Oh, There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays--Week 5

Wow, what a hectic week this was! That's the only explanation I can give for why this post is about a day or so overdue.

Tuesday was Sarah's Sankta Lucia performance. She read part of a holiday poem (in the original Swedish) called "Tomten" about a gnome observing the wintery scene outside his home. She read with a very nice accent and a very clear voice. She was definitely one of the better readers. She was all dressed up in a white robe and shiny silver wreath around her head. She said it was really itchy, but she looked like a Christmas angel! I got to meet her parents after the show, and they are both really nice. I'm glad that Sarah was able to introduce us.

Wednesday was the much-awaited suturing seminar. I actually wasn't half bad at it! Maybe I've just seen so much from watching surgeries at the St. Francis Vet Clinic that it was more or less second nature to me. Admittedly, I really only practiced a couple of really basic styles of suturing, but it gave me confidence that suturing is a skill that I will be able to learn and really get good at in veterinary school. I also opened my Christmas present from Sarah on Wednesday. She got me pretty much the coolest present I can think of: a necklace with a bird and a bow-and-arrow. Now, that might not seem remarkable to you, but I am a huge fan of the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. The bird and bow-and-arrow are very similar to the symbol on the front of the books. I won't go into a lot of details because you can all read up on it (and read the books!) yourselves, but suffice it to say that the necklace and the symbol has a lot of significance for the series. I got Sarah a hot pad...I felt like I got the better end of the bargain. Devon told both of us that she will try to send our gifts to us over break or, at the very least, bring them back to school with her when we are at Augie again in January.

Sorry about the bluriness. I took this picture with my cell phone. But compare to...

The mockingjay symbol (you'll have to read the books to really understand what a mockingjay is and why this symbol is so important in the books...)

Thursday was also pretty intense. I wanted to go to the Christmas convocation, but my Molecular Genetics class went a little bit over time, so I felt like I shouldn't go late and bother people. Besides, I felt better having extra time to do homework before proctoring. In the evening, I went to Lessons and Carols in Ascension Chapel. It was really nice and relaxing, a great way to wind down the week and get into the spirit of Christmas. I loved getting to sing some Christmas songs, including "Angels We Have Heard on High" and "Silent Night" by candlelight. Nothing like fire and college students to make everything more interesting, right?

Friday after class I did a lot of the packing I needed to do for going home the next day. I was glad for all of the extra time that I wouldn't have had if I had left on Friday instead of Saturday.

And that was pretty much it for this week. As you probably know, right now I am chilling at home. Not too much has happened so far. I am working at Hidden Treasures over the break. It is a bit stressful and not really what I need right now, but I also really need the money. Besides, I am still having a fairly relaxing time at home watching movies and talking with my family even after I get home from work in the afternoons and evenings. I'm very fortunate to get both Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve off because the store will be closed.

On Wednesday, I was able to shadow Dr. J, the small animal vet who is married to my old AP Biology teacher. I watched three cat spays and a cat neuter and paid special attention to Dr. J's suturing techniques based on what I had learned in the suturing seminar. I think I understand a little bit better how to do a continuous suture after watching her. I was pleased to see that I really understood what she was doing when she did the basic stitch to close up the body cavity; I had done really similar stuff when I was practicing during the suturing seminar. I saw so many cute and friendly animals during my shadowing day (my boss is really nice and lets me take Wednesdays off for just this purpose). I was reunited with the clinic cat, Odie. He is toothless and clawless, but he is such a great cat! He loves attention, which I give him plenty of because I really don't seem him that often. He enjoys sleeping on my lap whenever Dr. J and I have down time, and I happen to be sitting at the table in the break room with an open lap and a book in my hands. I also got to play with six Cavalier King Charles puppies. I met a friendly FIV cat named Tuffy (why are they all so awesome? I think I'm going to adopt one someday). I also met a German short-hair pointer/lab mix named Cooper who is looking for a home. He came into the clinic with a mangled paw, and the man in charge of him said that he was going to be shot. However, the kind hearts at the clinic couldn't let such a terrible thing happen. Cooper is sweet  with beautiful brown, soulful eyes, but he also needs a lot of training. He's about two years old. One appointment that Dr. J had was with a man and his dog, who has bone cancer. The poor thing was surprisingly happy and calm. He didn't look too uncomfortable and was glad to meet me (he wanted me to keep patting his head and almost looked like he was going to jump up on me and lick my face). Perhaps my favorite animal, though, was a tiny pit bull puppy who came in wearing an adorable sleeveless sweater. Oh my gosh. He was the cutest thing ever.

