quote from Moby Dick
"When these things unite in a man of greatly superior natural forcewith a globular brain and a ponderous heart; who has also by the stillness and seclusion of many long night-watches in the remotest waters, and beneath constellations never seen here at the north, been led to think untraditionally and independently; receiving all nature's sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin, voluntary, and confinding breast, and thereby chiefly to learn a bold and nervous lofty language- that man makes one in a whole nation's census- a mighty pageant creature"
-Moby Dick
this quote makes me think of what SAS did to all of us. I wonder, are we still living that way?
pain
it still hurts.....:-(
short list:
i miss shaved heads & tacos & special questions & CARMEN & waves & Filipinos & photographs & the map channel & Norris smoothies & Trivial Pursuit & Bandawe & working out to the rhythm of the ocean &
TRAVELING
a few pictures from the summer
Me, my friend Justine (from Georgetown), my sister Amy, and my friend Chava (from Cornell) in front of a snowcapped mtn
Our entire Abroad China group with some local Tibetan yak herders
These are Tibetan prayer flags
My sister, mom and me in front of Buddhist temple
Dy, Mike, Justine, Me, Leah and Selena on top of a Tibetan prayer mountain. It was COLD up there!!!
Part of Buddhist monastery
A mountain farmer with his ox, mule and basket
The Terracotta warriors in Xi'an
well it's time to update
i guess it's time for an entry. it's going to be pretty random.
i got rained on in a white t-shirt today. that was fun. no, actually, i really enjoyed band tonight, and it was really fun when we sprinted inside from the rain. it was nice when everything started coming together, i hate when jack's disappointed so i'm glad he's happy now. and i finally asked him when we're leaving for syracuse so i got that out of the way (i'd been meaning to for a while now). now i just have to talk to my biochem professor about movnig that test to wednesday...i wonder if he'll let me take two tests early, because i'm definitely not taking an exam the day after the wvu game. he's a really nice guy though, so i bet he'd let me...
my mom is coming to the game on sat!!!! i am SO excited! because no one in my family ever comes to games, and she's not even normally in the country, and the only reason she's in the country now is because she has to have surgery on monday. so, it's a positive and a negative, but i'm sure the surgery will be ok and she gets to come see us march and it should be a good show. Plus, it means she's bringing with her a few things i left at home that i need, and my passport, and some $ (because i can't access my atm account, which we're still working on fixing), AND.......MY STEELERS TICKETS!!! woohoo!!! i'm so excited for that game, i just hope ben's playing by then. and i really have to figure out who i'm bringing with me....i had an idea but well, now that's gone so i don't know how to pick.
i have been having the weirdest dreams since i've been back at school. maybe it's the pittsburgh air but every night i have an extremely vivid dream and it is always really really really random. one night i had a dream i was protecting my huge family (which wasn't my family) and we were in a soap opera and some sniper was trying to kill me and i ended up disarming him. and then the other night i dreamed i was fighting a supervillain woman who was trying to rob my friend's house, and i kept controlling her and she couldn't hurt me and then the main supervillain was talking about how he liked me b/c i was dangerous and anthony hopkins protected me from him (yeah, where'd he come from?). and last night i dreamed that melissa and i were at a zoo in like, florida and a female monkey kept trying to hump my leg and then melissa went and got kidnapped by the monkeys who hid her in the penguin house, so i had to go rescue her with tyler palko but we had to go through a den of lions first....and then the penguin house was out adrift at sea so we couldn't get back on the ship we had been sailing on the with the band to get back to pittsburgh.....yeah....
my first two tests are tomorrow, in biochem and functional neuroanatomy. woohoo that will be a blast. i think i'm totally set for biochem, but neuro is probably going to kick my ass. at least that means i get to start my weekend early, at 11am! haha, i don't know what i'll do all day but i sure as hell know it won't be work!!
i've really missed SAS this week. i mean, it's been a really tough week for a few reasons, and monday was one of the worst days in my life but i'm (mostly) over that now, and the only lasting problem is something i can't really talk about anyway, but hopefully it will turn out to be a non-issue...but i've missed SAS because nothing went wrong while i was on that ship. my life was so perfect on the MV explorer. i was never sad. even when something went wrong, like my grandfather passing away, it wasn't enough to keep me from smiling. and i really miss that, because i hate how now i feel like here...i'm not as happy as i used to be. don't get me wrong, i love Pitt, and i love my friends here, but now it's different. i feel like there was a light shining in me before, that burned really brightly while i was on SAS and while i've been back at school it's been flickering and then on monday it went out. i feel kind of like i'm just living now, i'm not doing anything. and i need to fix that but i don't know how. before SAS i didn't have these worries, i didn't have this broader mind. and i love that i have it but i hate how emtpy it's making me feel. and plus, i miss the people from SAS. i need to start seeing steve and sarah more, and i really need to call dave, i keep meaning to but it's so hard...
