blessed

Warning: This is a freakishly long post because I’m in this whole super-grateful-happy-peaceful mood right now.

We finished our first course in medical school yesterday. It’s been a little difficult to describe to people what classes I’m taking when they ask, because officially, I only really had 3 courses: “Foundations,” “Clinical Skills Lab” + “OPP Lab.” But Foundations covered everything under the sun, including, but not limited to physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, genetics, fungi, bacteria, viruses, immunology, communications, etc.

My short answer when people asked was, “Everything.” Suffice to say, all of us have been blowing off steam since we finished the test. A lot of people went down to the pub to get drunk last night, and our dean made it a point to tell us to be careful when celebrating. I opted instead to go cat-shopping for Kitler, clean my apartment, and to put my pole together, because it’s finally here! My neighbor was going to take it in for me because it looked like it was going to rain, but it’s probably a good thing that he did not. :P

It’s in my bedroom for the time being because my front door opens to my living room and I am still slightly iffy about letting people know about my freakishly awesome but often wildly judged hobby. The living room has a lot more space though, so I may eventually decide that I don’t give a shit and move it over there.I saw a supah cute lionhead bunny (shown above), a sugar glider, a blue & gold macaw that kept saying “Hello,” tiny hamsters, spotted guinea pigs and 2 ferrets at the pet store (shopping for Kitler). :O

~~I feel like~~ I’ve been incredibly lucky with how everything has turned out here; I think God’s been looking out for me every step of the way (throughout my life too, but for our purposes, I’m talking about my life here right now), since before I even moved in. I love the place I live in. It’s a little farther away from where most students live, so I’m slightly worried about ice and snow on the giant hill in the winter, but my neighbors are both from here (well, central WV) and have been great about giving me advice and basically taking care of me, in a sense.

If I were an arachnophobe or just afraid of bugs in general, I would probably be having some terrible times over here, because where I live is akin to being on an extended camping trip (with all the amenities I want/need), but since I don’t give a crap and don’t mind the random woodland creatures we happen upon (Adam found a tree frog in his bathroom the other day and we also have a pet skunk), it is a-okay.

My landlord is super nice and fixes stuff practically instantaneously if anything goes wrong (I had a problem with turning off the bathroom sink and shower faucets because it just stayed…on…; they like to joke that it’s because I’m too strong). Although he had initial reservations when I asked if he allowed pets (I wanted to get a cat), he actually okayed me to get one (more on him later! <3 he arrives at the end of this month + I’m super excited! :] ). He calls me every now and then to make sure I’m doing okay, and came to our White Coat Ceremony to stand in as my family since I told mine not to come (too expensive/inconvenient).

Although I live alone, I don’t actually feel like I’m living alone. This is probably due to the fact that my neighbors are so amazing. One of them is my landlord’s grandson and the other two are fellow first years and both of them are full of all kinds of awesome (understatement of the year). We frequently accidentally refer to each other as our roommates, even though we all live alone.

This is likely due to the fact that both of them have an open-door policy, as in, they keep their doors unlocked in case any of us ever need anything. For the most part, I leave mine unlocked whenever I’m home unless I’m sleeping, partly because it’s a force of habit (but mostly because I’ve re-adopted 6F policies in terms of how much I wear when I’m at my own place).

I’ve already mentioned here that people are incredibly nice here. I honestly feel like this is a cross-section of a different world/universe that I’m living in, and when I describe it to my friends back home/in NJ, they wonder how it’s possible. Case in point: my neighbors. I study with one of them almost every day, and came upon the realization a couple days ago that I actually spend a crap ton more time in his apartment than I do in my own place.

On Wednesday, I was there from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. (let’s not forget the fact that both of us had also been studying on our own throughout the day). I’ve been treating school like it’s my job and then some, because it basically is. Other than the fact that I’m paying them, but anyway. Granted, not every second is spent studying since we inadvertently end up talking about everything under the sun, but those are treated as our study breaks.

Adam cooked us omelets stuffed with all kinds of veggies the other night while we were studying, and I dumped some sundried tomato sauce that he made over em’. This is the good life. *-*

Our other neighbor (Dustin) cooked dinner a couple nights ago and brought it over for us. Although he’s on the paleo diet, he knew that I was a fan of rice (how can I not be when I’m Asian, right?), so he actually made me some and brought that over too. They were telling me about their hometowns the other day and from what I heard, I’ve deemed the mystery of the day to be this: how my neighbors turned out to be such amazingly nice people despite everything I’ve heard about what they’ve grown up with. It’s mystifying.

My parents met one of my neighbors (the one I study with who lives downstairs) while they were here and apparently, before my dad left, he asked him to “make sure that I don’t die.” (I didn’t hear my dad say this, but my neighbor told me, haha.) I guess he indeed agreed to look out for me, because he’s been making good on this by way of feeding me (yes, my neighbors seriously cook me dinner, and they’re both hella good at making food), picking up stuff for me or for my future cat whenever he goes to the grocery store, knocking on his ceiling/my floor to wake me up on test days (or when I am likely to oversleep).

Sometimes, I come home to small bags of candy or other treats on my porch. :O At one point in time, I would never have believed that it’s possible for people to be this nice, but apparently, I was all kinds of wrong.

One of my friends won a free shuttle down to the Greenbrier River Trail (which I’ve posted about before). It basically stretches 70-80 miles down, so she asked me and a couple other friends if we’d be interested in biking it, and seeing as how we have an ongoing “Adventure Time” thread on places to explore/things to do, who were we to turn that down? We figured, what better day to go than after our test? Blow off steam, get fresh air + exercise, rid ourselves of vitamin D deficiency, explore WV…win-win, basically.

I rented a bike from Merrick at Hill & Holler again. (That bike shop is awesome. :D I still wish I were hardcore enough to ride to/from school. I do not know how my neighbor does it.

We opted for the 20 mile bike ride, so Merrick drove us out to Renick and we started at roughly mile marker 23 (a little before that) and went on our way to meet him at mile marker 3. There was basically on phone reception for almost the entirety of the ride, but I brought mine along to take pictures. :D

We ate lunch at the first swimming hole we stopped at. The water was chilly, but our days to keep swimming are somewhat numbered because it’s probably gonna get kinda cold soon (it’s worse January through March, but I can’t imagine the water being very forgiving/us being free to swim in it for too much longer).