As you can see, break is pretty busy for me so far. I am excited for everyone to open his or her gifts on Christmas because I really think I did well in the gift-buying department this year. I'm not sure when I will post next (I'm trying to keep this blog centered on my school and veterinary experiences and less on stuff that happens at home), so I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Someone on campus obviously has a sense of humor. Charlie Brown, anyone?

I thought it might be nice for you all to see the front of the house since you've already seen the inside. Home, sweet Heimdall!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas--Week 4

Hurray! The wonderful Christmas season is upon us, filled with lots of wonderful Christmas-y things to see and do! We had our first real snowfall on Tuesday morning. This is what it looked like at 7:30 AM and later at 4:30 PM. Not too impressive, but it was still exciting.

Early morning.

Early evening.

As always, my classes are going well but continue to keep me pretty busy. I was pleased that my research for Molecular Genetics is going according to plan and that I was one of the ten students (out of thirteen) who followed the protcol appropriately and got colonies of E. coli on my petri dishes! I am very excited because now I can test to see if I successfully cloned my gene. In Botany, we took our lab quiz on Monday, and I gave my Botany-in-the-News presentation on GM tomatoes. I think it went over pretty well. I was very proud of my poster, and I don't think anyone looked too bored while I was talking. Friday was my midterm in both Physics and Botany. They went a lot better than I was expecting. I can't wait to get them back in class tomorrow to see how I did!

Tuesday was the Circle K Christmas party. We had some pretty good food from Fazoli's. Their breadsticks are to die for! Then, we did our White Elephant gift exchange. Everyone was jealous of the girl who got my gift because I put (unwittingly) Ticonderoga pencils in the gift. I guess those are a pretty hot comodity! (I wouldn't know...I use only mechanical pencils.) I ended up with a pack of mints, which I suppose isn't such a bad thing. One girl got two full bars of Lindt chocolate! I was pretty jealous, but then again, it was only milk chocolate and white chocolate and not dark chocolate, so it was probably just as well that someone else a little less discriminating in her chocolate tastes got it instead of me. We did a mini service project, too, writing letters for soldiers who won't be home for Christmas (especially those who don't get a lot of mail, normally). I felt good giving my encouragement to a brave man or woman who has done so much for my freedom and our country.

