Lola takes on Germany... again.

This trip now has been a sacrifice, because I shouldn't have spent the money on this. Money I may need for something else, but considering the fact that not too long ago I was shopping at Econo (supermarket) and spent $430 on groceries, it made me feel less bad about shelling out $600 for a nonstop round trip to Germany.
I have been wanting to visit Germany in the summer since last I was here (during summer) in 2009. I definitely missed seeing the fields of rapeseed, the green trees, the flowers everywhere. And, all the adventures that came along with it.
My flight was full. Like... packed. Like they shouldn't do this because we need the extra space in a 9 hr flight. And at the terminal, I had spotted a dirty, (I mean dirty) hippy german and  everybody who saw him was thinking the same thing: "Oh MEIN GOTT, I hope he's not sitting next to me." While I waited for the person who would be sitting next to me, these words were going through my head ALL. THE. TIME. Luckily I got seated next to a super nice danish girl who had just spent 6 months in South America, getting to know the culture and learning Spanish. We talked a lot about long distance relationships as she had met an englishman in her trips and they fell in love but she didn't know if she was cut out for the long distance thing. She showed me a picture of him, and let me tell you, she SHOULD. The guy was gorgeous.
After 3 hours of sleep, airplane food, my stomach not agreeing with anything, a sick guy coughing behind me, among other things, I arrived to Germany. It was the most natural thing in the world. It was like landing in San Juan! I felt home.
In the little shuttle bus, an older lady sat across me and asked me: "¿Tu hablas español?" I smiled. This lady could have been anybody's mom or grandma. She looked like she needed help. She proceeded to explain how disoriented she was because she didn't remember any part of this trip. She didn't know where to go next, what to do, and I was glad to help her. I led her through the airport, to customs. She didn't speak English, so I had to help translate. Next thing I know, I'm speaking English/German to two customs agents who were trying to communicate with my old lady, and the old lady in the other line, who didn't speak English either. The germans couldn't understand how these women, with an American passport, didn't speak English. I had to explain that we just belong to the United States, it doesn't mean we speak the language.
Then I had to take the women to the baggage claim. It was a bit far away, and through the airport so it was confusing for them. I was glad to be of help. After they found their bags, they went their merry way to their respective families who were waiting for them. I was then focused on making it to the train with my anemia and two suitcases.
In the train station, I met with the guy who was coughing behind me, an argentinian who recently accepted a job in Berlin and spoke no German at all. And then another old lady comes by speaking German to him, and he says he doesn't speak German. She actually spoke perfect Spanish and perfect German. We got in the train to the main station together, and it turns out that this lady lives in Cayey (of ALL places) since the 60s, when she married a soldier from Puerto Rico and came to Cayey, which she says that back then it was like stepping to 500 years before, both in architecture and in mentality. She argued that men and women in Germany were equals, and that in Puerto Rico women could not even walk into a bar without being looked at funny.
So 4 hours after the next train ride, my stomach acting up again, kids crying in the train, and being bumped into countless of times, the train arrived at Berlin Hauptbahnhof, and I began to search for my baby, Mr.J. As luck would have it, he was standing where my wagon was, and I could finally have my Nicholas Sparks moment, the reunion, with flowers and all... well, after Mr.J almost hurt his back with my heavy suitcases. :)

Internal Medicine : Morning Reports

My life these days in the Internal Medicine rotation has been quite the roller coaster. I have come to realize that this was not the moment I should have picked to make my lifestyle changes to finally go ahead and try to control the diabetic I am doomed to become. I recently re-started doing Pilates in an effort to not only fulfill my New Year's resolution (the first one I have done in YEARS), but to control my hormones, etc. and hopefully get at least a core (because I'm convinced I lack one). So in order to do this, I have started with a personal trainer and he made me a training schedule that I am supposed to follow. Ok, I started this in december, but went to Germany, got sick, stopped and ate every yummy marzipan anything that crossed my path. Back then I was only able to do this once a day, if at all, and now since I have to wake up at 5 am to get to the Morning Report at 7 am (more on that later), I figured I might as well start with my Pilates at said ungodly hour.

