Clean your plate

I forgot to blog about this the other night after it happened, but again, I was caught up in school stuff and didn't have the time most likely. I went to bible study at Papa Ron's on Tuesday night. Every Tues night they have an awesome dinner, then worship then bible study. I was sitting at the table next to two of my friends I hadn't seen or talked to in a while. The one on my right had a whole plate full of food, and commented after having eaten literally 2 bites of bread and 1 of the main course that she was full. Joking around like I typically do, I said "Guuuurl! You better clean yo' plate, there are starvin' children in Africa!" The ironic thing was, the two girls I was sitting between were from Africa. The one I made the comment about was from Zimbabwe the poorest and one of the most sad countries in Africa. The table went completely quiet, then an uproar in laughter at how ridiculous I am for saying something so rude!! I hadn't realized just how offensive I was at first, until the one from Zimbabwe said to me, "Those starving children are my familes." I couldn't seem to apologize enough to keep from feeling such tramendous shame and guilt! My friend from Zimbabwe knew my heart and that my intentions were not to be rude or to hurt her or to offend the people of Zimbabwe. We have spoken many times about how I want to do medcial missions to Zimbabwe and one day work at an orphanage there and adopt all of the starving kids! My other friend from Africa is from Nigeria, she couldn't contain her laughter. I had gotten myself into a deep hole REAL fast!

Spring Break Blues

Today officially starts my spring break. I skipped class this morning to sleep. It was much needed because I slept until 1:30!!! It is nice to not have to think about papers or final exams, but it would be great to get out of Gainesville for a little bit. Nearly everyone I know is going somewhere awesome like on a cruise in the caribean, to the bahamas, to jamaica, to NYC, Washington DC, the Fl keys.. you get the point. Where will I be? Probably working 6 out of the 8 days we are on spring break. I drove a friend down to Orlando last night to take her to the airport. My sister rode along so I wouldn't get lost coming back. We went shopping after we dropped my friend off and were so jealous of the outlet malls they have there! The best part of the night was when we drove around down town orlando completly lost for an hour with my friend Tammy on speaker phone trying to describe to us how to get to the hospital (that she is doing practicum at). She has only been there for a week and knows nothing about the street systems there. There are LOTS of hospitals in Orlando by the way. When we finally found Tammy's dorm, we took her to dinner at Outback. We were expecting at least a 30 min wait like we would have here, but we were able to sit down right away. I forgot to ask the waiter (Brad) to not put lemons in my tea and water. I was explaining to Tammy how dirty lemons are and how i didn't like them (in my drink-which i thought was implied when I was fishing the lemons out of my drink). Her response was, "I'm a woman, why do you think all women are dirty?" I love Tammy and the things she says! Anyway, if anyone has anything fun or interesting to do, or see in Gainesville hit me up! I'll be working 7 to 3's all week for the most part.

Evangelism Linebacker

Sometimes I can be completely oblivious to things. I went to BIG group tonight (which is mostly all of the small groups at First Assembly meeting together corporately) and watched this video before someone came up and gave a lesson on evangelism. Please watch the video it's pretty funny! I was laughing up a storm and couldn't wait to get home to share it with my friends. I shared it with one friend who wasn't that phased because he'd seen it a million times before. He said "Young Life actually did a spoof". I said "Man, I bet that was great!" He gave me the link to watch the spoof and as I was watching it, it seemed familiar like I had seen it before. It wasn't until the near end when I realized WHY it was so familiar! I WAS IN IT!!!!! I thought the video was pretty funny when I saw it at work week 2 yrs ago... but I hadn't seen the original video so I didn't know just how funny it really was! Oh man, how embarrassing!

Sun Tan or Sand Man?

Yesterday was such perfect weather that I just couldn't stay inside! I laid by the pool for a little while with my friend Jen but it wasn't enough. Sarah (my roommate) and our friend Laura were headed to St. Augustine for the day to celebrate their birthdays, my friend Nikki and I tagged along for the ride. Nikki and I decided we could be productive and do 3 things at once: study for our finals, work on becoming a color other than pastey white, and hang out at the same time. The weather was perfect. When we got to St. Augustine we ate at this awesome restaurant called Mango Mangos off of beach blvd on A1A! They are delightful, try them out the next time you're in that area! After lunch, Sarah and Laura dropped Nikki and I off at the beach while they went to explore the shops of St. Augustine. Nikki and I found what seemed to be a great spot on the beach to get the perfect amount of sun and not be around too many people. We descovered very quickly that this was not the perfect spot when the wind started blowing! We were INSTANTLY covered in sand! That's when Nikki found an abandoned fold out beach chair (also covered in sand) and had the great idea that we should go down to the water to wash it off so she could lay in it and the sand wouldn't get her (too bad for me though ha). When we were coming back up from the water we noticed far off in the distance our note packets from school were blowing EVERYWHERE! We quickly took off for our notes, but it was like one of those America's Funniest Home Video things where once we thought we were going to grab one, it would catch the wind again and fly away. It had to have been a sight to see. There were soo many papers flying it took about 15 or so people to help us. Thank GOD they did! Nikki and I would have been screwed for our finals! As we collected what we thought were all of them and headed back to our spot, MORE flew out of our notebooks! This was ridiculous. When we finally had them all, we were trying to peice our notes back together by first figuring out who's notes were who's. Then the ones that got wet and covered in sand had to be flattened out and dried. The ones that got ripped and torn from the staples had to be put back in order. It was a disaster! After getting it all sorted, neither of us wanted to study anymore. We were afraid to open our books in fear that the wind would take our notes away again. We couldn't risk that! We just laid out until Sarah and Laura came to our rescue to go home. I'm pretty sure I had a pound of sand in my hair and at least a half a pound in my ears! I love the beach but I hate how sand can manage it's way in any crevase it so pleases!

