"How Was Africa?"

How was Africa?  This is the question everyone asks but I couldn’t begin to answer if I tried...not unless you have several hours, maybe days, anyway, and even then I couldn't answer it fully.  A question like this begs a response like, "Amazing," "Unbelievable," "Hard," "Beautiful," "Life-Changing," or any number of similar trite responses that could never capture this kind of experience.  There are so many things that can never be put into words, and even the thousands of photos can never do it justice.

How can words ever be enough to describe the clarity of the stars in the Southern Hemisphere when there is no electricity for many, many miles, or the enormity of the African sky at sunset, or the beauty of the children's voices singing praises to God in the pre-dawn darkness as they work in the fields before their school day begins?

Words could never capture the deep laughter of Mama Jane as she ever-so-patiently coached us in Swahili, or the depth in the eyes of each child as they jutted out their chins with the simultaneous eyebrow raise that came to speak volumes in the course of an instant.  They knew all along what it meant.  It was we who had much to learn.

How does one explain the transition that takes place inside when you're trying to counsel a young woman, through a translator, who walked 30 km each way for HIV testing after her husband beat her because she refused to sleep with him after hearing rumors that he and his other wife were infected? Or the way I had to pay extra attention to every thought going through my head so it couldn't be read across my face as I tried to comprehend all the cultural implications of this beautiful woman's all-too-common story?

I could tell you about our incredible safari, the majestic lionesses we watched devouring their freshly killed zebra mere feet from our vehicles, the hundreds of hippos sunbathing or cooling off in the river, or the way we slept in the Serengeti, only the walls of our tents protecting us from the animals we'd been watching all day, but I couldn't explain the overwhelming smell of the hippo pools, the magic of the golden light bathing the giraffes as they feasted on the tallest branches of the trees, or the refreshing African rain that sprinkled through the open roof just before we saw our first wild elephants.

How can words describe the way it suddenly feels unnatural to wear anything but skirts out in public, or the way my heart longs to hear voice after voice calling out in their particular singsong, "Jambo! Habari!" as we walk down the road?  Or the pride and relief we felt when it finally became second nature to call back, "Nzuri!" just in time for us to leave?

Words fail to explain the emotion that spilled down our cheeks with our tears as the children we had grown to love sang their goodbyes, shared final hugs, and thrust some of the most beautiful letters we've ever received into our hands, wishing us well and reminding us, "Nakupenda sana"--I love you very much.

So how was Africa?  Amazing.  Unbelivable.  Hard.  Beautiful.  Life-Changing.  And so much more. Ask me about it sometime. I'd love to try to tell you all about it.

The Tale of the Unwelcome House Guest

Now, dear friends, gather 'round and I will tell you the tale of my unwanted house guest.  Last year when I lived in Portland, I had some unwelcome roommates of the gray, furry kind (and I don't mean Allee!).  They drove me NUTS and it took me almost two months to get rid of them.  My poor puppy about went crazy, too, especially the night we spotted one in my bedroom.  Needless to say we slept with the lights on and Allee growled and barked the WHOOOOOLE night.

Now that I live in North Carolina, I knew there was a possibility I might see some unwelcome roommates of a...crunchier variety.  Allee plus quarterly spraying by the exterminators have kept them at bay so far.  However, this summer, Allee is on an extended vacation to Doggy Disneyland (aka my parents' house) in Utah, and much to my dismay, these not-so-little little buggers (literally) have figured it out and are taking full advantage of her absence.

To be fair, I've only found a few, and they've all been dead (which means the poison is working like a charm, thank you exterminators!)...until now.

I asked my friend Nick about these little...no, strike that, GIGANTIC creatures, and he told me these are called Wood Roaches.  SICK.  He says this is lucky, because the little ones are German Cockroaches and they come in droves.  Wood Roaches usually just come in one at a time, and he says they come in when it rains.  Ughhhhh.  (If you want to know how disgusting these creatures are, go ahead and google "Wood Roach NC"--for those of you who can't handle bugs, I won't post a photo here.  Ughhhhh.)

All this makes total sense, because it's warmer, so they're coming out, and we've been having these glorious thunderstorms every couple days, so apparently they are trying to get out of the torrential rains these storms bring.  I get it.  Makes them no less disgusting.

Anyway, I was hanging out watching this glorious thunderstorm after class the other day, and when it cleared up, I went into the kitchen to make dinner.  I walked out and immediately I saw it--a huge, disgusting creature checking out the empty box I had put on the floor to take out to the garbage after the rainstorm.  It was then that I made my first mistake and broke the cardinal rule--NEVER LET THE ENEMY OUT OF YOUR SIGHT.  I immediately ran into the living room and slid on my flip-flops...no way was I going to attempt to vanquish this beast barefoot.  I ran back into my kitchen and saw...NOTHING.