As you can clearly see here, I am even failing at SLEEP

So far, the day I started doing this, I got sick with the cold. I am secretly thinking that it may be my body actually trying to sabotage my workout and thus confirming my suspicions that I am really allergic to exercise. So, that was that. But then to get myself more motivated, I got me a yoga mat, some workout clothes and thus forced myself to do this because now I have to so I tell myself this was not money gone to waste. 

One thing that I found though is that Pilates gave me so much more energy. I know, I know, you are reading this and rolling your eyes, big shocker, I know. But for me it was shocking because for the first time I was experiencing it. See, I have never been a sporty girl. I abhor sports, and anything that requires sweating. Ugh, Puerto Rico makes it impossible. I swear, the humidity here makes exercise twice as hard. So me doing sports, regularly, and finding out the things that everybody who has done exercise before, like endorphins and whatnot, was a revelation. Not only that, but doing these exercises in the morning has given me a sense of accomplishment and something to cross off a to-do list (which my inner OCD person loves), and also it has given me energy for what I came here to talk about: Morning Reports and my loathing of them. 

Mr.J calls Morning Reports "Mission Control", and it is at its core, what it should be like. But it's not. It may be my hospital... actually, it is my hospital. Here, they do things differently. Instead of reporting patients and what happened overnight, and discussing conditions and treatment, they do questions from a question bank to prepare the residents for their test, making our time there completely and utterly IRRELEVANT.  I don't know what we're doing there at 7 am. I can even hear the Sassy Gay Friend (youtube it) telling me : "What, what, WHAT are you doing?". What am I doing there? No idea. Right now I have taken this time to study for my tests and catch up on Twitter or Pinterest or God-knows-what. And I may not even care anymore because now I am high on endorphins at this hour. 

Mission Control

Being here in rotations in third year of medical school is fun though, it gives you a preview of what you'll be doing when you grow up. You don't actually do any of it, but at least it's better than sitting around in a classroom and seeing patients, talking to them, reminds you why you got into this in the first place. You forget why you got up at 5 am and why when you were driving to the hospital it was still dark outside. 

The perks of getting the cold, getting asthma. Plus side, cool mask. 

Internal Medicine... Ramblings of a third year medical student

Morning Report... nobody is actually listening. 

Finally, the much anticipated rotation is here: internal medicine. I have been looking forward to this rotation since... Forever. Why? Because I would actually be doing what I believed I would be doing for the next 4 years. Internal medicine is the stepping stone for two of the things I like the most in Medicine: endocrinology (hormones) and hematology/oncology (blood and cancer).

Behold, the apocalyptic hospital beckoning me at ungodly hours. 

But the reality has been quite the opposite from what I expected. Reality has been quite... anticlimactic. I have basically been running around the halls of the hospital, moving on from my sedentary lifestyle to going up and down stairs, looking for records, writing the progress note and...that's it. We are not allowed to do much there, just follow the residents and the attending physician. Basically, annoy them to no end with our questions on how to write the damn progress notes. I guess I can't complain much, since I don't really have to answer any questions because questions here are directed to the residents and interns, and we obviously know nothing.  I have to get up at 5am to be able to get to the morning report at 7am (where we don't actually learn anything because we are too sleepy to function), and then we get out at approximately 4pm. It doesn't sound like much but I get home absolutely exhausted. To top things off, no real endocrinology (although diabetes is rampant) and no hematology/oncology cases... Yet.

I need to buy this book. Notice my emerald nail polish. 

So all my dreams are sort of crumbling down at the moment. To be fair, it's my first week. One pro to my list of cons is the fact that my attending physician may be (on the risk of sounding borderline) the best in the world. I have never encountered such a caring doctor. He combs the hair of the patients, rubs their backs, gives them massages, holds their hands, I mean, I'm on the verge of tears every time I see/hear him talk to the patients. And that, my friends, is totally worth it. Plus he takes his sweet time explaining EVERYTHING to us which is fantastic for us, and really bad for the residents who just want to finish and get the hell out of there to study. Which reminds me, I have to go back to studying. :(

What I should be doing, instead I am here, letting out my frustrations. 