Thursday was a pretty exciting day. I had another great day at work. I attending a Vet-Med Mentoring meeting, and I found out that the executive board will be selected based on statements written by the members about what position they would be best for and why. I wrote a statement applying for the position of secretary, and I think that it sounds pretty good. Hopefully the advisor for the group (Dr. Good, my academic advisor) will like my statement and pick me for secretary! I have wanted an executive board position for quite some time now. I thought that Circle K was going to have elections in the fall to fill the last remaining seat on the executive board (service co-chair), but they never did, so I never got my Circle K position. Heather (the president and one of my very good friends at Augustana) says that next year, she will remember to include me on the ballot (I didn't run because I'm not very good at self-promotion and didn't feel right nominating myself). Anyway, I am looking forward to submitting my secretary statement and having it reviewed so that when I come back from Winter Break, I will find out whether I made the executive board or not. Later in the day, Heather, three other girls, and I went to a small warehouse in Rock Island to sort bottles and cans for the Cans for Kids service campaign. The program takes refundable bottles and cans and uses the money to help pay for medical equipment to treat sick kids in the US (at least that's how I understand it). Whatever it's true purpose is, it has something to do with helping kids, which is cool. It was a little bit of a dirty job because some of the bottles and cans still had liquid in them and some of the bags had non-recyclable items in them, but it was still enjoyable once I got the hang of sorting (even though the warehouse wasn't the warmest place on Earth). We talked and listened to the radio, and the time passed pretty quickly. After I got home from volunteering, I finished up studying for my two finals and then watched White Christmas with Devon and Sarah because Devon had never seen it before (well, she had seen part of it before and the whole thing once when she was doing homework, but that doesn't really count). It was a blast. We put up our Christmas lights this week, and Sarah bought a fake Christmas tree from Target, so now our halls are definitely decked out for the holidays. We match everyone else on the street, too! It's a lovely sight to walk back from the library at night when everyone turns on their lights on our street.

Sorry it's sideways...you'll read more about why later...

I thought I was going to go to Kayla's this weekend for our big Lord of the Rings marathon, but we all decided that we had too much homework to do and that it would be better to have the sleepover in the spring when the weather will be better, we can all make it, and we are less busy. It didn't matter too much to me, though, because I found some other great things to occupy my weekend (I hate doing nothing but homework on my two days off from school per week). Friday was a great night. My friends and I went to see Augustana's student version of Last Comic Standing with musician Jason Lavasseur as the emcee and musical performer. Most of the students were pretty funny, especially the eventually winner Alex, a student from none other than Tuscon, Arizona. He made a lot of Arizona jokes, like how the sports teams stink and how he finds the Illinois weather pretty difficult to deal with. Jason Lavasseur was just great. He was so funny, and he has some great music. He even did a few covers ("Wonderwall," "With a Little Help from My Friends," and a sing-along of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?") and a couple of medleys that made us all laugh. I will definitely go see him again if he comes back to campus next year (which I think he will because I seem to remember hearing his name before, sometime during sophomore year). Anyway, I had a lot of fun, and it was so good to see my friends again.

I volunteered more on Saturday, ringing those iconic Salvation Army bells outside the Jewel-Osco in Moline with Heather. We had a great time. She left me alone for a few minutes while she went to drop off the two girls who were ringing bells before us. In the meantime, I greeted people who walked past me and said, "Have a good afternoon" to people who were walking out the doors. I got two donations while Heather was gone! We did even better as a team, though. We laughed and talked and when we got really bored and cold, we started singing Christmas songs. I'm sure it didn't sound that great, but we were having fun. One guy even came up to us and said he liked our singing. He put $1 in the bucket and told us that he had been looking for a place to cash his check all afternoon and that Jewel was the only place that would do it for him. By the time our two-hour shift was over (we went from 4-6 PM on a pretty chilly evening), we were half-frozen and couldn't feel our extremities. We hurried inside with the bucket and then did some grocery shopping because, well, wouldn't you? I mean, we were right there. However, I will not be shopping at Jewel again because their fresh produce looks disgusting and is way too overpriced for how it looks. Also, half gallons of milk are $.3.09 (they are a mere $2.39 at Hy-Vee, even for my favorite milk, Swiss Valley), while full gallons are only 30 cents more. Furthermore, they didn't have any yogurt pretzels! If you didn't know, I absolutely love yogurt pretzels. They are such a delicious snack. Hy-Vee sells a pretty sizable bag of them for about $2.99. Well, Jewel only has chocolate pretzels (not as good, surprisingly), white chocolate pretzels (close but still not delicious yogurt pretzels), and the weird-sounding strawberry pretzels. I was a little disappointed, but I only have five days until I am home again, so I will be able to pick some up from Cub or some other nearby grocery store before I head back to school at the beginning of January. Oh, man. I love Winter Break. I get three full weeks off from school, and I get to spend it all at home with my siblings and parents! In addition, all of my friends are home, too, which is rare given our extremely different school schedules (trimesters are so weird...). I will also get to work this Winter Break, which is great because I have basically no money. I'm looking forward to celebrating Christmas at home once again. I get pretty into the Christmas spirit here at school because of all the amazing events, but I really get excited once I go home because I actually have time to listen to Christmas music, watch Christmas movies with my family, and help Mom bake Christmas cookies. Hers are the best in the world! (Along with everything else she makes, of course.) My heart was warmed on Friday by a lovely card from Grandma and Grandpa Hart. It is now installed on my wall so I can look at it everyday and look forward to being home again.

