A New Page

So, it's been a little bit longer, for good reason. A lot has happened but I can't remember much of it.

I took my second test of medical school and think I did pretty well. We have our second biochem test on Friday, and I am in no way ready for it. I've been pretty useless this week. On the upside, the work I have done has been pretty distracting. That's pretty much what I'm all about right now - distraction. Every now and then, I'll think about my life, what's happening, and where its going. Most things I planned for aren't going to happen now, so I'm rethinking. No cat for me, and I think I just may become a "road warrior" for the clinical years, since there's no reason to stay in DC. But such thoughts can get depressing, so I go back to the distraction thing. Sleep is a good distraction, but it can also be treacherous. For one thing, dreams can be an imaginative escape, or it can be a depressing rehashing of current events. Worse still is waking up and remembering.

On the upside, everyone has been very supportive. Well, almost everyone. One person was an a-hole, almost made me cry, but made me more angry than anything. But aside from him, everyone has been super nice, calling, texting, messaging to make sure I'm alright. Friday night we went out drinking, which was good and cathartic. I was temped for the first time in a long time to smoke again, but I resisted, because it would have required going outside. I think it won't be an issue this time because I don't have a balcony I could smoke from. Plus, I don't know any smokers anymore.

So I've got that off my chest, I'm going to study some biochemistry now...

Berlin in a Blur

This weekend was the group trip to Berlin. We took a pretty crappy night train to Berlin in which I tried to sleep in so many different ways that I lost count. We arrived and then set off on our whirlwind tour: the radio/tv tower, Bebelplatz, where the Nazis burned books, the Holocaust memorial, a very lovely church, the Brandenburg gate, and we glanced at the Parliament building (the Bundestag), before finding the Virchow museum, which was what we were in Berlin to see. We were all supposed to meet there at 2:30, and pretty much everyone made it at that time. So aside from checking out the exhibits, we got to enjoy each other’s company for a while.

Afterwards we wandered Hbf, the main train station (Hbf means main station or something like that, as all German main stations are called name Hbf), where there were painted bear statues from “every country”, if only omitting a few. The USA bear was painted like the statue of liberty, and wasn’t that great. We then returned to the Bundestag to wait in line so we could go inside. There’s an awesome giant glass observation… thing. It’s not really a tower, more like an aesthetically pleasing cancerous growth on top of the building. You can look down into the parliament chamber or look out on Berlin – as it was night we got a pretty view, but saw no lawmakers at work.

We ate a lovely and cheap (most important) four course meal for dinner, before heading over to the Berlin wall. It’s a wall, that’s for sure. Sadly it was fenced off, and not very well lit, so none of my pictures are that amazing. But the point is that we went there and saw it, and walked the line where it used to stand.

On the way back to the hostel, Helena and I decided that we were too tired to continue to Prague like we had planned the next day. We looked up trains and decided to go back to Maastricht a day early.

All sorts of crazy thing happened to the people who chose to continue on, but those are their stories, not mine.

On the way back, we met this cool guy from New Jersey, studying in Ireland, in the Nethrerlands for his friend’s wedding. Neat, right?

In other news, FINALS!!!! That’s my main focus right now, except for when I’m planning November. Before I leave I’m going to post a general schedule, so you can be like, “I wonder where Sarah is today, let’s check her blog!” Then you can go to the date (the 23^rd, Thanksgiving) and see where I should be at that time (Prague). It’s going to be pretty awesome.

Check facebook for pictures, I'm too lazy.