Brian Travels to Europe

So, I really don't know how soon anyone is going to notice this, but I figured a blog post would be the easiest way to share my stories so that I don't have to repeat the same stuff repeatedly.

I guess I should first do a better job of explaining the program I'm in. The Washington Semester Program is like a study abroad for those that don't want to leave the US. A lot of international students come over to participate as well. It is split up into different programs such as journalism, history, and business. Basically, you take seminars and classes some days of the week and work at an internship during the others.

This year they decided to try including a graduate part to the program as well. All of the people that are taking part were in pretty much my exact situation: no permanent career offers but looking for ways to gain experience and continue our education (also wanting to pretend we didn't graduate). Pretty much all of us got the ad in the mail, said "what the hell, why not" and signed up.

One of the perks of the global business seminar is a trip to either China or Europe, which is why the 12 undergraduates and 8 graduates in the program just spent the last week in Paris and Brussels.
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The trip began with a ridiculous start in Paris. The undergraduates and the professor had already been there for a few days, so we would meet up with them at Disneyland Paris. Our escort had to take our bags to the hotel, so we were on our own with rudimentary instructions in a new country immediately following a night transatlantic flight. I don't know how we pulled it off, but we made it just in time to sit through an hour long presentation on the "success story" of a company that has operated at a loss since its creation. We were given passes to the parks for the rest of the day, but most of us wanted to make use of our short time in Paris and left early.

We were in Paris for only 2 days and nights, but we made the most of it. I saw most of the essential tourist sights and participated in the requisite consumption of alcohol. One night, we accidentally wandered into a bar before we noticed that it was full of high schoolers. One girl even had braces! We chugged our drinks and got out of there quickly. The other night, we met a drunk, gay, brittish dude who bought everyone drinks and was one of the most ridiculous people I've ever met.

While Paris was fun, most of the program took place in Belgium. The country makes by far the best chocolate, waffles and french fries. Also, this may be blasphemy, but I now think I enjoy Belgian beer more than Irish. First of all, it's high alcohol content. (You're a wuss if you go less than 9%) But unlike other strong beers, Belgian beer is absolutely delicious, and you really can't tell that it has such a high content.

Within Belgium, we took a day trip to Antwerp, which is home to the world's diamond trade. We all left feeling like diamonds are the biggest scam in the world. Fortunately, the city was cool enough to just walk around.

We also took a trip to Bruges, which is one of the best preserved medieval cities in Europe. Lots of old canals, bridges, and buildings. At some point, we're all going to get together and watch the movie "In Bruges" which is supposedly hilarious.

We had one free day, that a few of us used to spend a day and a half in Amsterdam.

Brussels itself is a pretty sweet city. One bar, the Delirium Cafe, is now a possibility for my favorite bar in the world. The city is also home to the coolest record store I have been to. Brussels is home to the EU, which is the main reason we stayed there. We toured all the big institutions there, but left even more confused about how that whole crazy bureaucracy works than before we went.

Unfortunately, we finally had to leave this morning. We flew over Ireland on St. Patrick's day, which was pretty cool, but I'm not really celebrating because my liver is about ready to shrivel up and die.

If you're still reading by now, I hope you enjoyed the stories, and I'm sorry I've been so crappy at staying in touch.

FML

I think i got food poisoning. Pretty sure I am the sickest i have ever been in my life. im never eating anything ever again.

It's the blanket with sleeves!

It's been a while since this blog has been updated, so I thought I'd share an idea that Belma and I just came up with. Like, about 5 minutes ago via text message. We were discussing snuggies and I had a thought: how great would it be to have a snuggie party? FLF could totally pull it off. Details haven't been worked out yet (because, well, location will be difficult), but, um... yeah. It'll be epic.

I am officially diseased

I finally went to the doctor like a good little adult. they made me get blood work done, and it was discovered that i have celiac's disease. Now, i suspected that for a while and didn't really do anything about it, nor did i care thinking you know, whatever, i don't like bread pasta or beer so who cares. Well, ya know what else has gluten in it? CHEERIOS! I am so mad/upset! no more cheerios for the rest of my life :(. also, granola bars are another. fml. i know that given the variety of other things i could have had its really not bad, but its really really annoying. that is all

plans, life

Amigos! This is less a blog posting and more a letter to the editor and readers of the FLF paper, but please continue reading anyway.

I have religiously been checking this site for updates from all of you. Despite my silence, I’ve enjoyed reading what everyone has to say, and I’m always happy to hear of the successful things you all accomplish. Game Stop, needle-stabbing, traveling to India, client management, unemployment, grad school, volunteering—one thing’s for sure: we run the gamut of successfulness. Sarcasm aside, I really do love hearing/reading from/about you guys. And as time goes on, I regret the time we didn’t spend together and miss the time we did.

Anyway. Gross. Enough of that.