I suppose I should take this opportunity to make a little confession: I am writing this blog from one of the computers in the library. I would rather not be here on a Sunday afternoon, but I have no choice. My poor computer caught a virus, and now it doesn't work...I tried to fix it myself, but I am not enough of a computer whiz for this one. Luckily, I only have one more school week before I can take it home to be fixed. I have already lasted about six days without it, so I think I can do five more. I just need to do a little more planning and spend a little more time in the library. Mom works with a couple of guys who are good with this sort of thing, so hopefully it can be fixed pretty rapidly so I can start using it again to do homework and such.

But, enough about all that depressing stuff. This last week before break is going to be great! Tuesday is a traditional Swedish meal in the College Center called a Julsmorgabord (it costs to get in, but it will be delicious) and right after is a free Christmas celebration called Sankta Lucia. Sarah is minoring in Swedish, so she will be a part of the celebration, singing part of a song in Swedish. I think she wants me and Devon to be there to support her, as she seems a little nervous about having to sing into a microphone. Most of the other attendees will be older people, so I think she might feel better if a couple of her peers (and peers she knows and trusts) come to see her. Wednesday is a suturing seminar sponsored by BBB and the Vet-Med Mentoring group. Two doctors are coming to campus to give a lecture about suture techniques and then will allow each participant to try his or her hand at it using his or her own set of materials. I've learned a little bit about suturing from Dr. J (the small animal vet that I shadow) and from the vets at the Leatherdale Equine Center at the University of Minnesota, but this will be my first real hands-on experience. Thursday is also going to be great. It's finally time for the Christmas Convocation, where I will hear Christmas music performed by a few student music groups and get to sing along with other attendees on a couple of tunes. Later in the day I am going to yoga because everyone in the Aerobic Dance class must attend at least one outside activity and write a short report on the experience. In the evening, I will go to Ascension Chapel for the Lessons and Carols I was telling you about last week. It should make for a wonderful last day before I leave Friday. Well, now you are all caught up on my life at Augustana. I hope you all have a fabulous week, and you'll probably hear from me next time when I am at home in good ol' Minneapolis, Minnesota.

My new door dec, which features one of my favorite foods in the whole wide world. :D

This Crazy Life--Weeks 2 and 3

Hello, everyone! Thank you for being patient, once again. I am a terrible blogger at Augie. My life here is so hectic, it's insane. But I absolutely love it. I wouldn't trade this for anything. I love my roommates. I love my room. I love my classes. I love everything about Augustana (except the dog food smell from the Purina One factory, but that's small potatoes). I will try to give you a succinct summary of all that has happened to me in the past two weeks.

