Had Myself a Very Merry Christmas

Christmas eve. My favorite day of the whole year! My family has a long-standing tradition of going to visit my Van Stavern family in Paradise, CA. We all look forward to this every year because its a time when all of my favorite family members all get together and catch up on what everyone has been up to for the past year...it is especially fun now that I am an "adult" and can watch all of the babies in the family open up their presents and smile with the thought of Santa coming in the morning. It is always a lot of fun and it always goes by way too fast! Some highlights via photos:

Blake, Bryce and Brett! 

Mom, me, Rebecca, Christina

Rebecca, Uncle Jim

Cousins: Kathryn, me, Christina, Skylar

Christmas morning, we always spend at our own house. We make orange cinnamon rolls, look at what Santa left us in our stockings and then open up presents. We then get ourselves ready, pack up the car, and head to Sam's family Christmas celebration in the Bay Area for Christmas lunch!

After catching up with the Bay Area family, we were on our way to our last Christmas celebration at S's house! I'm so happy that my parents and S's parents like eachother. I always have a good time (and laugh a lot) when they get together! A great end to this Christmas season, in deed! :)

<3 [First photo on my new iPad!]

I hope everyone else had a great Christmas also! 

Disneyland [photo blog]

The third and final part of our Winter adventure was to Disneyland and California Adventure theme parks in Anaheim, CA.

Day 1:
After S finished his interview in LA, picked me up from Santa Monica beach and drove us to Anaheim, we checked into our hotel and went to Downtown Disney for the night. There, we walked around to explore the different shops and had dinner with two great friends: Kelsey and Lyle. I don't think I have seen either of these two since their wedding last May, so I was very excited to get together with them for dinner at my favorite Disney restaurant: Tortilla Joes.

Legoland Store: Beauty and the Beast

Legoland Store: Toy Story 

Legoland Store: Aladdin

Day 2: Disneyland!

:)

Finding Nemo Ride 

I'M GUNNA WRECK IT! 

Pooooooh Bear

Evening Christmas Parade 

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

Santa's Sleigh!

Day 3: Disney's California Adventure theme park (+ the new "Cars Land")

In line for the new Car's Ride
{side note: we had fast passes, but the
 normal line was 2.5 hours!!!}

Art Class

S's Frankenweenie drawing

My Tigger and Franekweenie drawings

The magic room/The Beast's Library

Jessie 

Such a great end to our vacation....I love Disneyland.

Los Angeles Vacation

After leaving Boston, S and I headed back to one of our favorite places: LA. We arrived around noon, got our rental car, and started thinking about what we wanted as our first meal back in Los Angeles. After living there for four years, we each had our personal favorites and not enough time to re-visit them all. In the end, we decided with a California Classic: In-n-out Burger!

"Our first family car" 

Driving through LA....*sigh*

yum. 

After we re-fueled our bodies, we headed to our hotel: The Beverly Inn. This inn was very...interesting. In one sense, it was great, because it was in the heart of Beverly Hills, but in every other aspect, it was a crap hole. Seriously though, this inn was falling apart. I'm glad we only spent one night there...

After we checked in, S got ready for his residency interview dinner, while I stayed back in the room and took a nap. After he was done with dinner, we decided to take a little trip back to Westwood to visit some of our favorite sites, get me dinner at one of the best/worst Thai food restaurants you could ever choose to eat at (Mr. Noodle), and have desert at the infamous Diddy Riese! We then ended up simply walking the streets of Westwood for a while, reminiscing about college. We also drove to my old apartment, S's old fraternity house, and my old sorority house! As silly as it sounds, I think this was the highlight of my entire trip. It was so great to be back in Westwood...I didn't realized how much I missed it. 

[Shout out: P*Posse and Sunday Night Dinners]

<3 <3 <3

S's Frat: Delta Sigma Phi

My sorority: Gamma Phi Beta

The next day, while S had his interview, I checked out of the hotel and headed to Santa Monica beach for a relaxing afternoon. After navigating through the bus system without any major problems, I spent about 3 hours at the beach. I spent about 2 1/2 of these hours simply laying in the sand, listening to music and taking pictures. I spent the other 30 minutes walking up and down the Santa Monica Pier. It was so ridiculously relaxing...I could probably have laid on that beach all day long!  

When S finished up at his interview, he drove into Santa Monica, picked me up and we headed off for our last adventure: Disneyland!

Boston Vacation!

After finishing up my semester, I left for a week long trip to Boston and Las Angeles. S was interviewing for residency, so I decided to follow along and explore! I had never been to Boston, so I was very excited about that...and Los Angeles means re-visiting UCLA and going to Disneyland!

We left East Lansing on Monday morning to head to Detroit Metro Airport...We were scheduled to leave at around 1 PM, layover in Baltimore, and then arrive in Boston at 5 PM. However, after sitting in the airport with delays for a while, we were informed that our flight would be canceled, due to poor weather conditions in Baltimore. Luckily, S quickly called southwest and re-booked us on a flight only 1 hour later that went through Chicago then to Boston. We were able to hop on right away, and make it without any delays! The only downside: because of the change in flights, the airline misplaced my baggage for the night...thankfully, it was delivered to my hotel the next day.

After arriving in Boston, we (fairly easily) navigated through the subway/train system and arrived at our hotel: the Holiday Inn Brookline. From the long day of travel, we decided that it was a good day for an early bed time.

On our first train into the city! 

The next day, we woke up fairly early, ate breakfast in our hotel and then headed into town to do some historical site-seeing. Our first stop, the Boston Tea Party Re-enactment.