But I feel I miss OB-Gyn, I miss psychiatry... And now I don't know what to do with myself. One contrast I see is the feeling I got when going to the OB-Gyn rotation. I don't know if it was my group of classmates or what, but it didn't matter how early I had to get up, I always found myself with energy to last me throughout the day, even into the night until my shift was over at 11pm. Also, going to the psychiatric hospital was amazing, no rush, no stress, everything just felt good. Here I am stressed, annoyed and I don't want to be there at all. I don't know if it's me and perhaps I just need iron supplements, but I just have no strength! We'll see what happens.

The "doctor" is in. :) 

So far.

So far, after I came back from my vacations I have been super busy with school but there are still some stories to tell. I will be working on that shortly. In the mean time, here are some pictures of Puerto Rico :)

German Christmas pt. 8

Next thing I knew, it was Christmas. Well, Christmas Eve to be more exact. They don't really celebrate the actual Christmas day here but they make the party the 24th. So I awoke to a hectic house. Preparations. Preparations. Preparations. In Mr.J's house they have a preparty party, where the mom makes lots of cake, lots of coffee and gifts and conversation are exchanged.
As I made myself ready I could hear all the drama downstairs but I was glad I didn't understand what was going on. The German was too fast for me and my vocabulary never seems to be enough. Some of what I did understand was that the mom told Mr.J's sister to get some chairs from upstairs, she didn't want to and told Mr.J to do it but Mr.J was too busy figuring out how the iron worked so he could iron his pants. A lot of scary angry German language ensued and thus I experienced true fear. You have never experienced fear until you've experienced Germans yelling at each other over God-knows-what.
But things calmed down and I went downstairs as soon as I heard the first guests at the door. Soon the house was full of laughter, cake, the smell of freshly brewed coffee and Lotti, Mr.J's dog.lotti was dressed as Santa Claus and spent the afternoon trying to avoid Lutzi the Pug who also came to visit. Apparently they are mortal enemies.
I spent the afternoon trying to understand what people were saying and it was exhausting. I don't think my brain could take it anymore. But also, I spent the afternoon cooking the turkey for the night. I had seen the huge turkey the night before and thought that we should take it out but Mr.J said no and by the time it arrived to the house the next day it was still frozen. I thought we would need a Christmas miracle if we wanted to eat that day but an hour later the turkey was ready to be prepared and put in the oven. Mr.J had asked me how we prepare the turkey in Puerto Rico and of course because I had never actually done this I had to ask my mom. After I told Mr.J how we actually do it he felt the Germans wouldn't want the ridiculous amount of garlic we use. I'm not gonna lie, I was a bit offended! Why would he ask me how to prepare the turkey if he didn't want to use my techniques? By the time we had to prepare the turkey he realized how silly he was and we put some garlic. It smelled delicious. We also incorporated a technique we use in Puerto Rico and that is taking an injection and injecting the turkey with its own juices. Every 30 min we did this and so it occupied most of the afternoon.
Then came Christmas dinner which is held at the house of Mr.J's sister. I wasn't hungry. I had a cheesecake binge during the day! So while the turkey cooked some more I played with Mr.J's niece.