Week 2:
A short week because we had Thanksgiving Break. It was fantastic! I turned 21, which was very exciting. I enjoyed a nice glass of red wine (a vino nobile, I think, from Italy--vintage 2001) with fasu mada for dinner. It was great seeing family members that I hadn't seen for awhile and getting to talk about London. It's strange because all of the students agree that it all kind of seems like a dream now. London has this magic pall about it that I didn't quite realize until I came back. We were all in a sort of trance during those 10 weeks. We all have what we call "London moments" now, and I love catching even small snippets of the British accent or really anything British because it reminds me of London. Anyway, my research class is still going really well. I love working in the lab and feeling like I'm doing "hard science." It gives me great satisfaction. Botany is still entertaining, but I worry about the professor because he likes to quiz us on really obscure things. I guess I will just have to pay extra-good attention to detail for future quizzes and tests. My aerobics class is still fun and challenging. Physics is going pretty well, too. I had my first lab on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I was a little disoriented because I was basically just ready to go, but my partner is really nice, and we get along well, so it made everything a little better and easier to take. While I was at home, I bought some nice Christmas gifts for my roommates and also assembled a White Elephant gift for the Circle K Christmas party on the 6th (just some magnets, a notepad, and some pencils). I won't tell you what I got for my roommates in case they somehow read this before I give them their gifts. I'd hate to ruin the surprise. During this week, I also finally went back to the Quad City Animal Welfare Center (QCAWC), where I was reunited with my best kitty friend Thomas. He was happy to see me, so it was very rewarding to know that he still loves me. I was so happy to be back and playing with all of the FIV cats again. It's a great way to de-stress after a hard week and also to get some good service hours for Circle K. I think I was still pretty jet-lagged this week, even though I didn't realize it, because everything was a lot harder than it should have been. Don't worry, though, I am feeling much better now and much more in control of my schoolwork and such.

Week 3:
Classes continued much the same as they did last week. One thing that I love about Molecular Genetics is that we get to make our own agarose gels to run our DNA samples on (called "gel electrophoresis"). We basically need to make sure that we are isolating the DNA as we should and that all of our experimental procedures are going as planned. Gel electrophoresis helps us visualize the DNA to see if we got our expected result. An electrical current is sent through this rectangular piece of gel with DNA embedded in it at the top (deposited in little wells or depressions). After about an hour, the DNA migrates through the gel and comes to a stop at a certain point. With special dyes and imaging techniques, we can see the bands made by the DNA and photograph them so that we can analyze them. It's a very rewarding part of lab work because we can see the consequences of our hard work. On Tuesday of Week 3, we had our Circle K meeting at nearby St. Ambrose University. We ate pizza with our fellow St. Ambrose CK-ers. It was very cool because I have never really interacted with students from other colleges in the area before. Wednesday evening was my first Success Networking Team (SNT) meeting for the National Society of Leadership and Success (NSLS). We basically get together and talk about our goals and the specific steps we will take to make progress toward those goals each week. An important part of the process is getting feedback from other students about how best to achieve our goals. I picked a good SNT because I know a lot of the people in the group, which helps me feel more comfortable both sharing my goals and giving advice to other people on their goals. Friday was so fun because my roommates and I made pizza from scratch, dough and everything! It took us SO long (about four hours), but it was so worth it. We made a deep-dish style pizza with the cheese on the bottom and the sauce on top (which I think is a Sicilian way of making pizza), and it was fantastic. Afterward, we watched Elf and The Cutting Edge while cutting out paper snowflakes. Devon is an amazing snowflake maker. She is so artistic. Mine turned out okay, but they were definitely not as nice as Devon's. Another exciting thing about this week was that I finally brought my beloved Fabio to school with me. No, Fabio is not an attractive Italian man, although that would be nice. Fabio is a bamboo plant (more specifically, the Lucky variety) that my grandmother gave me this summer. I left him at home while I was in London and then forgot to bring him back to school with me when I moved in. I remembered to take him back after Thanksgiving, though, so now he is happily installed on my desk. He looks taller already! I was a bit upset with myself this weekend because I didn't realize that the choirs and the bands here were doing Christmas at Augustana already. Christmas at Augustana is a wonderful holiday concert filled with all the old favorites (mostly the religious ones, but those are the best, anyway). Some of the songs even have a singalong portion so the audience can participate. By the time I realized that it was going on, it was too late; my weekend had already been planned out, and I really didn't feel like spending $10 on a ticket. It's no matter, though. This Thursday is Lessons and Carols in Ascension Chapel, which has a few Christmas hymns and the singing of "Silent Night" by candlelight. I think the Thursday of Week 5 is the lovely Christmas Convocation, a lighthearted midday gathering of students, staff, and faculty for some cute Christmas songs (more singalongs!) and performances by the Hand Bell Choir and other student musicians. And let's not forget the Christmas buffet Augustana rolls out in the College Center! Yes, Christmas is probably my favorite time of year at Augustana. I especially love all of the Christmas trees and decorations around campus and in the TLAs. We just put up our Christmas lights in our little front porch. Now we look festive!