And Josh. Honestly, I don't know what I'd do without him. He has happened to be there every time i've been upset in the past few weeks, and he always talks to me for hours and never fails to make me laugh, just like he did on the ship...did i mention i want him to move here? and get a puppy? that would rock my world. i love puppies. and his photographs are just so beautiful.
school's going well, i guess. i think i'm doing well so far in my classes, but i don't have too many grades back yet. the classes i'm taking "for fun" (my englit class and my hps class) are a LOT more work than i thought they would be, and that's not cool. i'm doing it, but it's not giving me time to work on my harder classes. it's more busywork and less....stuff i need to do. i'm going to judge the semester on these first two tests tomorrow. if they go well then i think i'm going to have an awesome semester, even though i didn't get an IBK bid. and i'll look on the plus side, now i can watch grey's anatomy on thursday nights (and i'm seriously ADDICTED to that show. that last episode of the second season...whenever i'm upset i watch it and it just makes me...ahhhhh) it has the best quotes ever, i have started a collection and i love it. and the music of the show is incredible too. and well, let's face it, patrick dempsey and isaiah washington are gorgeous men. i got sick of the way derek was looking at meredith in the second season but now it should be better. and burke is just the most perfect man ever. i want him. christina needs to shape up.
and on that note i'm going to go study some more. this was a fun study distraction but now i need to cram for neuro.
rain in shanghai
rain in shanghai is crazy. it rains more here than anywhere else i've ever been, i think. it rains at least two days of every week, sometimes torrential downpours for very short periods and sometimes for long periods of less strong rain. but it is incredible. and the chinese are so funny because they are like cats- at the slightest hint of rain they pull out umbrellas. and i'll be walking along like it's nothing. the streets are so bad that along the side of the road are the biggest puddles i've ever seen. it's more like a pond than a puddle, but somehow you never get splashed by cars, which happens all the time in america. i guess they avoid it or maybe they're just driving too slowly for that. but if you're in the right mood for it it's so much fun to walk in the rain here because you're the only one getting wet and everyone else is so amusing and scared of the water.
the only downside is that the water feels pretty dirty.
on another note, i still love life here. there are three new interns at work and they're very nice. we've seen some great surgeries recently. on their first day i got them into a hernia surgery (it was a HUGE hernia, 14cm across) by dr. yao (my favorite dr :-D). on their second day i took them to a hand surgery to fix carpal tunnel by henrick's group (henrick is my friend who is a hand surgeon who i talk to a lot and think is pretty cool. i might like him but we'll see) and then he asked if i wanted to do sutures (ah that would be awesome but i turned him down) and then he told us to go into some other room and watch a surgery but the other interns didn't want to just walk in...luckily, i'm the dr. pimp down here and my "boyfriend" dr. wong (who is in no way my boyfriend, he's married and has a beautiful young daughter) was doing a total knee replacement and he let us watch the entire thing even though we weren't supposed to. it was amazing that is exactly what i want to do. and he is so good at it, he was incredible to watch. i have now decided that i want to be him.
anyway, wednesday we had lunch with the president of the hospital which was really impressive. i made a new dr friend, another dr wong (a urologist) who is going to show me some more surgeries. he reminds me of matt's dad so i like him already.