German Christmas pt. 7

Continuing on with the good stories, coming back to Werne was like coming back home. I felt comfortable, everything felt familiar and good. I wanted to be here and it felt like I was always supposed to come here.
I was greeted by Lotti, the Italian mutt. She doesn't speak italian though! She happily barked and I was so glad to see her. It felt like I was cheating on Mr.Baby. But I was also so glad to see everybody else and to be greeted in such a warm way like the Puerto Ricans do, people actually glad to see you back. It felt like happiness.
The next day we had to get up super early so we could have time to visit Aachen. Today was the only day people actually could come with us and before the Christmas Markets closed on the 23rd. It was early so there was no sunlight yet, but I was full of expectations of what awaited me in Aachen, a city I had not seen when I was studying in Germany. I was also filled with the thrill of the new adventure. By the time we arrived to the train station, morning was upon us. Kamen has a small train station and we waited there by the bakery for a few minutes. It smelled so delicious. It served only to remind me how hard it is to carry a diet when such things like pudding pretzels covered in icing exist here. First stop was Bochum, where we met with half of the group. I was glad to meet with old friends and meet new ones. Then we took a regional train to Aachen... I remembered the first time I went to Cologne in one of these and this was the same route. These trains were always super full and this train was no exception. But we managed to find seats, which was a bit hard for one in our group who is 2 meters tall.
Two hours later we arrived at Aachen. We were greeted by the second part of the group, a beautiful couple from Vietnam. I was finally able to speak a bit more English and their German was surprisingly easier to understand. First stop there was the Lindt outlet. Let me repeat this... LINDT. OUT. LET. Chocolate outlet? I didn't even know these existed... let alone Lindt... delicious Lindt chocolate.
As we arrived there, we were supposed to smell the smell of chocolate but today it started raining and it is holidays so I couldn't smell anything. Inside the store there were all classes of Lindt chocolate I had not even seen before. I thought I wasn't going to buy anything, but these thoughts were useless as I saw there was 99% cacao chocolate which I thought my dad would love. All I did was buy chocolate to bring back home.
Next stop was another outlet. This time it was Lambertz, what Mr.J called the "kingpin of sweets in Germany". Here we bought Printen, a traditional Aachen cookie. Also Mr.J bought some Dominos cookies which are filled with marzipan, a horrible fruit jelly and a cookie, all covered in chocolate.
The day was gray and as we got out of this outlet, it started raining harder. We took a bus into town and now I could see all the old houses and traditional architecture that I was waiting to see. We decided to go eat first to this Lebanese restaurant but it was too full and the weather was too bad to go outside with the food. We kept looking and looking and everything was either full or closed. We ended up inside a mall, and ate... a burger. :) I guess with the rain and the trouble with finding a place to eat, comfort food was all we needed.
After this we carried on to the Aachen cathedral, where Charlemagne is buried. From outside it doesn't look like much and it is much smaller compared to other cathedrals like the one in Cologne. But inside, the real treasure lied. So. much. GOLD. All the ceiling was full of mosaics with real gold. Different patterns, different colors, everything was beyond beautiful. This certainly made the weather and the trek there worthwhile.
But the weather carried on. It was cold, it rained, there was no more sun. I didn't feel any more adventurous, I just wanted to go home. After looking around the Christmas market, we went home. I guess nobody was enjoying themselves anymore either. Everything was full, there was nowhere to sit and nowhere to go. We then went home.

German Christmas pt.6

Christmas time has been quite hectic and I haven't had much time to sit down and think about what I've been through. I am trying to enjoy every moment for I know that my time here is running out.
Every time I come to Germany I fall more and more in love with it. Even with its recycled toilet paper that sometimes feels like cardboard, even with it's unspoken rules of how to properly open the door and I was not aware of it, I have even gotten used to the stares! Germans love to stare.
This time, my German was perhaps a fraction better (there is still a lot of space for improvement!) and I could see how the people I had met before are even more funny than I thought. And how the people that I didn't like much before, I like now even less.
The other day I was with Mr.J and we met some of his friends at his apartment. I guess we were going to go out later but Germans meet somewhere else first to catch up and catch up on beers. So I met some of Mr.J's people and it was interesting to see how the themes we don't talk about with friends back home as to save the friendships (namely politics and religion) are pretty common topics here and people think nothing wrong with discussing and attacking other people's beliefs. Germans are so direct as to scathe. German humor is also direct and back home I would think "¿De dónde sacó éste tanta confianza para hablarme así?", but here my Puerto Rican skin would have to thicken in order not to feel offended.
There was a moment in the endless stream of German conversation that I realized they were going too fast, that I didn't understand where words began and others ended, that I didn't understand at all what they were talking about, not even the main topic. I was reminded of this episode I saw of the series "Switched at Birth". If you haven't seen it, they deal beautifully with deaf people and the problems they face. The scene I was reminded of was when the deaf kid was surrounded by hearing kids and they were all laughing and making jokes but he couldn't understand, he couldn't read lips and the camera zooms into his point of view and all sound goes out. This is how I felt at this moment. And nobody seemed to notice/mind/care.
On to nicer stories...
The next day I went back to Mr.J's hometown and it was unusually warm for this time of the year. Even though it was dark outside when we were driving, I remembered the streets and houses and I remembered the lights in the windows and the Christmas decorations. But it was not going to be a white Christmas this year like I hoped for! When we finally got home, it felt just like that... Home.