Fabio! The camera loves you!

Fresh pizza toppings, cut by yours truly and Sarah (whose last name is Mattimiro--to kill with a look, a made-up but totally kick-butt surname, in my opinion).

 Today (Saturday the 3rd) was a very exciting day in its own right. I spent a good chunk of the morning and early afternoon at Petsmart helping out with Santa Claws. People bring their pets to the store to have their pictures taken with Santa, who is just a volunteer. The other volunteers do things like canvasing the store for potential customers, positioning the pets on Santa's lap, squeaking toys at the pets so that they look at the camera, taking the picture, printing the picture, and placing it into the frame for the owners to take home. It was quite fun because the dogs were all very friendly and adorable. I also loved just hanging out with the other students while we were waiting between customers. Probably my favorite part of the day was having a couple bring their pet pig Faith (a Micro pig) to have her picture taken with Santa. She was so precious and cute. I loved her little wet nose, which twitched in a very cute manner when she was smelling my hand and letting me pet her. She let out little grunts of contentment when she got to sit on Santa's lap (which was warm and soft) and protested adamantly when she was taken off said lap. Later, I went to see the free on-campus movie of the week with my friend Haley. The movie this week was Fright Night (the new one with Colin Ferrell and David Tennant). It was an okay movie. The DVD kind of freaked out on us about 10 minutes before the end because it was too scratched up, so I never found out how the story finished. All the same, it was nice to see Haley. That reminds me of Thursday afternoon, when I saw my friends Lauren and Elizabeth in Brew by the Slough (AKA Java, the on-campus cafe). Lauren gave me a big hug. It was so nice to see them and chat with them. They both seem to be doing well. I can't wait until next weekend, when we will all see each other again at Kayla's house for our big Lord of the Rings sleepover! The only one of my friends that I haven't seen yet is Amanda, which is too bad because she and I get along really well (I obviously get along well with all of my friends, but there are some that I just click with better than others, and Amanda is one of those friends). I'm not sure why, that's just how we are. But I will see her soon!

As far as tomorrow goes, I will be finishing up some homework items (studying for my Botany lab quiz, putting the final touches on my Botany lab presentation on GM tomatoes, reading my Physics textbook, and working on the bioinformatics portion of my research class) and hopefully meeting Lauren and Elizabeth in Java for some coffee and a chat. I will also hopefully go for a run in Pepsico. I totally should have gone today, but I really needed to work on homework because volunteering took up most of my morning.

A Micro pig (Faith was a little more mature-looking than this pig...I think this one is more of a baby). Photo courtesy of archive.blisstree.com.

This week is looking pretty exciting. The Circle K Christmas party is on Tuesday. I have another SNT meeting on Wednesday. My first payday is on Friday, as are my first two lecture exams (one for Botany and the other for Physics). I think that sleepover will be just the thing I need to relax and unwind after this week. No other news on housing for next year yet. We are still deciding what to do. I hope we can get this taken care of soon so that we can all have peace of mind in that area. Thanks for reading this long (and long-overdue) post. Have a great rest of the weekend, and you'll be hearing from me again in about a week!

"The purity of a person's heart can be quickly measured by how they regard animals." ~ Anonymous (just some food for thought...)