I immediately called my mom.  When she answered I said, "You want to know the only thing worse than seeing a gigantic live cockroach on your kitchen floor?  LOSING SAID COCKROACH."  So I stood, half-frozen, talking on the phone to my mom while I surveyed the scene and tried to figure out where this vile creature had escaped to, when suddenly it came out of nowhere, running full speed toward me.

Now, I really make a pretty valiant effort not to swear, and especially not when I'm on the phone with my mom, but when a GIGANTIC COCKROACH COMES CHARGING AT ME ACROSS THE KITCHEN FLOOR, all bets are off.  "*$#&!!!!!!!" I yelled into the phone.  "Oh God, oh God, oh God, there it is!"  I backed up and tried not to panic, then apologized to my mom for swearing.  She calmly said, "WELL, STEP ON IT!!!!!"

Easier said than done, my friends.  First of all, WHY DID NO ONE EVER TELL ME HOW TALL THESE BUGGERS ARE?"  Seriously, not only are they the length of my freaking finger, they have these intensely long legs that make them stand up waaaaaaay taller than you expect off the floor. SICK.  I was not expecting that.  When all you've ever seen are dead ones, their legs are always all folded up and it is very deceiving.  NOT OKAY.

So in the interest of not letting it get away again, I knew my only choice was to step on it, but when this giant thing is charging at you and you only have flip flops on and you are completely losing your mind, IT IS REALLY FREAKING HARD!  Plus, the crunch.  Oh, dear Lord, the crunch.  I just can't even handle it.  So disgusting.  I'm still shuddering.

So I let out a mighty "GAAAAAAAHAHHHHAHAHAHAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!" AND STEPPED ON THE BLOODY THING.  Welllllllllll...............sort of.  Okay, I'm a complete freaking wuss and I sort of like danced on it while I was jumping around and screaming, but I managed to hit it once and it flipped over on it's back.  VICTORY!!!!............and then it started moving.  "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, God, it's not dead!!!!!!  It's twitching!!!  Ahhhhhh!!!"  (Mind you, I was still on the phone with my mom this whole time, who was trying to coach me and also laughing at me.  A lot.  Thanks for the support, yo.  She would have been up on the chair screaming if it were her, so she can play brave all she wants when she's 2,000 miles away.)

I stood there and watched this horrific beast moving around, twitching it's legs and antennas and I literally didn't know what to do.  Because, for real, how does any one expect me to walk past it to get over to the sink where there is RAID in the cabinet below when walking past it means I will have to be closer than four feet away from this hideous beast?  I mean, how do I know that sucker's not going to flip over and charge me again as soon as I get near it?  As I weighed my options and realized the longer I waited the better chance I had of it flipping back over and charging, I gathered up my courage and finally ran, hurdling over it's horrible body, flung open the cabinet, and grabbed the RAID.  Not wanting to turn my back to it, in case it disappeared again, I spun around and pulled the trigger on the can.  I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed and sprayed and sprayed it but it still kept twitching!!!!  These things are like in-freaking-destructible!!!!  Ugggggghhhhhh.  As my mom assured me with that much poison it was only a matter of time, I just stood there, frozen, and watched while it finally expired.  Holy sigh of relief, Batman.  The villain had been defeated.  And the village rejoiced (or maybe just I did).

But wait, there's more!  You'd think that would mean this story would be over and I could move on with my life, right?  Nope, because NOW THERE'S A GIGANTIC DEAD COCKROACH CORPSE ON THE FLOOR TO DEAL WITH.  My friends, please understand, giant dead cockroach is only slightly less horrific than giant live cockroach.  I am not ashamed to tell you that my vacuum lives in my kitchen for occasions such as these, because (I told you I'm a wimp) I honestly can't bear to pick them up, even with tissues or a dustpan or whatever because I CAN'T HANDLE GETTING THAT CLOSE TO THEM.  DON'T JUDGE.  Actually, judge me all you want, because I promise, if you haven't experienced them, you have no idea.  THEY ARE HORRIBLE.

