hello all of my AUC fellows! Congratuation on your successful semester and it was all done my best wish for all happy break home and heartful relaxation. I just cant resist sharing that emotinal trip back home for the winterbreak. It was 13 hours of tiresome flight and three different time zones as well as three difficult and crazy security gates at the air port along with the mighty US custom at San Juan! "did you bring any foreign vegetation or timber seed with you? no sir. did you bring any live stock in your possesion? no sir. Finally, do you live in Denver? yes sir. then did you bring any jacket with you son? it must be cold over there ,,,yes sir. it was funny conversation that I had with that veteran US custom man.


Anyway, it was surreal and almost spiritual experience to walk alone at the quite air port at the Denver international at 3 AM. the train came by only every 20 minutes and the janitors were only visible on that main area of the beautiful air port. Welcome to the Mile High City of Denver on the banner and the Santa on the slade with amazing cute 20 herd of rain deers flying over head. It was hot summer when I left here as a Rookie AUC first semester with so much uncertainties.

My flight Delta Air was late by at least 45 minutes from Atlanta International and I had a group of college punks that dare to throw "AIR party" on bord in the back of Boing 737 that cruised 3000 feet at Mach .78. The funny thing was that that Delta Flight attendent was almost encouraging these kids to go on with onbord party that were so loud and bothersome.


Anyway, finally I came home after that crazy and intense first semester. It was so nice to have real hot shower home at 3 AM since I did not have hot water at the Blue Azure Apt for some mysterious reason. I will attempt to find out why next semster though. And it was so nice to sit back and watch CNN at comfortable home here in leather couch in my soapy hair and pink cheek with hot water insult for 20 long minutes. Dang it was so good to be home...


Again, have very safe break and dont forget to fill up your empty luggage with a lot of necessities that you wished to have during last semester...

:-flasing :-flasing

Ken H-just done with first semester

It's fun to read your post about the hot shower, remember what that was like and how good it was to get home.... then read the Jan newbie thread.

The range of emotions experienced during the years of med school is pretty amazing.

I'm happy that I am such a beach/warm weather/sand/saltwater person... it always made leaving home so much easier. I remember one January thinking about how I needed to clean all the sand out of my backpack when it fell onto the floor in the lecture hall.

I smiled as I thought of my friends in the northern US who would be leaving class to face..... .... snow. (gag, I hate the stuff!)

Faith

__________________
Faith Dillard, MD

“Well behaved women rarely make history."
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

I dont particularily like snow either especially after I had two close call crashes on icy road of the colorado and thank the lord, I walked away from that scary sites twice with not even a scratch. One of them was my Totota SUV that spinned mercylessly on the snowy day of the Boulder CO. I am a lucky kid! it makes drivig so difficult and dangerous for the practical reason. But I think I had some sort of Island fever even for my brief first semester. it was incredibly heartbreaking to see the vast caribbean ocean to be remined far home and pursue this fragile dream of being a doctor on this strange island. The Saint maarten has its own beauty and almost stunning beauty of caribbean culture that is so rich and almost intoxicating serenity. The small eatery places at the back street of the philipsburg had me frozen for a minite. they are so charming and pretty in cultural way. No wonder why Earnest Hammingway so fond of Cuban back streets with some African Caribbean spices. thats where the great inspiraton came from. I am lucky that I have this extra cultural living environemnt whicle pursuing a MD degree. But this island fever definitely got me last semester despite I rigorously tried to hide if from my friends at AUC except to Jeff.

Your are blessed with your sand and ocean friendly taste.....Faith.

Peace and blessing to you in new year


Ken...the library bookbug

Hey I got a mention!!! haha. Good to hear you made it back Ken. See you in 3 weeks back on the rock but in the meantime, enjoy the cold weather and the hot coffee.

Actually, I've got a airplane story that might top most of the other sept newbies...

From SXM, Dr. Colborn and 6 or so other students boarded the tiny little plane all ready to go until I look around and notice one other student who was at the ticket counter with me was missing. A few seconds later, he shows up right outside the plane with his belt over his neck and a look of shock on his face when he saw the plane's propellers already spinning. Needless to say, the plane shut off it's engine and allow him to board(that was pretty nice of them). We all looked at our watches and noticed that the time between our connecting flight in San Juan had just been cut to 1 hour due to the small inconvenience. No biggie.... maybe

Upon arrival at the SJU airport, a bunch of Canadians, including my wife, looked around for immigration agent booths to deal with non-US Citizens but none were around. The clock was ticking and all the other agents were busy assisting the US Citizens(sucks to be Canadian, eh?). Finally, they all decided to line up with the other Americans and hope for the best. They went to 3 different agents until they hit the jackpot, one of them was willing to deal with the non-Americans.

