Currently Listening Lifesong By Casting Crowns see related

Before I go on road trip number 2 for the summer I should probably talk about trip numero uno and every thing else that I have been up too in the past 2 weeks.  Seeing that writing is not my thing I think it is time for a list.

~ 2,000 miles on my car (seeing that my car only has 10,000 miles on it this is quite a lot)

~ 4 states

~ I actually got the trip there done in one day (first time in 3 years)

~ 1 wedding

~ saw 20+ of my favorite people in the world

~ went to MAC J

~ only hit one thing with my car and who said that hubcaps can’t fly

~ Sunday lunch at Panaras (oh the things I used to take for granted)

~ sitting around for hours and talking about everything and nothing (once again I miss this)

~ playing card games (what trip would be complete without a little competition)

~ 2 nope make that 3 trips to Khols (now I can’t laugh when my mom tells stories of people coming into the store an hour before a wedding)

~ taking pictures of people taking pictures

~ realizing that I am actually friends with an English teacher (who would have thought)

~ and I did all of this with absolutely no knee pain

Then I came home to one of my mom’s projects.  She tends to plan large events and then somehow I get rooked into helping.  So I spent 2 days baking, cleaning and helping with a 4 course senior citizen’s tea at our house.  I even went and bought roses for each of our guests (all 30 of them).  Let’s just say I am now an expert scone and lemon curd maker not to mention all the old people now just love my family.  Well if I ever decide that getting my doctorate is overrated I have something to fall back on. 

And I was doing so well on updating.  I guess I will just blame it on getting sick and spending more then a week at my parents house with their very outdated computer and dial up Internet.  I'm not really sure what made me sick.  Was it a virus or just a major allergy attack.  In my "medical" opinion I would vote for the later.  Stress + a new location for summer + mowing the lawn + lots of growing things + an old house with no AC + mold on my cadaver = me getting very sick.  If this were not bad enough my professors are trying to kick me along with some of my other classmates out of the program for missing 1 day of class.  It's not even like I skipped or anything I truly was sick.  Well at least there are only 2 more days of this insanity called anatomy then it is no tests till November.

In the meantime I will be enjoying what is left of summer.  A road trip to Indiana for a wedding and some catch up time with my TU peeps.  A family road trip to the Adirondacks for yet another wedding and maybe some enjoyment of everything that the ADK have to offer.  Summer would not be summer if I do not at least get to spend some time in the ADK.  I probably will also have to fit in some research time and study time but this is nothing compared to what I have been doing.  Well I guess this is enough of a look at how wonderful life will be come Monday but for now I must go learn everything, well almost everything about the head and neck.   

The rain came down and the floods came up............ or in the summery of my professor at the beginning of class today, which was actually 45 minutes late, Philadelphia is just rivers and parking lots this morning. 

I think the rain is finally starting to subside .  We walked out of class today and were in shock to see .......... the sun, which has been mostly absent since last Thursday (you do have to remember I spend most of the day in windowless rooms).  Saturday in my brilliance I actually drove almost 100 miles in the off and on torrential down pours.  Sunday we realized that part of my brother's girlfriend's road was washed out.  Monday it took me almost 2 hours (normal <1) to get to from my parent's house to school only to sit in my seat to see rain coming through the roof. Then Tuesday the road I took on Monday was closed.  Today well none of the roads we go on were closed but it seemed as if everything else was and thus we sat in stopped traffic a lot.  I think I had at least 7 people honk at me because I did not get out of their way quick enough  (i.e. I tend not to go through red lights when there are streams of cars going the other way) .  I also just found out that my aunt and uncle were evacuated from their house and our basement actually has its own little puddle forming in it.  So I guess that updates the flooding of the east coast or at least the parts I have seen.

Currently Listening Lights and Sounds By Yellowcard see related

YES you have just read the date correctly and have infact done the math without error.  It is just 6 days since my last post.  This could be due to the fact that if the info from my last class was taught at highway speed I am now in a class that is taught in a school zone.  I think in all actuality I have done less work in the past 6 days then what I was previously doing in one night not to mention getting out before 2 every day is such a nice and much needed change.

Now on to something that I have been thinking about recently.  So throughout this whole class I have been completely in awe of how cool (for lack of a better word) the human body is.  Yes this is not the first class I have taken that involves anatomy but to actually see it, while being a bit on the gross side, is completely amazing.  I keeping thinking of how awesome God is at the same time I realize most people in my class reject his existence. 

(please remember that I am NOT getting my doctorate in bioethics but these are just my ponderings) Not only this but I have seen how scientists react to the Christian community and more then that I see how they look at comments that Christian's make or even comments that sound Christian.  For instance when asked about a certain anatomical feature that we really do not know the purpose of my professor simply said, "well that's how God designed it".  Not only did that get boos from most of my class it left me at odds with a misplaced comment.  Yes I believe that God did design it that way.  But what happens when a scientist goes and discovers the purpose of that part of the body.  Does it disprove the existence of God?  Does the fact that I could ramble off how exactly the heart works make it any less important or decreases God's power.  I think not.  While I realize this is not in fact how logic should work, it is in fact the response I got from my classmates.  Basically if we attribute to God only what we do not understand (while normally this is not our intent) we are making God smaller with each discovery that is made.  This is one of those things that they tried to teach us at TU but now that I have seen it played out before me I realize it is more then just a slip of the tongue but rather we don't portray God as who he is.  He did not just make what we will never understand but he made what we are fully aware of.  It is so easy to say well I don't know the answer but God does.  How often though do we look at something that we completely understand and say WOW look at what God made.  

For example looking at how one bends their elbow (sorry if I get technical).  And more specifically the nerves that control the muscles that bend the elbow.  Now for memorization purposes it would be great if just one nerve did this from one spinal cord level but instead it is actually a combination of spinal cord levels that control this one movement.  This seams really redundant until you get a spinal cord injury at just one level.  Instead of being unable to move your arm you are able to rely on other levels of your spinal cord to complete the task.  In all truth this is much more complicated then I just presented but does the fact that I can explain this make God any less powerfull.  Yes there are things I will never know and there are those things that I may one day understand but either known or unknown we have a God who designed it. 

WOW 3 months.  I mean really how hard can it be to update a journal.  Well I guess when you hate writing and really don't enjoy talking about yourself it is kinda hard.

All I really have to say about the summer this far is that it is vastly different than the past 6 summers of my life.  For starters I'm in school (taking anatomy at Drexel Medical College) and not at camp.  I'm in a city and not in the mountains.  It is 90 degrees here and humid instead of 70 and cool.  I spend my afternoons in a room without windows with dead people instead of on a beach with living breathing people.  It's not that it is bad but just very, very different.  There are days that I really wish I could just leave this all behind and then there are days that "gasp" I really enjoy doing what I'm doing and learning everything that is put in front of me, as hard as it is sometimes.

Yesterday for instance I was at Schriners a hospital for children and even though I was there to sit in front of a computer to take a class regarding HIPAA (after already taking anatomy tests at Arcadia and Drexel) I realized that even though school is completely stressful and I'm not completely sure why I agreed to do research (especially in the summer) there is a reason why I am doing what I am doing.  Even though I am not actually using kids for the research I realize that what I am doing will be of benefit to kids.  It's just one of those times that I have to remember my main goal of helping people instead of focusing on the insignificant hardships (having to learn almost every bone, muscle and nerve in the body in just 2 weeks).  Maybe what I just wrote was mostly for my own benefit but at the same time I doubt that I am the only one in this world that tends to question if what they are doing really matters.  So many time I feel like I get caught up in the day to day things instead of focusing on the big things.

That's about it for now.