So I hung up the phone with my mom so I could try to deal with it.  But here's the thing...okay, I know was being totally irrational, but I could not 100% convince myself that it was actually 100% dead, so I didn't want to vacuum this one up because I also wasn't 100% sure that if it were faking somehow it couldn't just climb back out of my vacuum.  I KNOW, YOU GUYS.  I TOLD YOU I WAS BEING IRRATIONAL.  But it was SCARY.  Even after I tried to nudge it a little and it didn't twitch anymore, I knew I couldn't handle having it in my house anymore, even just in the vacuum.

I weighed my options again, and I looked over at the giant paper towel roll on the counter.  I unrolled about 5,000 paper towels until I had a nice big wad and walked toward the corpse.  I thought about putting the paper towel wad over it and stepping on it again for good measure, but then my rational brain started coming back a little and realized I was being a little ridiculous.  So I took a big deep breath, wadded up those paper towels in my hand so that the nasty beast would be as far away from my actual hand as possible, and in about one tenth of a second, grabbed the body and threw the whole thing in the box, grabbed the entire box, and sprinted to the dumpster as fast as I could.

And that, my friends, is the story of my first (live) North Carolina cockroach.  NO THANK YOU.

THE END.

Technology is SO cool.

Check this out!!  Technology is soooooo cool.  When we were having a little IV insertion refresher class, they showed us the latest technology they have--a vein finder!  It's this little device that shines a special light on your skin to help the health care folks find your veins so if you need an IV and you're one of those people who they call a "tough stick" because it's hard to find your veins, this makes it lots easier!  Even cooler is how it was developed--workers at concert venues noticed when they were using scanners to scan people's tickets, they could see their veins.  So they tweaked the technology a little, and voila!  SO COOL.

Vein finder--soooooo awesome!

And my three good things for the day:

1.  I watched Dr. Maya Angelou's memorial service this morning.  She is one of my heroes, and it was a beautiful tribute to a phenomenal woman, and a testament to the way we should all be living our lives.  Be the rainbow in someone else's cloud!

2.  It was a nice chill Saturday but I actually got some work done.  Hooray!

3.  I got an unexpected phone call from a friend today, and we had a lovely little chat.  Yay!

Good Things, for a change.

The lovely woman who taught my mental health class last semester filled me in on a practice that is supposed to relieve stress and anxiety and help to focus on gratitude and positive thinking.  Basically, every single night, the last thing before you go to bed, you're supposed to write down three good things that happened/came from that day, it doesn't have to be long, just a sentence (but these will be a bit longer).  So here are a few good things from this week:

My friend Kristen and I had the privilege and honor of spending a lovely afternoon with a former Dean of Duke's School of Nursing.  She is 83 and had a stroke about 6 weeks ago, but she is still sharp as a tack and even though we had a mission to help her with a few specific things, it ended up being a really wonderful experience.  So much so that we're going back again next week.  She is a major force in the nursing world, not just at Duke but around the world, and I don't think many students get the opportunity to know her and spend time with her.  The American Academy of Nursing named her a "Living Legend."  I feel pretty lucky to have been specifically asked to spend some time with her.  

One of my most favorite professors has asked me specifically to work with her on some research she's doing, which is a huge, huge honor.  She is a brilliant, incredible woman, and I feel really lucky that I developed such an awesome relationship with her last semester and it has continued into this semester.  I saw her a few days ago and she gave me the best pep talk.  I know she is going to be a mentor and a friend for a long, long time. 

I got to spend time last Saturday volunteering with another of my favorite professors at the Special Olympics Powerlifting competition.  First of all, who knew Special Olympics HAD a Powerlifting competition????  It was incredible.  And a huge inspiration, as always.  As an added bonus, I got to spend the afternoon getting to know this awesome woman better, and as a real person outside of school--she is HILARIOUS and SO encouraging, with the BEST advice--and I got to hang out with an alumna of our program who is also pretty incredible.  It was a fantastic day.

I have been RIDICULOUSLY productive this week.  It took a minor miracle to get everything accomplished this week, but I managed it.  Now onto the next!

Three good things of today:

I got great comments on a presentation I gave today.

I came home to the most lovely email tonight.  It made me cry, in the best way.

I got to watch a real life miracle today.  It was awesome.

So there are my three good things.  :)

Disappointment, Exhaustion...and Encouragement.

Sooooooo....this turned into sort of a venting post....fair warning.

