Adventure and Irony

This week was the last week of summer before I go back to being a school girl! :) Here we go!

Happy Wedding Day Cousin Kelsey!!!

Duke School of Nursing Orientation! 

This is in the nursing building, after our formal orientation, where they wined and dinned us! We had a mix and mingle with all the professors and our fellow classmates. Guess who I ran into? The chief nursing officer of Durham Regional Hospital. Yes, she is also getting her Nurse Practitioner and is my fellow student. :)

Graduate School Convocation at Duke Chapel

 Convocation was a beautiful ceremony inside the Cathedral on campus that was for graduate students. It was a formal procession of all the heads of the academic graduate programs at Duke, in their graduation robes. We were welcomed by the president of Duke University and then the academic accolades of the staff were read. We prayed together and sang the Alma Mater "Dear Old Duke" :)

 These are my two nursing friends! We are all three in separate nurse practitioner programs (family, acute care, and pediatric nurse practitioner) but have some of the same core classes this semester.

This is the ironic part. In the photo below, from left to right is Katherine (me), Kaci, and Katie. 

If Kathy-run were sitting next to us, we would make up all the aliases I have ever gone by!!!

Oh car, I wish you would not break down! Instead of my car, I will be ridding Durham Public Transportation to school tomorrow because my car gave out on the way to work yesterday. :(

Down time = rag time

Well, I have been trying out some new hair styles that I do not have to use my hair dryer, straightener, ect. This is just one of those things that a girl does when she is sitting around waiting for school to start. :) 

So here it goes, rag curls!

There is a sequence photo missing, the "blonde puffy mess" photo... but after some bobby pins, it took a turn to the 1920s.

Mormon.org

Mormon.org is a great website that teaches about what members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believe.

If you click on the link below, you can see my profile that tells a little bit about why I am a Mormon.

http://mormon.org/me/985T/Katherine

The Appalachian Trail

The Blue Ridge Mountains! 

Some of my blog posts have all words and no photos. Those ones tend to be more serious... but some are all photos and adventure! :) This one will be the latter. 

 Two fellow Duke graduate students were planing a camping trip to hike along the Blue Ridge Mountains to summit the highest peak in Virginia, Mt Rodgers. They sent out a mass invite to many students in the area, but evidently I was the only one who responded. They thought I may be deterred in going as I was the only girl, but boy were they wrong! This girl needed to get into the mountains, she was not too particular who took her!

You will see my tent on the right and the boy's tent on the left. :)

You will also see the mostly sad faces of my camping partners as we could not start a fire!! Because it was so humid in the mountains, nothing would catch fire! We could not even get cardboard to stay on fire because it was so humid!

After just a few setbacks... here is what the adventure looked like the next morning. The hike was along a portion of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia.

The summit of Mt. Rodgers at 5,728 feet. 

Highest Peak in Virginia

Wild Appalachian Ponies!!! However they seemed pretty tame to me... :)

And last, but not least. We ran into this tractor graveyard on our way home. It went on for acres!

Say hi to Mitt for us...

Tonight was my first night working on my own in my little ER. A little underwhelming, but a good night overall. Like every day at work, I had more conversations about being a Mormon. The great majority of people that I talk to here have never actually met someone who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints before. However, I was surprised when two ladies told me how every year they look forward to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert. They know nothing about the LDS church, but the concert is a staple in their family Christmas traditions. I had no idea! Another one of my favorite conversations of tonight was as someone was leaving and shouted back to me "Say hi to Mitt for us". It took me a second to get that one. :) Mitt Romney.

Another interesting thing is the amount of nice people that come to this southern ER. I have not yet met a single angry family member. And here, you look someone in the face and tell them that they will probably wait for 7 hours until they will be admitted to the floor and they kindly and understandingly reply "okay". Maybe it is because they are used to these kind of wait times, but man! The main Duke University Hospital emergency room has a wait time of 4-12 hours! And people wait!

The last enjoyment is I am starting to meet more granola friends at work who know places and things to go adventuring. I have met a man who choose his profession so that he could support his athletic habits that consisted of playing on a super competitive mens ultimate frisbee team from Minnesota. (Christy, they went to nationals and worlds! I told him about Persuader and he had totally heard of them!!!) I work with someone who lived near Yosemite National Park and went almost every week. Incidentally he was friends with the guy that solo climbed El Capital and Half Dome. They called him "princess"...

I love you all very much! Hope all is well! :)

Magical Times

I just finished my first week of orientation actually in the emergency department at my small community hospital. :( It has not been as magical as I had hoped. If fact I am unhappy there.

However I thought I would share a few of my favorite stories about the hospital. The lack of magic I feel toward the job has not detracted from the magical things that have happened while I have been working. :)

The H-MRE

 So when you think of MRE, you probably think of something similar to this... 

One of the ER Doctors enlightened me on his H-MRE. Hippie meals ready-to-eat. :) First off he is trying to eat better and loose weight. He weighs in every two weeks and if he has not lost his weekly goal weight, $10 automatically transfers from his account to a political party that he wildly opposes. Any guessess... Mitt Romneys presidential campaign fund. :) Any way, so he has started bringing H-MRE for breakfast. It is a little brown envelope of plain oatmeal inside a ziplock baggie that has fresh nuts and craisins. The ready-to-eat part comes when he pours his hot morning coffee into the bag and mixes it all up! And walla! Coffee flavored oatmeal. :)

Roachy Roach

I experience firsts every day living in North Carolina. Today I went from being a girl who had never seen a real cockroach to killing two!

This photo was taken just outside my hospital's cafeteria. I was sitting with some fellow employees waiting for the cafeteria doors to open. A man looked down at my feet and said "nabit, there at it again". I looked down and saw a HUGE cockroach. He looks small here because he is smashed. I proceded to run and he chaced after me! I never knew they were so fast. I frantically ran in between the cafe tables in horror! Right then the cafeteria doors opened and I continued my Olympic run right through the doors. Then that very nice man squished it on its hot pursuit of me into the cafe. It is absolutely no wonder I make so many new friends here. 

Then tonight as I was going to turn my bathroom sink on I saw his little brother crawling up the sides of the white porcelain. He met the same fate, squished beneath the weight of my hairspray bottle and my vengeance.

Diversity Training

 Other highlights include my diversity training day! Well, it is a required training for all employees annually. We spent the first hour getting to know each other and the subsequent three hours debating:

 politics

 gay/lesbian rights

chick-fil-a

black discrimination still present in the south

the confederate flag

and

why I am a Mormon. 

Good times!

Love y'all and pray you are doing well! :)