Picking up where I left off

Thursday {2-24-11)
I had the day off for presentation preparation. I received a book from Dr. Martin on acupuncture in pregnancy when I was at her office. So I spent a majority of the day at Mauna Kea Beach reading this book. It was a really interesting read. To get to the beach was rather interesting. There is a large German software company which has been on the big island for the past week and they rented out four of the really large resorts for their people. Anyways, beaches are all public access but the Mauna Kea resort would not let us access the beach through their property. So, to get there, we had to drive down the road to Hapuna Beach, walk across that beach and then hike a little trail to the Mauna Kea Beach. The hike was right along the ocean which was so beautiful. We walked past all of these huge multi-million dollar homes with their infinity pools and floor-to-ceiling windows on the way there. What it must be like to have a huge vacation home on the beach in Hawaii *sigh* maybe someday - yeah right. I'd rather just vacation here than own a home here. Once we got to the Mauna Kea beach, it was gorgeous! Check out my view...

Excuse me - I just vomited a little - ha! {No seriously, this really was my view - lol}

I laid out on the beach and read my acupuncture book for a few hours...

...until I got a call from Ryan's mom that their flight had landed {oops, I thought it wasn't supposed to land for another 2 or so hours!} So I picked up all my stuff and started the 15 or so minute hike back to the Hapuna beach parking lot. I was a little bummed that I was going to miss an awesome sunset. Hands down, likely the best sunset we've had since I've been on the island. And not to mention, the air was so clear today unlike must days which are voggy {volcano smog}.

This is the only picture I got of the sunset which I captured on my cellphone :(

One of my classmates sent my this picture mail to let me know what I was missing out on :( Isn't it gorgeous?! Oh well, I was picking up family which was more important.

Once I picked up Steve and Renee, we had some time to kill before my parent's flight and Ryan's flight got into the island. So we drove into Kona and I took them to get Hawaiian Ice :-) Mmmm. After we finished eating, we headed back to the airport as my parent's flight had just arrived. My parent's picked up a {supposed} four wheel drive vehicle so we could do some things a regular car would not be able to take us to. We met up with my parents and waited for a few minutes in this little dirt parking lot until Ryan's flight arrived. Once we picked him up, we drove to our rental home on the south side of Kona.

Wanna see pictures of the house? It was gorgeous and right on the ocean!

This is the view from the lanai!

Here is a picture of the living room. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the bedrooms/dining room/lanai/kitchen. I'm hoping my mom, Ryan or Renee got pictures. If so, more picture to come soon.

I hung out with Ryan, my parents and my in-laws until 9pm or so and then made the hour and fifteen minute trek back on to the North Kohala coast to the house I was staying in to work on my presentation for the next day. When I got home, all my roommates were in the living room with their laptops working on their presentations. So I joined the club and got to work. I was exhausted so I didn't quite finish the whole presentation but I got a fairly good start before heading to bed while the roomies watched Austin Powers.

Friday {2-25-11}
I woke up, worked on my presentation, packed some of my clothes, cleaned up a little, worked on my presentation until it was finished and then left for the hospital to give my presentation. The presentations over all went fairly well. I was second to go and was glad to just have it done and over with. The only thing that kind of irritated me was this little speech we received from one of our course directors {for the second time none-the-less} but he had to give it to us again in front of all the other faculty {secondary motive? maybe? possibly? I think maybe so.} Anyways, when we went to the south part of the island, we packed our lunch {which consisted of turkey sandwiches, fruit and diet coke in addition to some snacks for the car ride including cheese balls and animal crackers} since it was a long car ride and we never know when food is provided or not. Anyways, one of my classmates got the bright idea to show the course director our snack food {minus the sandwiches and fruit mind you} for reasons I don't know and the course director kind of freaked out and told us that food will kill us. Yeah, maybe he is right, but it is what it is. Anyways, he brought up our stupid snack food again at the presentation and told everyone there that he was appalled we would make such food choices. Ok - what was the point of bring this up again - to make us all feel about an inch tall? Anyways, moving on. I'm over that. Presentations and course is now done.

On a more positive note, it was great to see some of the instructors we had throughout the three weeks. These people really did make a difference in my life by opening it up to several other possibilities in medicine. Overall the course was fantastic! I would recommend it to all of my classmates. It's too bad that they only take six students a year and even with that, with budget cuts all, that might be going lower in years to come. Which is a shame really but the things I've learned on this rotation, they just don't expose you to in medical school. I feel this experience has contributed to making me a more well-rounded person. I have made some of the best memories these past few weeks which will last a lifetime.

On our way to our final presentations in good 'ol K'hol!

After the presentations were over, we headed back to the house so that Nick could pack his stuff as he had a Friday night flight off the island. Once he was packed, the whole crew headed down to my families place in Kona for dinner. We had steak, Ono fish, and potatoes on the grill which were all excellent! Once dinner was done and the dishes cleaned, it was time for Nick to be dropped off at the airport, so we all piled into K'hol  with Ryan this time and headed back up to the coast, dropped Nick off and then went back to our house.

Nice Hawaii....most places call them bumps, but Speed Hump? It's definitely worth a good chuckle. These signs were all over the airport and the island.

We spent the night hanging out, having some drinks, looking at pictures and playing dice. When Ryan and I went to bed, Kelsey, Wade and Sean were still up so I knew Ryan and I wouldn't be getting a full nights sleep. Sure enough, I heard the Tiffany "I think we're alone" song come on and knew the three of them would be in our room very shortly. I think it was the second night in the house when Wade taught us his Tiffany dance and every day/night since that night we would all do the Tiffany dance. So once I heard the song, I knew the three of them would be barging into my room for a dance party. Lol. What it would have been like to have cameras in that house - ha! Good times!

Saturday {2-26-11}
To be continued...

*sigh* I'm tired. We are headed out early tomorrow morning on the Road to Hana. So I'm going to go to bed. I'll update {and hopefully make it all the way current} tomorrow.

~Ashley