Week 5

A day late, but it's here at last!

Life in Grenada continues to go well, with tons and tons of studying (seriously, today alone was 10 hours of study for Adam). So, not too much new going on there besides the slow progression to becoming a full fledged doctor! Adam continues to do well keeping up with studies, and has been enjoying taking breaks for movie nights, and the occasional trip to the beach for additional snorkeling swims.

Tons more whiteboards for study

A cool sculpture on campus depicting
a doctor warding off death

 As for here in AZ school continues to pick up in pace. Had the first few assignments and group projects due for class, and am in the middle of studying for the first test of the semester tomorrow for Biochem. Aside from that, got an interview this week for a potential new job to add some extra hours in the evenings after school! So, here's hoping all goes well!

Beautiful rainbow at sunrise one morning
(sadly only the red really ended up showing)

Sunrise from that morning

Update to the apartment this week: Was able to move some of the old furniture over to our friend's place, thereby clearing up space for some more new furniture :P
So, the reading nook is now well on it's way to completion!

Hinata has decided that the recliner is satisfactory :)

That pretty much covers this week, so until the weekend!

Week 3&4 - Changes to blog updating :)

Howdy all, it's been a while! School is in full swing, and work is still going for me. So, Adam is studying full force, while I'm busy with work and schoolwork as well. Due to the demands of medical school this semester Adam will likely not be updating the blog anymore while classes are running. However, I still have a little bit of spare time here and there, and will therefore keep everyone updated on the both of us. I won't be able to do so on an almost daily basis as we used to, but I am making it my goal to have weekly updates posted by the end of each weekend, that way you all can have a better idea what to expect. :)

With that being said, here's a bunch of pictures of all the nice monsoon weather here, and similar cloudy weather from the recent hurricanes running nearby Grenada (don't worry, none of them hit the island. The most Adam saw of it was some pretty clouds and a little bit of rain)...

Beautiful Cloudy day riding the light rail to and from class today

The clouds became even more pretty
by the time class was done

AZ Monsoon Sunset

Downpour that took only 10 secs to get
thoroughly soaked whilst running through :)

Some nice cloudy weather in Grenada

The most colorful Grenada sunset so far... almost as colorful as AZ :P

Getting on the light rail for work

After light rail to work - Amazing how much
10 minutes can change

Hinata - 

Still being the cutest kitty
and keeping me company :)

Home Projects -

Still been working on the organizing of the apartment. Most of the hard work done I've been able to work more on the finer touches and decorating. Thanks Mom for the tools and supplies to help with this project! :D

School in Grenada -

One of the nice things about St. George University is that already Adam has had the experience of interacting with patients as part of class in just the first few weeks of school. St. George's is also one of the medical schools that performs a white coat ceremony for incoming medical students, check out the details of it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_coat_ceremony

and view the video here: Fall 2015 SGU White Coat Ceremony

Unfortunately you will not be able to see Adam in this video, as he had to excuse himself from the ceremony due to a coughing fit he was having trouble with at the time. He has already recovered and is no longer having issues. Sad that it occurred during this ceremony, but thankfully it did not last long :D 

Got all decked out in scrubs!

... and a white coat too!

There are tons more pics of whiteboards like these... but this is a small glimpse into the study life of Adam as a medical student learning as much Anatomy and Physiology as fast as he can!

Just today was the first big Unified Quiz of the semester, and we got to see how much all of Adam's hard work and studying has paid off. With a class average of 76%, Adam scored 95% and sits just barely under what he needs to make the Chancellor's Honor Role. So, that will be the goal for the next series of tests :D
As reward for all the hard work, Adam and his room mate Morgan decided to go snorkeling around a new beach they discovered just outside their dorm! There was lots of beautiful Coral, some Dory fish :P , and Morgan even found an octopus!

