Job & Chicago Updates

     So I just realized I've been slacking once again in my posting/notifying you all about how the new job is going.  I know I've told many of you about the eye bank briefly, so even if I've talked to you about it a little hopefully this will give you a better idea.

     Essentially you could take the picture I painted in my last posting about what I'd be doing at the eye bank and just burn it.  I haven't been doing anything that I thought I'd be doing!  Pretty much since day one I've been, what I like to consider, and glorified secretarial detective!  So I've been doing paperwork......... A LOT of paperwork!  How exactly is the best way to articulate what I do?  I'm sorry if this all comes off leaving you with no clue, but it's sort of hard to describe accurately.

     Well here it goes!  Picture every donor has a case file.  This case file has it's own unique number.  There are all kinds of different things that need to be approved and tested and investigated in each donor chart.  And everything that not only has to be done with the donated tissues, but also their whole medical history has to be documented in these charts.  So far, thats where I've stepped in for the eye bank.  There is an overwhelming amount of paperwork that has yet to find a home in it's corresponding chart.  So I take paperwork and put it in charts.  I also take charts that are needing final approval and make sure all the paperwork that is supposed to be there, is in fact, in the chart.  This requires me to look up information detailing each chart on Midwest eye bank's national online database.  I check shipping data for flags, where the tissues went, did we get paperwork from those locations, did the tissues get approved, etc.  I've also been given assignments where I've had to go through already filed charts to recheck if the required paperwork is all there.

     So again, I've done a lot of paperwork!  I'm currently working on an assignment that is the most fun....... I've literally been given 96 pages worth of case numbers, or, all the cases that we have at the eye bank, and I'm going through the file cabinets and verifying that they are all actually there.  This is very time consuming and tedious work.

     Again, I'm sorry if I've done a terrible job of attempting to describe what I've been up to, but there isn't a whole lot to tell!  But I must say, even though I haven't been up to what I thought I would be so far, I can't say I'm entirely unhappy.  Yes is all the paperwork terribly mundane?  Sure it is.  But I really feel like I'm helping the eye bank out a lot!  There is a lot of paperwork that I've done because there is no one else who has had the time to do all of this!  And as boring and lame as it sounds to be doing, it is actually super important that it gets done.  So does the work kinda suck?  Yeah, sure it does!  But it is vital that it IS done, so I'm surprisingly happy to do it for them.  Plus, and I really don't mean to toot my own horn, but I'm shockingly good at it.  I'm efficient and organized.  I've been able to take all the charts and paperwork and organize it all very well so that everyone knows what-is-what and where it all is.  People have been coming directly to me to ask questions about their charting and what to do with it.  So again, as lame as the work sounds, I must also sound lame because I'm kinda enjoying it.

     I must also say, I won't be doing this the whole time I'm at the eye bank.  I have already been doing a little bit of cell counting, reorganizing stored corneas and scleras, and I'm eventually going to be training on how to go out and do eye procurements!  I'm very excited about that last one!  I'll have to let you know more about that when I actually start getting around to that though, because as of right now, I only know that they want to train me in on that job.

Wow, I've actually written a solid amount about doing paperwork.  You must all be falling asleep reading this!  How about some other updates?!  Hannah and I went downtown for St. Patrick's Day weekend to see the river all green and weird looking.  We saw brother +Josh Ditthardt and finally met his wonderful new bride-to-be Laura!  Congrats again you two!
We were able to drive +Paul warneke back to Winona not long ago and were able to stay in town for the weekend.  That was amazing.  Always so refeshing to get out of Chicago and get back home!  Oh, also while we were home we got to go shoot guns!  So I'll add a picture of Hannah shooting just for fun!
After church today we drove over to one of the conservatories here in Chicago...... there were a bunch of plants in it.
Hmmm..... what are some other updates?  I, regrettably, just shaved off my best beard ever.  SO I guess thats news.
OH!  +Hannah only has 5 months left of PA school!!! BOOM!!!!!!
Yeah...... we're not too exciting.  Sorry!

