I wish I had exciting stories of traveling around Miami, stories about sightseeing, unique experiences, or fun things, but we really haven’t done anything while we’ve been here.  Andy’s spent most days shuttling between classes downtown, classes in South Miami, clinicals in Pembroke Pines (which is like 40 miles away, so with Miami traffic it takes about an hour and 45 minutes to get there), Spanish class, and certification for ACLS.  In his “free time” he was also expected to study for his giant comprehensive exam (which 60% of the class usually fails) and do a bunch of assignments.  Fun, right?  Well, the good news is he passed the comp without any problems and has managed to stay on top of all these assignments, despite how much work this has been (as a side note, he was told that only 40% failed this semester so I guess things with the comp are improving).  This schedule should slow down a little bit soon, once the certifications are out of the way and some of the stress of the first few weeks has passed.  We’re looking forward to a weekend off, but we haven’t had one of those yet and won’t have one this weekend either.  Oh well, maybe the week after. We’ve been here for two weeks and we haven’t seen much beyond the boundaries of our building.

I’m back at work on a set schedule and really enjoying working from our building.  My office just gave me a Blackberry so I now have two Blackberries to keep up with and keep track of.  I have been going to the gym during my lunch break every day; unfortunately, my metabolism seems to have slowed to a crawl and it hasn’t made much of a difference.  After work, I always make dinner and it seems like cooking is so much easier now than it ever was on the island – I never seem to have a hard time incorporating vegetables and healthy food into our diets in a way that never seemed possible on the island (which was an awful lot like Lost at times, Marianna!).   Old island habits seem to die hard though; I was making Krista’s enchiladas the other night (which were awesome, Krista) and I actually caught myself worrying about leaving the oven on for a long period of time in case I would run out of propane.  Now, we don’t have a propane stove, but I don’t think I’m completely adjusted to the US yet.  I find myself worrying about generating too much laundry, too, but then I remember that I have a washer and dryer in the apartment.

So there isn’t much to update about; it’s all working and studying for the most part.  We will have visitors over the next few weeks, so as people come and go we should have a few decent stories and pictures.  I do have one story, but it’s one of great frustration; it was one of those moments where I realize that just because we’re in America, it doesn’t mean that EVERYTHING is easy.  I was trying to track down a varicella vaccine for Andy (that’s a chicken pox vaccine for all you non-medical folk reading this).  The school recommends one clinic that they have an agreement with, so I called them up.  The woman I talked to said she had no idea if they had the vaccine in stock and that if they did have it, I would have to call the doctor on his cell phone to schedule something outside of office hours because he’d be out of the office most of the week.  She said she’d call me back.  A few hours later another woman from that center called saying she still didn’t know about whether they had the varicella vaccine or if I could make an appointment for this week; being completely useless, I gave up on this clinic.  I moved on to the next name on the list of locations recommended by the school, except they didn’t have phone numbers.  So I Googled them and came up with a number for one – they didn’t seem to speak any English, which made it pretty difficult to get an answer.  I then dug out my insurance card and started looking for primary care physicians in the area.  I called the first one and got no answer.  I called the next one and left a message (they still haven’t called me back).  Then I went to the next one and the woman who answered didn’t know what “varicella” was; I took this as a negative sign and hung up (what kind of person in a doctor’s office doesn’t know what varicella is?!).   I finally got a decent response at the next number.  A man answered and put me on hold to see if they had the vaccine.  They did, then he put me on hold again to find out how much it would cost.  3 full songs played while I was on hold (one of them was Jefferson Airplane – it was a radio station for the 60′s and 70′s).  He comes back on the line to tell me that they can only give the vaccine if Andy gets a full physical, too.  I told them I didn’t need that, that I could send a letter from our primary physician that he was in perfect health and just needed the vaccine.  He said that the doctor refused and would only do it if he “became a patient” and they billed our insurance.  I told them that I was not willing to have them charge me for more than I needed or wanted and that this kind of greed was absolutely unacceptable.  I hung up angrier than ever.  I called the next number and they had the varicella, but only in the children’s dosage.  Next number: they were out of the vaccine and had ordered more, but it would be a while.  However, the woman at the desk gave me the number of a clinic that would definitely have it, or so she said; I took this with a grain of salt.  I called them and sure enough they had the vaccine, in the adult dosage, and they didn’t need to examine Andy’s insides to give him a stupid shot for chicken pox (and just charge me more than they already would).  Thankfully, after an hour of making phone calls, I finally had an appointment made.  This frustrated me so much because I don’t feel like getting an appointment to get a shot should ever, ever, ever be this difficult; things are supposed to be difficult in Dominica, not in America.  If Andy had just gotten the chicken pox as a kid (like I did in the first grade from Robby), none of this would have been a problem.  Oh well… c’est la vie!