When I started nursing school, there were three tracks we could choose from: medical Spanish, research, and genetics/genomics.  I have always wanted to learn Spanish, so I decided to go for it.  As German and Sign Language are the only languages I've ever taken, I asked to be placed in the baby beginner Spanish class.  First semester it was fantastic.  Our teacher was fun and supportive and she definitely knew where we stood as BEGINNERS.  Second semester it all changed.  Several of the students who were in our class graduated, and suddenly our class was too small to run (they require six students to run a class and we had five), so they merged our class with the intermediate class.  Intermediate is a bit of a misnomer, though, as most of those students have taken at least 5+ years of Spanish, and there were at least twice as many of them.  (The advanced class is full of fluent speakers, so intermediate is really advanced, just not fluent.)  Our teacher was still the same wonderful woman, but now she taught the entire class in Spanish.  Rapid-fire Spanish with a thick Chilean accent.  I usually do a pretty good job of understanding Spanish, but as one of only two students who had never taken Spanish before this, I was drowning.

I've never been a quitter, so I desperately tried to stick it out, growing more and more frustrated each week as the semester wore on.  After several weeks in a row of spending the entire 90 minute class utterly lost and leaving in tears, I knew it was time to do something about it.  After a long, crazy, drawn-out process, I was finally able to switch tracks (which they told us from the beginning would be very difficult once we started the program).  My dear friend, Nick, who is still in Spanish, assures me I made the right decision.  (He says I would be miserable in there this semester.)  Which brings us to today.

Switching tracks means that I am both behind and ahead in the program up to this point.  Ahead because my extra elective class is already finished since Spanish counts (yay!), and in fact, I will graduate with more credits than I need.  Behind because everyone else in the program took a class last semester that I did not take (the Spanish track folks take that class this semester).  Basically what that means is that I have more credits this semester than anyone else, and since it's our short semester, it's extra accelerated.  Yay.  :/  I knowingly did this to myself, but holy moly, I had no idea how intense it was going to be.  

Just this week, I had to write FIVE papers that each required a literature search.  If you've ever taken a college-level research class, you know that lit searches can be time-intensive and cumbersome.  These were no exception.  Seriously all I do right now is write papers.  It's totally crazy.  Thank goodness I have a fair amount of skill in writing papers, because otherwise this would be TROUBLE.  Everyone told us that last semester was the crazy hard one and our third semester would be a piece of cake, and super fun to boot.  They were LYING.  There is SO much work to do, it's out of control.  And exhausting.

The hardest part so far, though, has been the surprise and disappointment I've had with one class in particular.  Anyone who knows me knows I've ALWAYS loved babies.  Ever since I was a baby myself, I've loved babies.  I also had the privilege and honor of witnessing my sweet baby nephew's birth, and it was truly an incredible experience.  I thought I might be interested in being a maternity nurse/nurse midwife.  This semester is leading me to believe that is probably not my calling, which is highly disappointing.  My maternity class has actually been pretty interesting, although a ton of work.    It's the rest of the experience that's been hard, and the disappointment of it has been hard to get over.  I'm trying, though.  As my best friend pointed out to me the other night, loving BABIES doesn't have to mean loving working with their "hormonal, grumpy moms."  Haha.  Who knows, maybe someday in a different location I'll feel differently, but for now, unless the next few weeks picks up, I think it's getting crossed off the list.  Oh well.  Also I had the strange and uncomfortable experience of being bullied today--I am way too old for that kind of crap.  And that kind of stuff stays with me for way too long.  Darn that sensitive heart of mine.  :/  

Anyway (despite an actually pretty great morning), needless to say I came home pretty discouraged tonight after a very long day, only to find one of the most lovely and encouraging, supportive emails I've ever received in my inbox from one of my favorite professors.  It was unexpected and I will admit I cried...both times I read it.  And then I remembered that I AM cut out for this and I WILL make it through this and I DO really love it, even when it's hard.

And since my last couple posts have seemed rather overwhelmed and not overly positive, I will also tell you that I ran into another of my very favorite professors the other day, who I completely adore, and she also gave me the best pep talk.  I have had some really awesome things going on lately, and I just have to remember that through the haze of stress and never-ending work.  Both of these incredible mentors of mine also reminded me that I only have to make it through a few more weeks of this craziness and then it's on to pediatrics, which I already know I'm going to love.  Can't wait.

Cheers to tomorrow being a new day, taking deep breaths, making the most out of hard situations, and remembering all the time I love this beautiful place in life I'm in right now.