Here is another stack of files from some random day

Here are some of the filing cabinets at work I dig through

Here is a view from the break room (aka my office)

This was my beard..... I already miss it

We visited one of the conservatories in Chicago

Finally...... a job..... deuxième partie!

     Well friends, I have been waiting for some time to write this next post.  And man, I am so happy to finally share!

     It is with surprising regret to announce that my time at the Red Hen will be coming to a close at the end of this week.  I have come to enjoy this job SO much more than I ever thought I would, and I can honestly now say that I'm going to miss working at the Red Hen, at least a little.  Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to be moving on to a new position at a new job, but I'm really going to miss the people I work with and who have really become my friends.  The free coffee, pastries, and bread are also going to be sorely missed....... because I have really taken advantage of those benefits!  But I'm going to miss my Red Hen friends so much more.  I believe I can walk away from my time at the Red Hen with a lot of valuable experience and new learned life lessons.  This barista job was given to me in a time that I could not have needed it more, and for that I will be forever grateful!

     And now after that little tid-bit, I'm sure many of you are in ardent anticipation to hear where I will be moving onto!  Starting on the 24th of this month, I will be starting my new role of being a laboratory technician at the Illinois Eye Bank!

     God has certainly been testing me with the road leading up to this position, and it is certainly a story worth telling.  Especially for my personal blog.......

     As many of you know, and I'm sure the rest of you have speculated, receiving this barista position at the Red Hen was nothing short of a God send, but I wasn't satisfied with stoping there for a job.  So I haven't stopped the endless process of seeking out and applying to other jobs around the Chicagoland area.  And so a couple of months ago this position at the eye bank popped up while searching.  While home in Winona over Christmas I had the elation of finding out I was being offered an interview!  Finally, after the innumerable fruitless applications I have completed, someone was actually willing to give me a chance!  And so I had a one-on-one interview with the manager of laboratory services at the eye bank and was invited back a week later to have a second interview that was set up to be a group interview with a few of the other laboratory technicians.  After both of the interviews were all done I felt I had done a great job and was extremely hopeful of receiving the position.

     But to my dismay, I was not chosen.....

   I was, to say the least, devastated!  I was really starting to like the Red Hen, but the thrill of the chase for this new exciting job really got my hopes up and really made me realize how ready I was to be moving on to the sort of job I was hoping to get when I first moved down to Chicago.  So to hear that I wasn't selected really hit me hard.

     I really tried to trick myself into feeling that it was alright that I wasn't selected.  I at least attempted to put on a happy face up front, but deep down, it really sucked to not be selected!

     Roughly two weeks after I had heard I didn't get the job at the eye bank I was listening to a podcast and walking to work when I realized I was not even listening to the podcast but instead just fuming over my misfortunes yet again.  And I just remember somewhere in that walk I said a quick little prayer that was something along the lines of 'ok fine God!  Clearly if you wanted me to be done at the Red Hen I would have gotten this other job, so evidently I'm not done here yet.  So I guess I'll be fine with it too for the time being.  But I really wish I knew what the heck you have in store for me!'  And man does God work in mysterious ways......

     During my break at work that same day I happened to pick up my phone and saw that I had a missed call...... from the manager at the eye bank......
     Clearly I was baffled to see that they would be calling me so recently after they told me I wasn't hired.  I remember that night Hannah came to pick me up after work and we gave one of my coworkers a ride home, and as soon as we dropper her off I told Hannah about this mysterious phone call.  I remember the look on Hannah's face and her saying that she had a feeling that I wasn't done with them yet!  So when we got home I gave them a call and was greeted by the manager who I had interviewed with.