Wan Hung Lo

Ok... so the title of this post is only to bring a bit of light and laughter to a situation that has had soo much doom and gloom lurking over it. The title is actually one of my dad's ridiculous jokes.. My friend Daniel is 23, he is my friend Lauren's bf/fiance. I've known Lauren for almost 2 years now, she is in my nursing program. She and Daniel just found out last week that Daniel has a very agressive form of testicular cancer. Monday of this week, he had surgery to remove the right testicle. Thursday the pathology had come back to confirm the diagnosis. The visit Thursday also brought more bad news. The cancer had spread to his lymph nodes and has been traveling through the lymph. Please keep Daniel and Lauren in your prayers. Lauren has soo much to deal with having being in her last semester of nursing school and her concern with Daniel.

Crazy

I haven't blogged in a while! It's almost been a month. This blog won't be too long because I have a friend coming over to study with me in just a min, but I wanted to give a short update on my crazy life. With in a period of 2 and a half weeks I've had to deal with: 5 days of pediatric (I will call it peds from here on out) clinical, a 20 page peds paper, 1 pscyh exam, 4 days of psych hospital, another 15-20 page paper for pscyh, and 2 finals next week.
As most of you who know me personally would know, I was NOT looking forward to doing my psych rotation at the psych hospital. The idea of being surrounded by crazy people scared me. Turns out, we're all a bit crazy. Some of the people there made me feel quite uncomfortable, but others were just normal people, with normal lives, experiencing really hard times. I met an 18 yr old girl the last day of my rotation, who was in for an overdose in pills. When she realized what she had done, she had called her sister right away. She says she wasn't trying to hurt herself, just dull the loud thoughts in her mind that screamed at her that she was worthless, ugly and fat. All of which she was not. Such a young girl with SOOO much trauma in her life. My heart broke for her. I enjoyed the little amount of time I had to speak with her. The Young Life leader in me just took over. So the over all experience, though very difficult at some points, was not as bad as I had anticipated.
Ok, the weather is too great to not be outside at the pool. So my friend is here and I'm going to get my study on pool side!

playin a game of hookie

Who decided that when you skip school that it's a game? And who decided it should be called hookie? What does that mean anyway? I know we're only a month into school, but I really needed a day off to just relax and not have to think about so much. Because I have nothing interesting to report I will tell you a story our teacher told us in class last Friday. I warn you now- THOSE WITH WEAK STOMACHS DO NOT KEEP READING!

We are in our psych rotation right now which is always interesting. Our teachers have tons of stories about working in pysch. Friday our teacher spent more time telling stories than he did going over the lecture material. He spent about 15 minutes telling us about a guy on the pscyh unit that had a Jesus complex- where he genuinely thought he was the son of God. One of the techs who was a Christian and going to school to become a priest decided he was going to go in and tell him to stop claiming to be Jesus. The tech spent almost an hour in the room with the man and came out only more puzzled and frazzled than he did when he went in. This guy memorized the whole bible. This guy thought he really was Jesus and there was NOTHING the tech could do or say that could prove other wise. Well, on the psych unit, rounds must be made every 15 minutes to know where your patients are and what they are doing. During rounds my teacher said he was going in to give "Jesus" his afternoon meds, but he wasn't in his room. He and the tech looked in other rooms and in the halls to find him. Finally they found "Jesus" in bed with one of the women from psych unit. I'm pretty sure that the son of God wouldn't get away with that...anywho.. My teacher and the tech separated the two and made "Jesus" go back to his room and he was put in "time out". The female patient was not one under my teacher's care, so he went to go find her nurse. When he did, he told her, "I found "Jesus" and Ms. so and so in bed just now". The nurse said, "kissing?" My teacher said, "Yeah, that and then some." The nurse said, "I have been in the bathroom for five minutes throwing up, when I went in to do my rounds I found Ms. So and so drinking the contents of her colostomy bag!"