Black Sand beach in the middle is where they went snorkeling.
the building closest to the camera is their dorm building :)

I know I've missed a few stories here and there due to a far amount happening in the past two weeks, but from here on out the blog should be more up to date more regularly! :D Hope you all have a wonderful week, I'm off to go watch a movie with Adam... speaking of which, a huge thanks to the folks who developed rabb.it! It's an amazing site that has made keeping up our usual evening of shows before bed, and having movie dates doable in spite of the distance! :D

Day 14 & 15 - AZ

So here it is, the project I've been spending my weekend working on. The entire project is going to take more than just one weekend, but at least from here on out the apartment will not look like a tornado just came through :P
Taking a look out how things were organized in the apartment, and all of the things we've accumulated (mostly I, Adam does pretty good, but I have just a touch of hoarder in me :P ), both Adam and I were in agreeance that it was high time to de-junk and make the place look like more than just piles of stuff. So, with the end goal to make our home look more like the neat and unified in design/style hotels we've stayed at on our vacations, I set to work by first determining what furniture stays, where it will stay, and what goes. In addition to that, also picking up a couple new pieces of furniture that work more appropriately for our space, and match more with the current style for each room. After dealing with the furniture came dealing with the piles of stuff the needed to go on them, along with sorting through said stuff to determine what actually was of use keeping and what could go. Of course, that process is what will take the next few weekends to do. Now, for some before and after pics :)

Living Room Before

Piles of stuff

Here's some new shelves that are a better size for everything in the living room... but I think there's something I can do with the bottom posts for the cat...

I've still got leftover sisal rope from making her first cat tree, so what better use than to make the bottom of these new shelves into many scratching posts. Hinata liked the idea too :P

Taking a break having a movie night with Adam... Hinata didn't last through the movie, such hard work for a kitty playing and exploring with all the new furniture and piles of things on the floor.

Albeit she was more than happy to wake me up in the morning :P

And here we have a few pictures of the new bedroom! Still need to better organize the items on the bookshelves, finally get some actual curtains, etc. But for now at least the room is functional again...

Instead of just having the TV on a TV stand, I decided to replace it with my desk, and now have a nice little study area in the room too :)

While playing with piles of stuff on the floor was fun, Hinata missed having open floor, especially for her late night races from one end of the apartment to the other :P

And here we have the living room. Don't mind the pile of drawers that goes to a bookshelf... Unfortunately, while it was a super nice bookshelf (thank you Jayme!), it ended up being too big and never really having a place that it fit. However, it does have a new home, and will be getting there sometime... eventually :P

So there you have it, that's what I've been up to these past couple of days. Also, I got my textbooks in, so I'm good to go in that department for class. Even more exciting, the lightrail extension that has a stop just down the street from here opened up and started running yesterday!!! I also discovered that it runs early enough that, with my current work location, I can ride it to and from work as well :D

Also, just so you all don't get worried, Adam has been doing well in Grenada. Classes have been going full speed ahead this last week, so he's been pretty busy going to class and studying. So far he's doing excellent in class and staying on top of his school work. While he hasn't had much time to blog and keep you all updated, he is still around and doing well. We'll get a blog post from him eventually, but for now he's focusing on the important parts of his stay in Grenada, and that takes up pretty much all of his time.

Day 13 - AZ

First day of school! Stayed up a bit last night getting everything all sorted out and ready to go. Skimmed over class syllabuses, announcements and emails, and got my binder all ready for the first day. The next order of business was books. Looking at each syllabus and what was listed as needed, from the ASU bookstore, would run me a grand total of almost $1000! So needless to say I've been spending my time finding cheaper sources. Thank you again Ryan for recommending addall.com to me those several years ago, it made the search so much easier. Combining used sales and renting the books that I really don't need/want to keep (like a book of medical terminology or case studies being used more as a supplemental resource in the class), I was able to whittle that $1k down to a more reasonable, albeit still pricey, $260. :D

All prepped and ready for school, my day began as normal, getting ready and leaving early in the morning for work, albeit today I started being considered a part time sub due to classes causing me to not be able to work full days everyday. Work of course had to be busy with a lot of the usual busywork, just all clustered together in one day. So it was hard leaving early to go to class, knowing that I would be leaving the rest of the crew to finish the craziness of the day on they're own, but luckily I have an amazing crew that's able to manage. Even still... I think they've earned some donuts for their work today :)

While on the lightrail I realized how much time I'd be spending getting to and from class over the next couple years. About 1.5 hours every school day, about 3 days a week. That comes out to be 4.5 hours a week that I can spend catching up on my leisure reading! Ok, in all likelyhood I'll be spending chunks of it reading course material, but still, it'll be nice to have some solid reading time again.