     She told me that first of all she was very sorry for not hiring me.  As you can imagine, this took me quite by surprise because how does one who has been bitterly brooding for two weeks respond to this apology?!  "Ummm..... well yeah you should be!", or "well thanks for the call but I don't forgive you", or "I was hoping for an apology", or "....... well yeah you should be!"  But anyway, I honestly can't remember how I responded, but I can only assume from what followed that I responded respectively.
     She then continued that I interviewed extremely well and that everyone liked me but that they were in the end unable to hire me because I had aspirations of getting accepted into dental school which would already start this fall and they didn't want to hire someone in this position for such a short amount of time when they knew other applicants were willing to stay longer.  But she did have a new proposal for me.  One of their current lab techs is leaving on maternity leave and since everyone wanted to hire me before anyway, they were willing to create a paid internship for me to fill in while their other employee was absent!

     I was speechless!  I didn't know what to say!........... but I managed to squeak out "yes"!  And so here I am!  I have yet to have the exact hard details of what I'll be doing, but I do know it will be along the lines of the job I had applied for.  Some of those tasks included calling optometrists and other physicians to review donor patient charts, reviewing donor medical history, analyzing eye tissue cell counts, dissecting the corneas and other harvestable eye tissues, packaging and sending out tissues, and I just found out recently that I will at times be assisting in eye extractions!  I am extremely excited to begin and will absolutely be sharing my experiences!

     I feel exceeding blessed for this opportunity!  It is going to feel incredible to be back in an occupation working in the realms of medicine again.  This internship is going to offer me invaluable experience in not only reviewing patient history's but also reviewing anatomy, medical terminology, pathology, microbiology, etc.  This job is also going to help support Hannah and me finically a little bit more for the time being.  I also feel blessed that this job is in fact an internship because if not I would not have the chance to be assisting with eye extractions.  I also feel that my hours are going to be much more flexible this way.  And to be truthful, being in an internship works out the absolute best for the eye bank and for me looking down the road.  All in all, this seems at the moment to be a win-win scenario, and has clearly shown itself to be a case in which God knows better than I do and will make it work.

     Well if you've actually made it this far, thank you for reading and I will be sure to post again after I begin at the eye bank!

     Cheers!

Brewing the beer

      Holy cow...... well evidentially I haven't written a blog posting since the end of September!  It honestly doesn't seem like it's been that long.  Like I assumed at the start of this blog, I live a humdrum life and apparently can't find enough to write about more frequently than 4 months apart at a time....
Such disappointment....
     Well, this is something I certainly aim to improve upon in the future!  So sorry if I out of the blue throw out a barrage of postings.

     Anyway, I decided I really wanted to start brewing my own alcohols, beginning with beer!  Thanks to the generosity and love from my parents, my Christmas present was a beginners brewing kit!
     Oh the joy and jubilee this brought me!  It may have not been a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass and sundial in the stock, but the sheer bliss of that brewing kit brought me comparable excitation to Ralphie's that crisp Christmas morn' (For reference, please see "A Christmas Story" and make yourself happy).

     I must say first of all, I first wanted to begin brewing on my own after seeing a 5 gallon pickle bucket at work being thrown out.  I looked at it and instantly thought what a perfect acquisition to begin my very own fermenting felicities!  I could simply collect these barrels before they get thrown out and be able to brew to my pleasure's delight!  The possibilities appeared endless at the flicker of my imagination's content.  Little to my knowledge, it so happens that removing any sort of lingering pickle smell is a major pain in the ol' keister!  I am only now, after several months, feeling that it is usable for brewing..... and I've only gotten one of these barrels to that point.......
     Many of you may be rightly wondering, why not just ditch the dumb thing and buy a proper barrel?  Well the answer to that is simple!  I'm stubborn!  And lacking any funds to do so!  So free is better!  Here is a picture of the stupid thing!

      So as we move on, I think you can grasp a clearer picture as to my elation of receiving a proper brewing kit.

     It was packed with it all!  The fermenter, the sanitizer, the hopped malt extract, the bottles and caps, and tissues to wipe away any amateur's tears of joy!  I was ready to start.  For the first time since leaving Minnesota, I couldn't wait to get back to our apartment!

