my upcoming Half-Marathon!

Mumsy and Dad and Unka and Aunt Diane -- can't wait to see you guys this weekend! Now to bed :)