weekend pics

Hola familia y amigas!

Hola! Is a familiar word that I have been saying daily it seems. I am starting to pick up a little bit of Spanish working around the hospital, and my friend Adri is teaching me some words. A lot of the patient population is Spanish speaking out here (obviously) and it makes things a little bit tough when trying to communicate with families, BUT LUCKILY a lot of the nurses speak spanish on our floor so it's all good :) I'm going to take a Spanish class after the residency, I decided. I took care of a 9 year old girl the other day, who traveled here from Guatemala. Her mother and her were lucky to be a part of this "international faces foundation" group which takes children from countries that don't have the services/surgical care that we do here in America. She was born with facial deformities, and she was flown/housed here by this foundation to have a cranio-facial reconstructive surgery. When they got here they didn't know how to use a toilet/telephone/etc, etc. I guess they are from a super small underdeveloped village. It's really crazy but puts things into perspective a bit. It was quite funny because they only speak Spanish, but the little girl watched TV all day in English...I guess because she was so mesmerized by the idea of television. But anyways, she is healing well and will soon be headed back to her home country and able to lead a more normal life with a more normal face :)

On to other things, I went on the most beautiful hike last Thursday in Griffith Park (about a mile away from me). I went with my friends Adri & Afton (from work). It was nice to walk through nature and see trees, rocks, hills, and grass. The walk up was pretty much a complete incline, which took quite the toll on my out of shape body (ha). But when we got to the top (to the viewpoint) we could see EVERYTHING...and I mean the ENTIRE city. We were able to see the ocean, the hills, all of LA's buildings, and behind us into the valley. It was complete silence at the top and very peaceful. It was so beautiful and I can't wait to take friends and family when they get out here to visit. It took about 1 mile to get up to the top and 1 mile to get down.

On Friday I went to see Andrew Clore's band in Santa Monica. It was good to see a fellow Eldorado-an in the big city of LA. It was a good show and my roomate went with me. Aunt Missy had asked me in an email if Santa Monica was close (I haven't gotten replied yet) but the answer is yes, it's pretty much LA territory. I am actually headed there tonight to have dinner with Jason. They have really good shopping too.

I am very happy because one of my best guy friends from SLU moved to LA on Monday!! Micah is living with his brother and looking for a job in LA. We are meeting up and going out on Friday night, along with another guy from SLU (AJ) who is stationed out here. I'm really excited to seem them and catch up. I have the next 3 days off so I'll try to upload some new pics from my weekend on here soon. Hasta luego!

persimmon

Today I ate a fruit that I had never heard of before, called Persimmon. It is the hybrid of a tomato and an apple. It's an Asian fruit that was first introduced to California in the mid 1800's. It's a "thanksgiving-type" plant in Korea...they eat it as a holiday fruit. Kind of like our pumpkins, I'm assuming. It's hard, but not as hard as an apple...and looks more like a tomato. There's not much taste to it, it kind of reminded me of a hard pear...with a more dull and less fruity flavor. It was interesting and I had never heard of such a thing, so I thought I'd share with you guys who live in areas that aren't able to grow it.

Wildfires and Cooler Weather

Everytime I turn on my TV to watch a show, the only thing that's on the tube is "SoCal Wildfire Updates." LA has been plagued with blazing flames and up to 70mph winds that are making it spread. Luckily, I haven't seen any effects of the fires and it hasn't impacted my life or my part of the city at all yet. The fires aren't close to me, so no worries! I'm hoping it hasn't impacted anybody at work, but I'm sure that it has. I go back to work tomorrow so I'm sure I'll be hearing about it. They've closed off parts of the freeways due to the heavy smoke and many people have had to evacuate their homes while the LAFD fight off the flames. Yesterday, Jason and I went up to Griffith Observatory at Sunset. The pictures that I've posted I took lastnight. You can see a little bit of the smoke from the fires in the right-upper part of the picture above (the smokier color mixed in with the sunset). California sunsets are the best!! They are so pretty and colorful.. and the backdrops couldn't get any better.

The weather has been cooling off and I'm actually curled up in a blanket right now. It's really cool in my apartment in the morning and late night, but it warms up to almost hot as the afternoon rolls around.

Amanda texted me lastnight and asked me if I had seen Natalie Portman around the hospital, supposedly she visits 3x a week to cuddle with the sick kids. I haven't seen her, but will be keeping my eyes peeled now. I hear celebs tend to frequent the hospital, but I have yet to see anyone famous at work yet. I do enjoy seeing the therapy dogs though, they are so cute and we get so many of them visiting our floor! The kids love the dogs and they get their pictures taken with them. I love them too (sometimes more than the kids do, haha).

3 of my best friends; Rachel, Nicole, and Lindsay (all SLU nursing students) are coming to visit me at the end of January, I'm sooo excited. I really miss them so I'm looking forward to their visit.

It's a little weird that all of my friends are so spread out everywhere now. Amanda is teaching her own 3rd grade class in Kansas City, MO. Molly is living in downtown Chicago venturing through her first year of Law School at DePaul. Rachel Holmgren is living with her boyfriend (Ned) in Chicago, working as a secretary in a medical clinic and doing her own online projects on the side. Rachel and Lindsay are working at St. Johns hospital in STL (Rachel in the PICU and Linds in Labor&Deliv). Nicole just got a new job at Children's Hospital St.Louis in the neurology unit. Mal is working towards her accounting degree in Evansville, IN. Then of course, I still have a lot of friends that are still at SLU enjoying the college life. (I can't wait to go back and visit SLU sometime this year and see some of my friends and DG's!).

my first "blog" entry

As I began to type my usual "LA Update" email tonight, I decided that maybe it was time I try something new. I never thought I would be one to "blog", but seeing as I'm so far away from my family and friends, it makes perfect sense to have one. So from now on, if you want to catch up on what I've been up to, pictures I've taken, or thoughts that I have...you can come to this page and read away. I will try to post pictures often too. My goal is to update this once a week...we'll see how it goes!

I have been enjoying a nice 4 days off of work. It's been good so far and I've been able to catch up on a lot of things. Today I ventured over to Burbank, CA (only like 2mi from my apt) and bought some little things for my apartment. My apartment is coming together and starting to look really nice. My next goal is to paint 2 of the walls in my living room (olive green). Tonight, Adam and I had a few friends from our residency program over to our apartment. We cooked out on the grill and had hotdogs, hamburgers, shrimp, and portabello mushrooms. It was a nice get together. The weather is starting to cool off a bit here, which I'm happy about. I miss the fall smells and colors of Southern Illinois!

A few new friends from the CHLA RN Residency. My roomate is the guy I'm standing next to. All of us in this photo are from out of state (CT, TX, NY, PA, MI, FL)...from all across the US! This was taken in Long Beach after visiting the Pacific Aquarium and enjoying happy hour on the pier.

Taken at the Griffith Observatory (about 2 miles up the Hollywood Hills from my apartment) . The view is amazing! That is the city of LA lit up behind me.
Griffith Observatory is also right next to the Hollywood sign (fun fact: The Hollywood sign doesn't light up anymore at night because the environmentalists argued that it disturbed some of the animals natural habitat).