thursday i left for beijing with my family. we went to the Huton and shopped and ate and took rickshaw tours of the area. it was a really nice place with lots of cool bars with couches along the river and it was pretty. i wish america had places like that. they all had big tvs outside so you could watch the world cup, it was great. i followed my sister into a shop because it was a tibetan shop and i wanted to get presents for girls from work and i figured they wouldn't have tibetan things. well the shopkeeper apparently adored me and he ended up asking me to marry him lol. more like he stuck out his left hand and made me shake it and i did and then he told me we were now engaged. that was interesting...i bought some earrings though...friday we went to the Great Wall and spent 4 hours walking on the top of the wall, which was very different from last time i went. we spent 5 hours total there, whereas last time we had an hour and a half total. we had a picnic and went all the way from one end to the other (of our section). and it was a lot of fun. pretty hot though, but it wasn't humid so it was very nice. then amy and i went shopping at silk street and we had the funniest dinner ever with my family. we ate at a japanese restaurant at our hotel and it was an extremely funny experience. my sister said, "i don't like those fish that have shells. what are they called?" and i go, "uh, shellfish..." in this great voice. we were all grumpy because we hadn't eaten in so long and so we kept arguing and then just burst out laughing and the waiter thought we were absolutely hilarious. he sent us the best food, i had a great time. saturday we went to the forbidden city and spent over 3 hours there, which was a l,ot better than the 45 minutes last time. it was almost too hot though, and i already knew what the guide had to say so i kind of just wanted to wander by myself. our guide, vicki, was incredible and she kept talking to me about chinese history because i knew more about it than the rest of my family and i am more genuinely interested. i think she really liked that. afterwards we went and rested while my mom went to an antique market. apparently she got a bunch of great things, and then we went and had peking duck. then watched portugal play iran in the world cup and i discovered i have a new favorite football player- cristiano ronaldo. he is awesome to watch because he's so flashy and so handsome. then i watched the beginning of the ghana game, and all of the US game. of course i was incredibly tired the next day. sunday we went back to silk street and i got the chinese checkers set i liked. don't know what i'll do with it. then we flew back home. watched brazil play australia at night, and even though i love australia i was rooting for brazil because they're my favorite football team and well they're just full of such talent that i have to love watching them play.
i've been on a great exercise regimen all week, and i really like it. i'm on a kick to get in great shape before i leave, so i will. hopefully. monday we didn't do too much at work. i wanted to see surgeries with dr. yao but he didn't come around until after his surgeries were done. then he gave me his pager number so i can call him when i want to come to surgeries. that didn't work though, because yesterday i tried it and his battery was dead. tuesday i couldn't see surgeries because a medical school was visiting so all of the rooms were full of visitors. so i basically did the usual helping around the front desk stuff for the whole week. it was good but boring at times. i liked it because yesterday all of the other interns left after lunch so it got to be like old times. and everyone is so different when they are not around. i had some good quality conversations with my doctors, and even met some new ones. there're ones that have seen me a million times and never said anything, and then suddenly this week they just started takling to me. i didn't even know they spoke english!!! i think it was that they needed to see me enough times to become comfortable and now they suddenly are, even though i didn't do anything different. i did find more people who are offering surgeries, and today my "boyfriend" dr (it's just the easiest way to describe who it is) gave me a massage which i totally had needed the entire time i was here. Henrick took me to lunch today, and yesterday after work i walked some of the way with one of the doctors from my floor. i think he likes me and for some reason i feel drawn to him even though he is too shy to talk to me at work. he definitely has started going out of his way to be around me and to be able to see me, and he planned it so that we would walk together. i liked it a lot. and to think, he was so shy that i didn't even think he knew English. it turns out his English is better than a lot of people's!!! i think diana is trying to hook us up, so we are going to dinner with him next week. :-D
tomorrow night i'm going to an indian restaurant with diana, judy, sabrina and the interns from work. then on saturday we're going to hanzhou. sabrina wants to come so i'll ask amy if she can. it would be nice to have another person to split the room with. i'm watching the US play ghana right now, and i just watched 3 west wing episodes with my mom. we FINALLY got a copy of the 6th season that works!!!!!!!!! so now we can watch the 7th, too! yayyy
you know you're from SAS S06 when...
You know you are from SAS Spring06 when:
1. You measure time by when the next meal is.
2. People know to stay the HELL away from you until you are done using the Internet.
3. You get up at 7am not to eat breakfast, but to use the Internet.
4. You finish all your assignments a day early, so you have an entire day to gage when to print the damn thing out.
5. Your rolls are either inedible, sub par, par, or squishy…and how your day will be hinges completely on what level they are on.
6. You’re cabin steward stopped making your beds after Vietnam, because either you or your roommate don’t go to Global anymore (if you ever did).
7. When you find doing your assigned reading in a bathing suit on a wooden deck in the middle of the ocean a normal thing.
8. When you are surrounded by an eternity of water, but always seem to be thirsty, cuz that damn ship water tastes like someone pooped in it.
