school.

School. It's started. I just finished my third week and so far so good. I'm keeping my job and taking Spanish classes at the Davis Adult School, hoping to keep myself balanced. Classes are intense but I've yet to feel completely stressed out. I've heard that it will hit next week so I'm a bit worried, but I know I can handle it.

Below is an e-mail I wrote to Dave's grandmother pretty much explaining what I've been up to. I figure it's easier on my hands to copy paste it than type up a whole new one. :)

I started school on the 4th and have been going pretty much non-stop since. I've taken the weekends off so far but only because I was home with my parents and had other things to do. I think taking those breaks are necessary though, so I'm not worrying myself over those lost study days. I did purchase a desk on Monday (I never used a desk while at Davis but have found my method of study needs to be different.. enter my desk!) and am loving it. I have it set up with a white board that I update with that day's schedule and a cork board with the week's assignments printed out. I also have an alarm (I slept through my phone alarm last Friday and determined a real alarm necessary) and a photograph of me and David from my graduation. I'm very proud of my desk set up. :)

I had my first real day of clinical lab today... I wore scrubs (all white), learned how to put on sterile gloves and properly wash your hands (both harder than I thought). I also learned how to do vital signs - temperature, pulse rate, respiration rate, and blood pressure. I'll be using some of these skills in the clinic this semester. We're doing our clinicals at a mental health facility in Sacramento. We've only had our orientation so far, but it seems like it will be a lot of fun and very interesting.

Classes themselves are pretty good too. I'm auditing the hardest course of the semester, Pathophysiology and Pharmacology, because I took it Woodland Community during my gap year. I'm so thankful for this because my load has been lightened significantly. All I have to do is show up to lectures regarding concept maps/disease flow charts. I don't have to take any exams for the class! I had two quizzes this week. I received a 90% on one and 100% on the other. The first quiz was on APA format... I thought in the references you would put: Author, year, title, publisher, city. Nope! It's Author, year, title, city, publisher. Go figure.

I've also made many good friends! I absolutely love my classmates. I'm so grateful to have such a good group of people to go through this craziness of school with.

The other day, I sent a package to my friend Doug who will be going to visit David for Carnival. I'm sending a few English for Spanish speakers books for the families I met and became close with, an astronomy book for David to use when on his roof at night, and some dried cranberries because David ate the dried cranberries someone had sent him to give to someone else. I'm so excited for him to come home! He'll be coming up to Davis the day before my birthday and I couldn't be happier. Best birthday gift!