This was a really cool experience! [If any of you readers is ever planning on going to Boston, I highly recommend this]. We started out by meeting in a room that looks like an old school house. All of a sudden, a man dressed in Colonial clothing runs in, speaking Old English and begins rallying us together to fight against the British. Yes, it was the night before the Boston Tea Party and we were all being recruited to participate in this important moment of history. We then boarded the Boston Tea Party ship and through crates of tea overboard in to the Boston Harbor.

Throwing tea overboard! 

After the re-enactment, we were led to a tea shop where we sampled some tea and cookies. We then went through an interactive museum all about the American Revolution. It was a really fun site-seeing spot!

Boston Tea Party Gift Shop:
Boston LOVES their lobster memorabilia! 

After the Boston Tea Party, we asked a local what other things we could do nearby. They told us to go to the spot where the Boston Massacre occurred. We went to the spot, took some pictures, went to the museum, and listened to an interesting talk about different perspectives of what happened that night in Boston.

We then decided it was time to go back to the hotel. S had to get ready for his residency dinner (which always occur the night before the interviews). So, we went back, he got ready, I ordered room service and watched movies for the night! So relaxing! :)

Room Service + Grey's Anatomy

The next day, S had to leave early to go to his interview bright and early. He started at 6:45 AM!!! I slept in, took my time getting ready, and then took a free shuttle over to the Harvard Hospitals location. I brought my First Aid Board review book with me (so that I can one day pass my boards and get a residency spot too haha), sat down in the lobby of the hospital, and waited for S to finish.

Once he was done, we both went together to walk down the road the Harvard Medical School. In their library, they have a little museum (Warren Anatomical Museum) where they had Phineas Gage's skull! So, this science nerd obviously needed to see that!

After we left the museum, we headed back to our hotel to get ready for the night. Our plans: see the Boston Ballet's "The Nutcracker". I have always loved seeing the Nutcracker...I don't think that there is anything more Christamassy than that...so I couldn't wait.

The ballet was absolutely beautiful and it was so fun to dress-up and pretend to be cultured for the night!

After the ballet, we went home and went right to bed. We had to be up very early the next day, because it was time to leave Boston and time to move on to our next city: Los Angeles!

Finals Week

Another semester down! Only 1 more semester until 1) I am done with pre-clinicals and 2) I have to take boards. Its absolutely crazy how quickly this last semester went and I know that next semester will be the same, if not even faster!

This last round of final exams was much different than those of M1 for a few reasons. First, the M2 year is based on block exams (meaning we have a final exam every 2-4 weeks) and we only have 1 main class at a time. So, while all of our grades are based on a 100% final exam for each block, we at least have the opportunity to focus the majority of our time on studying for these domains. Second, I feel like I finally have a scientific background on subjects that allow me to dive right in to the material, instead of having to spend half the class understanding the basics. While I loved my major at UCLA, I think that coming from a non-science heavy major kind of put me at a disadvantage last year...fortunately, I think that having my M1 year under my belt, this disadvantage is over and the playing field is now even. Thirdly, the three final exams that we did have all happened to be some of my favorite courses: Clinical Skills, Epidemiology, and Psychology. So, while finals are always a little stressful...I felt more comfortable with these subjects than others that we have had in the past. Finally, our school put on an AMAZING and supportive finals week that was full of relaxing activities to help us poor med school students out. These activities included pet therapy (an afternoon playing with puppies), art therapy (art supplies out for a quick relaxing break of exercising our creativity), free chair massages (clearly amazing...I don't think this really needs an explanation), and lots and lots of free snacks/coffee.

Pet therapy! 

This semester ended wonderfully. My overall final average for the semester is my highest yet and I feel like I am finally getting the hang of this whole medical school thing. Lets just hope this confidence continues into next semester and into my board studying!

Animal Procedures Lab

Two weeks ago, I got the opportunity to participate in a really unique learning experience! Every 6 months, the Emergency Medicine residency program at Sparrow Hospital puts on a workshop for their residents to practice some skills that are rare in the emergency room. These procedures are done on anesthetized pigs and include Chest Tube Thoracotomies, Transvenous Pacemaker Insertions, Surgical Cricothryotomies, and Resuscitative Thoracotomies. For these workshops, 8 medical students are invited to come and participate. Because its such a small number of spots for the 200 first and second year medical students at CHM, the opportunity to sign up for a spot goes QUICK...as in, as fast as the Spice Girl's Reunion tour tickets selling out...as in seconds after the email goes out! So, although I really wanted to go, I knew that the chance would be slim. Miraculously, I got one of the 8 spots available during this semester! And...

IT. WAS. AWESOME.

Seriously. Such an amazing experience. For any CHMers that read my blog, you MUST try to go to the next workshop. It was really amazing working 1-on-1 with residents and learning how to conduct these procedures first hand. From lots and lots of suturing practice, to holding a live-beating heart in my hand, to putting my first chest tube in (and having my glove rip while my bare finger was inside the pig's thoracic cavity), it was truly an experience I will never forget!

Suture Clinic

Last week, I went to a skills lab offered by the Emergency Medicine Interest Group to learn how to suture! Even though I don't really think I will be going in to Emergency Medicine, every doctor needs to know how to suture... So, I was really excited to learn this skill.

We worked 3:1 (3 students:1 emergency medicine resident) on our suturing skills and learned several different types of knots. These sutures included a simple knot, a two-layer suture, a horizontal mattress, a vertical mattress, and a running stitch!

My first suture: Simple Stitch

Horizontal Matress and Vertical Mattress

2-layer suture (used dissolvable layer underneath)

Running Suture

I had a really great time and learned a lot...Suturing was definitely not as hard as I thought it would be, but I guess thats because I was suturing on a pig's foot and not a little kid thats moving around while I'm trying to sew...