9. You can say the word “voice” in too many different languages.
10. When the only news you get is sports reports for college basketball and some insane Jewish girl talking everyday about how Israel was bombed…again.
11. You sit at BBQ night for almost 2 hours waiting for them to finish up the rum raisin and butter pecan ice cream and bring out some damn cookies and cream! Yes – you stage sit-ins.
12. Toasted pbj has become a staple in your diet.
13. There are either raisins or nuts in just about everything you’ve eaten in the past 3 months (on ship).
14. You’ve had a milkshake in every port, despite “Doctor” Jean’s fair amount of warning. Is there a difference in the danger of the milk in port and on the ship? I think not.
15. You’re entire day is ruined when someone besides Tom (aka the field office lady) gives the announcements.
16. Everyone you know rates how they’re feeling in accordance with Dengue levels.
17. You swore the Aegean Sea was yelling out Obrigadah at the beginning of their Sea Olympics chant to “purple’s got the power.”
18. You know what a “happy ending” is and you know where to get one.
19. You don’t know what you’re going to do when you go home and have to make your own bed and don’t have strangely concocted menu choices for each meal.
20. You have a feeling you will try to bargain down for that $60 pair of jeans in Hollister.
21. You forgot you owned a cell phone and now that you’ve remembered, you realize you have no idea where it is.
22. You went to or know people who got smashed and robbed in Flic n Flac.
23. You can’t imagine a highway that doesn’t have a lane for bicycles.
24. You stage nap wars with your roommate.
25. You are still convinced you are getting off in Hawaii.
26. You spent more on $1 DVDs in Vietnam than you have ever spent on DVDs in your entire lifetime. Or ever will.
27. Every dessert, whether pudding or brownies or anything, comes in the form of cake.
28. You eat at least 3 dishes of ice cream when it is dessert for dinner.
29. You were outside to either participate in or observe the dock time mob in Vietnam.
30. Your library is simply an extension of a hallway and you have class in “the smoking room.”
31. You have to stop yourself from crying after you’ve missed breakfast to find out later it was a sugar-cereal day.
32. You take a mandatory study break at 3pm everyday in order to go on a Dean’s Memo search.
33. You leave class under the pretense of using the facilities, when you are, in fact, checking today’s lunch menu.
34. You understand that living the same day twice is not as cool as you had imagined – especially when you have to study for tests.
35. You can easily point out the people from CSU, especially when they speak in class.
36. It becomes something of a normality for someone to wear a monk outfit around the ship or a kimono to a dance.
37. When you identify where you live not by what dorm you are in, but by sea.
38. You have had a “rickshaw experience.”
39. You have found your entire day was wasted by things like Catchphrase and past Semester at Sea voyage videos.
40. The Map Channel becomes your MTV substitute.
41. You know what a “Special Question of the Day” is and you have at least one friend who always tries to debate it.
42. You’ve attempted to sleep out on the deck…and have failed…miserably.
43. You dress in layers upon layers of clothing, so you can strip down when you step outside and get out of the ice box (that is the ship).
44. You understand what people mean when they use the phrases “I Chocolate You” and “Ubuntu”.
45. You are deathly afraid of every domestic animal in port, because of Dr. Jean’s rabies warnings…until you saw the picture of her and the dog.
46. When there is literally not enough time in every day…literally.
47. You enter a steep depression because, alas, the ship ran out of bananas…again.
48. You or someone you know has had a banana-cake eating contest.
49. You don’t understand why your local McDonalds doesn’t have shrimp burgers or shrimp nuggets.
50. You got ripped off at least once in every country.
51. You find yourself bargaining vehemently over 100 rupees or 1000 chet, and then you stop and think about it and realize it’s less than $1.
52. You have at least one friend who has an unhealthy obsession with the crew.
53. Your favorite days on the ship are Taco Day, BBQ Day, Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup Day, and any day with French Fries. When they combine any of the above days you just don’t know what to do with yourself.
54. You interrupt whatever you’re doing at 10pm every night to go see if snack has anything good. You still have hope.
55. You don’t know anyone’s last names, but you have little epithets to describe everyone.
56. You went to Apocalypse Now in Vietnam…or at least you have pictures of it. You don’t remember it.
57. You kick yourself when you find someone who got the same souvenir as you for less, even though you didn’t even want the thing.