Classes went pretty standard for the first week of school. Class syllabus review, getting to know the instructors a little bit, and some of my classmates. In one of my classes we'll be forming up in to groups for the whole semester to work on our case studies, so that'll be exciting. All in all a pretty good first day at class.

In other news, I've been working on finding part time work to make up for the cut in hours from my old job due to schooling. Thanks to Adam, I've had a pretty nice in for getting a position as tutor at MCC, and on my way to class I got called in for an interview tomorrow! Hopefully I'll be able to get the position, as the hours and job itself are amazing for going to school. Thank you Adam for being such a good tutor while you were there and putting in a good word for me! :D

Now the hour grows late, and it's time for me to head off to sleep before heading to work for Friday. Unfortunately I did not think to take any pictures for this blog post, so it'll just have to be plain text... but I am planning on working on a project this weekend, and I will for sure have more pictures for that! Until next time! :D

Day 12

Hey everybody! It has been a few days, sorry for the delay in posting. Classes are great. Interesting stuff. I am glad I had to take the MSAP (medical school assessment program) this summer because a lot of material learned there is being covered here. I have already had 12 lectures, 1 lab, and 2 supplementary lectures and it has only been 72 hours! lol

Tomorrow I have my first anatomy lab. I bought some scrubs today! Brad helped me pick the color.

View from near the lecture hall on the first day of school.

Just as a side note! I am so excited for this movie. The book was amazing.

Martian Trailer

Back to studying!

Day 11 - AZ

Hello again all! Thought I'd give you an update on how things have been going back here at home.

I've been keeping pretty busy getting everything started up and work for the school year, and have had a pretty good first week all things considered. As tends to be the case when working out of a new kitchen, there were a few kinks at the start, but they've all been hammered out, and we're up and running pretty smoothly now. As for at home, I've been taking the opportunity of having a lot of stuff pulled out from the packing for Grenada to pull out even more stuff. Yes, it's pretty messy here right now, but the mess seems to be a natural consequence of de-junking and organizing. So in the end the mess will result in everything being much nicer :)

I'll be starting school back up this Thursday, so pretty soon both Adam and I will both be nose deep in books studying (though I have a feeling he will be more so than I :P ). It's been a while since I've been to school, and so getting school supplies has been kind of fun this time around. I even have my UPass all ready for the lightrail, and hopefully they'll be running all the way out to the stop by the apartment before too long. I was excited to see they were testing again just the other day.

In addition to life keeping me busy, I've also had family to keep me company and busy as well. Just this last weekend I went for dinner with Adam's Mom over to her brothers place, and the weekend before was family dinner with my parents.

Some yummy homemade tacos from dinner:

So overall, things are pretty same-old same-old keeping busy with work, but about to get new and exciting going back to school to finish my degree. :)

P.S. I just booked my first trip to Grenada to visit! So excited!!!! :D

Day 9

The waves were really crashing this AM.

Today was Grand Etang tour provided by school. The 4 hour tour left the campus and travels up to Grand Etang Lake. We then visited some waterfalls. Overall it was really fun.

This is a time lapse made by the school to Grand Etang

Waiting for the bus to leave.

View back towards Grand Anse Beach

Up in the mountains

Awesome foliage

Looking back towards the airport with campus on the left

Cool house at the entrance of Grand Etang park

Grand Etang Lake with tons of students making there way to the lake

Panoramic view

Pretty gazebo

Lots of students. There were 6 buses.

Hiking a trail back to the buses through the forest. Luckily there is absolutely nothing poisonous on the island haha

Lots of cool flowers

It looks like it is on fire

This is the first flower I saw on the way to the waterfall, Annandale Falls which was our next stop

And here are the actual fall. Lots of students were jumping in.

We paid 5 EC for a coconut. It was amazing

Then after we were done with the coconut water the vendor broke it open so that we could eat the flesh. Very tasty

This guy had a pet monkey. This is a mona monkey and is a species which was brought over from Africa on slave ships. They now populate the island.

This isn't my video but it gives you an idea about the monkey