One Day at a Time

This weekend it hit me that I am far, far away from home.  That doesn't happen often since I'm pretty used to being away from home, but the East Coast is far away and in a totally different time zone than most people I know.  I guess by "home," I don't even really mean a particular place, I just mean everyone I know and love is far away.  While everyone was posting photos of their cute families and barbecues and all the fun things they were doing, I was hanging out at my house being overwhelmed by the crazy workload I have this summer and thinking about how I really SHOULD be writing a paper of some sort.  It also just hit me that my sweet puppy really does live in Utah for awhile.  She is at Doggy Disneyland (aka, my folks' house) for the summer since I'll be headed to Africa in August; plus, with two long clinical days and two long class days every week, it was just a lot to ask of her to be crated for that many hours, so she's living the high life in Utah.  She's loving it, but I'm not such a fan.  She's been my little buddy for almost five years now, and it's weird not having her around.  :(

Beginning new semesters always overwhelms me a little.  Okay, maybe a lot.  I think it's because we spend the first week or so going through syllabi and being told in depth about every assignment we will have to do over the next 11 weeks.  The ten exams, many, many quizzes, projects, discussion board posts, and the gajillion papers I have to write hit me all at once and I'm just knocked for a loop for a minute.  I think it's also the moment when I realize how much I truly do NOT know yet and there's a finite amount of time in which it all must be crammed in my head and hope it stays there.  It's kind of hilarious, because last semester was the semester that everyone warned us about and I did just fine--unlike most people, I LOVED it--but I remember having this overwhelmed feeling at the beginning of January, too.  This, too, shall pass.  

Okay, pity party over.  Tomorrow is a new day and I have big plans to get lots done.  I just want to be clear--I LOVE North Carolina.  I love being a student, I love nursing, I love pursuing this new career in health care, I love the people I get to interact with on a regular basis, and I am shocked every day by how much I LOVE Duke.  I feel like North Carolina is "home" more than I ever felt Portland was "home."  I miss my friends and family like CRAZY, but otherwise North Carolina is a fantastic place for me to be (so if ya'll could just move here, it would be perfect).  I couldn't possibly have made a better decision for myself.  I'm already over halfway finished with this program and thinking about what's next...isn't that wild?  Time flies when you're having fun.  :)

Anyway, a lot of the new(er) cohort has been asking me how to survive THEIR second semester, and I just keep telling them to take it one day at a time, one week at time.  Time to start following my own advice.

One day at a time.

#Nursingschool

Well, hello!! I'm sure no one reads this anymore since I have effectively dropped off the face of the earth, but since I'm trapped on a plane with wifi for another hour or so, I thought I'd actually write a quick post.

I just finished the toughest academic semester of my life. No joke, this is degree #4, and even when I did my Masters degree, when I was doing a 2 - 2 1/2 year program in a year and working three jobs, I've never worked so hard or been so busy in my life. I've said it before and I'll say it again--when they said this was an accelerated program, they weren't messing around!!! And it's Duke, which means it's super academically rigorous on top of being fast. But want to know a secret? I LOVE it.

To give you an idea of what my schedule has been like the last few months, here's an average week for you:

Mondays were my clinical days, so I left my house at 6 AM, worked 13 hours at the hospital, and made it home about 8. Tuesdays when I didn't have random class obligations, my study partner and I would meet at school around 8ish, study until our review session at 4, go to a review, go to our a Cappella choir rehearsal, and head home around 6:30. If we had a test that week (which was the case most weeks), we'd grab dinner, let our dogs out, and meet back for a few more hours of studying. Wednesday was another all day study day. Thursdays we had class from 8-4:30. If we had Friday exams, it was back to studying after dinner. Fridays we had class from 8-2:30. Depending on the week, Friday afternoons were more studying, random paperwork, errands, grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, etc. Then Saturdays and Sundays were usually all day study days. Somewhere in there I also tutored a student behind me and took on a couple leadership positions in different organizations. Insane!!

Since I started the program, they've been warning us that second semester was the hardest, we just needed to survive it and pass, and don't worry about grades. Well, I guess my hard work paid off, because I got a 4.0!!!! I promise I've never worked so hard for anything in my life!! Totally worth it. My professors are incredible and I learned SO much this semester. It was stressful and exhausting and totally fantastic. We all are still totally blown away by how much we know that we didn't know eight months ago. Unbelievable.

Anyway, if you haven't heard from me or I've taken forever to respond to your emails or I've just been a crappy friend in general, that's why. I wish I could promise that it will get better, but I have an insane, 18-credit, 2 clinical summer ahead, followed up with a 16-day clinical rotation in Africa!! So, know that I'm always thinking of you all, and I'm so grateful for your support and love, even if I've been MIA. I'm halfway done!! Next week I start helping deliver babies... :) Can't wait!

Cheers to a wonderful summer, everyone, and if you're not afraid of the humidity and want to check out beautiful North Carolina, my spare room is always open!

Loves!

Jen