58. The biggest threat you can make to anyone is “Tina”, even if you love her.
59. You measure time by countries. “I haven’t worked out since South Africa.”
60. You have a random collection of words in other languages, such as “mingalaba,” “shiay-shiay” “dzogwai” or “yogwai.”
61. You don’t know what to do with yourself when you get home and don’t hear Tom’s jokes over the loudspeaker every day.
62. You don’t believe in crosswalks anymore, and feel that after Vietnam you can take anything.
63. You gossip about which staff members are hooking up, and spend hours agonizing over whether the guys are actually gay or not.
64. You don’t recognize the crew in their normal clothes in port, but once they say hi to you it makes your night.
65. You have friends that you refer to as “my India friend” or “Rachel from the Amazon.”
i'm in shanghai!!!
i'm here at work in shanghai and i love my hospital!! i have a blast and they are all so nice and sweet and they let me watch surgeries! yesterday i saw a lot of different brain surgeries, and the first day i saw some general surgeries and i even got to help out it was great!
i think the doctors are all competing to impress me so they play whatever card they can. and most of the time that happens to be a surgery card. i'm eating it up. they're not used to western women working there, so they all talk to me as much as they can. the guys are so awkward it's hilarious, and i never really know what to say to them. they're great though. and i already adore a bunch of the women i work with, they're so sweet. i help them with their English all of the time, and they're helping me with my Chinese. yesterday I got to watch the thesis defense of the head doctor's student, and even though i didn't understand most of it it was pretty cool to see the process. i also really enjoy talking to all of the ex-pats that come in, and helping them out. They always seem to relax when they see me, and I hope I make them feel a little more comfortable. we seem to have a bond because we're in kind of the same situation. in a way it's a little like SAS, but it's more of how i feel with all SAS alums.
today they took us on a tour of shanghai, part one. tomorrow is part two, and hopefully it will be better. it was nice to meet the other students in the program (there are 4 other girls and 2 guys) but the tour itself was pretty boring. we're supposed to go out with them tonight, we'll see if we do.
in other news, in the past 24 hours i've gotten to talk to a lot of people from back home that i hadn't reached since i got here. it was very fun, and i really needed it. i don't think i'm homesick, i think i'm SAS-sick, but it's different because i think i have moved on i just miss it and the people. i do really love it here though, and everyone has an open invitation to come say hi!!! hehe, that would be awesome, if people came to visit me in Shanghai.
thanks to everyone who read my blog and enjoyed it!! i'm glad i was able to give you some sort of idea of what we experienced!
really frustrated right now
I'm really frustrated and disappointed right now. The one person who i thought would listen beyond the cursory 7-minute grace period that is all everyone gives me to talk about SAS (and which you all know is an insanely inadequate amount of time to even begin to describe the experience) is the one person who doesn't even seem to care at all! she asked about one place and then fell asleep while i was talking about it! that's the most obvious disinterest that i've ever seen! and then since then i've been trying to show her a few photos (and by a few i mean 6, i haven't even broached the subject of my slideshow) and she's been putting it off and it's just...
i had no idea how much i needed to talk about it, really, until i now can't, with the person i thought i could. and i'm so disappointed that she'd rather talk about completely mundane and inconsequential things, things that don't matter to me anymore. i hate that she uses me the way she does, i hate the way i'm forced to take care of her. our whole relationship is just not the way i want to expend my energy anymore. but i can't do anything about it.
maybe things will get better in a few days. maybe she's just jealous and she needs time to get over that. or maybe she never will. either way, one way or another, i'll eventually move on, i guess.
(on a side note, things were going really well for me. last week was awesome, i went out to visit pittsburgh with sas friends and then i went to a yankees game with a pitt friend, and then i saw a friend from the marines who i hadn't seen in 2 years! it was so nice to see them all, i was really happy. this week hasn't looked like it's going to be so good, at all, mostly because of this dark stain on it now. but i leave for china on friday, for better or worse, and i'll be there for 3 months. wow. all sasers are like "wow, that's great, see you don't really have to get over sas yet you're so lucky." while i feel that it's going to make me get over it even more b/c it's going to make me go into withdrawel from all of my sas friends, and make me be in a place i've been with sas, but in a completely different situation having none of the same amenities or friends or even just the ability to get back on the ship. it'll be like i'm in port (and i will be) but i won't be able to ever get back on the ship. argh. but i'll live. and it'll certainly be an experience.)