The real reason I’m writing is because whilst I sat under my apple tree pondering life the other day, I happened upon a magnificent idea: we need to schedule a road trip. NEED. And rather than opt for something practical, my brain did me the extraordinarily kind service of running away to Candy Land with the idea. Don’t ask me what that means, but before long, I had planned a road trip that started at Disney World and ended in our nation’s capital not before it had – wait for it – taken us across FORTY-FIVE states AND to Vegas!!!!

I don’t know if you guys are as excited as I was at this point, but if you’re not, hold onto your corsets because this story still hasn’t reached its climax. While trying to figure out how to get to our multiple destinations, where to stay, etc., I thought, “Golly! Why don’t we rent a couple of vehicles to drive around the country.” That’d be cool: the FLF Armada. Has a ring to it, ja?

But then I arrived at my greatest idea ever ever. In fact, it left me wondering if my apple tree was the same one Newton sat under centuries earlier…. “No!” I said aloud (because you can’t confine ideas like this to thoughts only – they must be expressed). “Why don’t we rent a fifteen-passenger VAN and travel around the country together!!” Think about it guys: we could make peanut butter sandwiches, play musical instruments and board games, sing kumbaya, and maybe even have a CAMPFIRE in the back of a van WHILE driving around the country!! Not to mention the appeal of living out of the back of a van when young children are running around at Disney World... All things considered, if this idea isn’t Mensa-worthy, I don’t know what is.

Okay. Dreams and wishes aside, it would be cool if something like this could happen. I know ideas like this (though not nearly as awesome) have been tossed around since we’ve known each other. And I’ve started to accept that flexibility won’t ever be the same as it once was, but I’m still a believer in the you-make-time-for-what-you-want-to-make-time-for concept. To a point anyway. That’s not meant to call people out; I’m just defending my fantasticality (a sweet word that sounds made-up but isn’t) by pointing out that there are shreds of practicality somewhere in my story. Let’s try to figure something out. The beauty of a road trip, too, is that we could visit the friends that are too good to join in. I like those sorts of built-in guilt-trips.

Okay. That’s all. Just wanted to share my beautiful dream (that Bridget slightly contributed to as well). I hope all’s well with everyone. Please write more, too! – it gives me something to do during the day aside from applying for jobs and watching Days of Our Lives with my mom.

Thanks, fellow readers. Love and kisses.

They were dumb enough to let me play with needles, so of course I stabbed myself

Today in my clinical practice of medicine class we had an injections workshop where we practiced giving and getting injections (we didn't really practice getting them we just practiced on eachother so we got stabbed a lot). Anyway, our professor went through this whole long thing in class about being careful and not messing around while we were holding the needles cause he didn't want anyone stabbing themselves or anyone else. The entire time he was giving this little lecture, I was sitting there thinking, I'm not gonna be messing around and I'm still gonna end up stabbing myself. So we got through the intramuscular and subdermal shots fine and then came the intradermal. I opened up the needle and I could not for the life of me get the cap off. Being the genius that i am, I decided to just pull harder; well, the cap came off, but the needle proceeded to go into my left middle finger on the palm side of my finger on the left side of the finger...it went all the way across my finger came out the right side and hit my middle finger...that would be far ore impressive if you saw how small the needle was. I also managed to stab through multiple blood vessels so now I have a bruise across my finger. Being as coordinated as I am, after that I got a new needle, got it all filled up with saline solution, and then proceeded to drop it on the floor. It was slightly ridiculous. I felt like people felt like I was nervous about the shots or something, I knid of wanted to tell the boiling soup on my hand story or the slamming my head into the ceiling story, but I figured normal people that aren't me can only handle witnessing so much clumsiness in a day.

stupid heater

Today I got home from going to the sabres game w/ med school people (so not the same as nd games with you guys fyi) and realized I had to put my scrubs in the dryer for lab tomorrow; well, funny story about how my washer was open and still totally full of water cause someone opened it and stopped the cycle right at the beginning. There are two possibilities for this, the first is that I'm a dumbass and forgot to close it after i put my scrubs in yesterday. The second (and the one that I'm going with so that I don't feel like an idiot) is that I've had maintainance people in my apaetment the past two days because my heater is broken so I'm thinking for some reason they couldn't have the washer running while working on the heater and opened it and forgot to close it (yes its unlikely but it's what i'm going with.
today they told me that it was my air conditioner leaking that broke my heater. the best part about that is that I had my air conditioner set at 75 so I think its actually been on maybe 3 or 4 times since i moved in. fantatic. supposedly my heater will be fixed tomorrow which would be fantastic cause im cold.
Anyway, theres not actually a point to this. I'm just waiting for the washer to finish so I can put my scrubs in the dryer and go to bed. It's taking forever and I'm bored. It's pretty much all the heater's fault which I guess makes it all the air conditioners fault