My wife and I went to talk to the immigration agent and all went well, until she asked us to step inside the clear room with locked doors....... (wait for dramatic tone) 5, 10, 15 minutes passed before anybody came to talk to us. The clock was ticking and there was less than 45 minutes to go before the plane was about to depart. Finally, the Immigration officier asked us a few questions and said "oh, you're just awaiting a change of status from the INS? Here you go." She hands us the passport and off we ran to get our luggage. As we ran down the escalator, we see two luggages around the carousel which looked surprisingly familar. They were also the last two luggages left on the conveyer belt. We grabbed the two luggages and again, ran to the nearest customs agent to be insepect. Things went smoothly and out the door we went.

People were everywhere and nowhere was a sign for the Delta check in counter. We decided to go right but soon realized we went the wrong direction so we did a 180 and darted in whichever direction seemed to have the most amount of people. Finally, we found the Delta ticket counter but were rejected from the counter since we did not go through the X-*** detection of our luggages. 20 minutes were left on the clock and the ticketing agent yells out, "Final call for Delta Flight ___ to Atlanta." Crap.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO," I yelled out and awoken all the palm trees. I spotted the x-*** room and made my way there. Half assuming we were already too late, we took our time and got our luggages checked out. We decided to head back to the ticket counter and plea and beg. I allowed my wife to do the begging and it worked. The guy crumbled and gave us our boarding passes. It just goest to show how gullible men really are. (oh wait, I'm one of them)

One more obsticle, the body check. Long lines and sweaty people were all we could think about when we approached final stage in our quest to head home. Everything was moving in Caribbean time so we again had to beg and plea the rest of the people in line to allow us to cut through. It worked again since they were mostly male and didn't really care. We made it close to the other group of students and finally let out a sign of relief. 10 minutes to go but since there was about 8 or so of us there, they won't leave. Then it happens. The power goes out.

You hear cussing and man's best friending all around as you bend down to check to see if your luggage is still around. I looked at my wife and told her this must be a sign that we will make it on the plane since the power outage will only delay the planes but the generators kick in and ruin that whole plan. We finally crossed the final barrier and saw the light at the end of the tunnel(i.e. gate 41)

A huge heard of people sitting around outside the gate and the plan wasn't even prepped yet. We lucked out, we made it on time.

As the final lay-over in the "home for the holidays" saga, we got onto the final plane in Atlanta airport around 7:30pm. 10 minutes passed before the captain said we were experiencing some instrument malfunction so we were instructed the instrument would be fixed within a few minutes. Minutes turn to half hours and finally they told us the pimary engines were not working and they were going to fix the engine. uh, right. We stayed on the plane an additional hour until they flight crew asked us to move to a different plane since the defective plane could not be fixed in time. A 3 hour delay later, we got onto the new plane and hoped the day would soon end and it did. We arrived in Seattle around 1 am the following day which made the whole trip about 18 hours or so.

__________________
Finally beat Super Mario Bros within 7 mins.

Dude,
Sucks to be you...Lucky I live SXM :P ...
Have a wondrful holiday season, and see you in a few weeks...

Aloha,

__________________
Pathology
PGY-1.75

to never travel with you! hahaha...

luckily in all my days of flying...i've never had any major problems/delays...knock on wood.

Have a great break.
See y'all when we get back.

Thanks again for everything this semester. We owe you big.
Few weeks... I'm cherishing each minute of each day. Sushi for lunch today and sushi for dinner today. (after the hell of a airplane ordeal we went through, we deserve a bit of uncooked meat)

I'll see you in a few! Merry Xmas.

Jeff

__________________
Finally beat Super Mario Bros within 7 mins.

This coming from a guy who leaves halfway through the semester to go home for just the weekend. Impressive!

BTW, bring us some krispy kremes when you come back! I would bring them but... well, you know my experience with airplanes. The donuts would be all moldy by the time I arrive.

__________________
Finally beat Super Mario Bros within 7 mins.

My x-mas wishlist...

• From microphage...a Genuine Grande Skinny Carmel Macchiato from Starbucks;
  From RN2MD...spicy creole seafood jumbalaya with tons of Tony Chachere;
  From Lynseystew: whatever your lil' heart desires (actually no...that would be a dozen Krystal's);
  From brswartz: a dozen White Castle's;
  From beach_bum: UNC baseball cap
  From mushie_cookie: KRISPY FREAKIN' KREMES!
  and finally, from sweet_mouse...a double double from In-n-Out...

See you all soon!

Aloha,

__________________
Pathology
PGY-1.75

Jeff

I am saddend by the tragic news of your trip trouble home- But You made it safely and eating a lot of sushi man. I wish you and your familys best and continous prosperity in upcoming year and new semester. thansk for the all the fine support last semester. the friends are indeed absoulte and best in getting through this crazy rollercoaster called basic science.

Dont eat too much sushi though. Especially a sushi cooked by untrained chef is dangerous as you already knows it.

See you in about two weeks!

Ken