     This particular kit came with a Classic American Light malt extract to make the beer.  So in other words, a pretty wimpy beer (ABV a laughable 3.7%) but probably a good one to start with.  And at least its patriotic!  If you really care to take a look here she be: http://www.mrbeer.com/product-exec/product_id/1008/nm/Classic_American_Light_Standard_Refill1 

     Here are pictures I took for documentation of my first beer brewing experience.

This is the fermentor 

This is me preparing the HME before starting the wort

   

    Everything went extremely well except for the carbonation process.  I believe I put the beer in the refrigerator just a couple days before I was supposed to.  They gave me a general time frame in the instructions for when it would be acceptable to do so, which I waited for, but I should have been wiser and noticed that the bottles weren't quite pressurized enough.  And I should have been wiser by only putting one bottle in the fridge instead of 5!

     That being said, I did leave out 3 bottles and I discovered that those lucky few survived my accidental murder of carbonation.  So I am at least able to properly enjoy a small portion of my batch.  

     Well needless to say, I cannot wait to begin my next batch (once that pickle smell is vanquished)!  This next time around I'll be able to produce more (5 gallons instead of 2) and I'll be able to bottle and cap the beer for real.  The whole plastic bottle and screw of cap just seemed like I was cheating!

     Again, hopefully I'll be posting again here very soon.  In fact I'm sure of it, so sorry.....

     Also, if you are interested, be on the look out for +Josh Dégallier's upcoming video blog!  I'm sure it'll be a bunch of junk, but I'm looking forward to it anyway! 

I sure wish all my beer turned out this well!

Finally..... a job

Hello there everyone!

     Well I've been waiting a long time to write this post, and now, finally, the wait has ended.  I finally have a job!
     I have been hired at Red Hen Bread as a barista.  While this is not exactly the occupation I was hoping for when moving down to Oak Park in June, I am beyond grateful for this job!  We needed this source of revenue like crazy!
     After yesterday, my first day, I was excited, nervous, petrified, and lost with all the new experiences!  It's going to take a lot learning for me to get to true proficiency at this new job.  The training experience is difficult!  But I think this is going to be fun.

     Just a forewarning, I got a little carried away..... so this is a long posting!

     So the real reason I wanted to write this post isn't so much to let everyone know that I finally have a job, but really more of what I have been trying to learn through this whole phase of unemployment!  I say this because I believe God has been toying with my flimsy heart strings over these past 3 months and the only way I can justify having gone through this is to take the 3 months and use it as a time for self reflection.

     I honestly believe I needed this time without a job to get ready for marriage.  I don't know if I have fully discussed this with +Hannah, but I think I needed to not have a job for a reason.  I obviously knew I wanted to get married, and I obviously knew I wanted to marry Hannah!  But I have learned a lot about marriage by not having a job that I think would have made our first 3 months of marriage a lot harder if I had a job right away.  I know to SO many of you reading this that what I'm about to say is a no brainer, but marriage takes A LOT of self sacrifice!  Now to back myself up before everyone judges me, I knew this going into this commitment!!!  But knowing it and actually experiencing it is very different!  I'm sure when Hannah reads this she is going to laugh and think I'm exaggerating, but I've worked pretty hard while not employed to do things for her and set my wants aside.  I've been the one cleaning the apartment, for the most part, she obviously does things too!  I've done a lot of laundry.  I've done a lot of cooking, even if its basic.  I can't list everything I've done, but I can describe that I've felt many times thankful for being a full time husband!  It's tough work fellas!  It's not always easy to look forward to seeing your wife all day and then when you finally do you have to sit and listen to her cry and complain about PA school for an hour.  But its easier when you haven't been doing anything yourself all day.  I believe I needed this experience to get ready to be the same comforter even after coming home from work myself.  Even after last night, I came home from my first long day of getting trained in and feeling like an idiot all day, but I still had to do the dishes and take out the garbage and carry something out to the car, because you know what, thats fair!  Hannah worked all day too and made the food!  But anyway, I needed to learn this.  And perhaps the best way for me to learn how to live with Hannah was for me to only have Hannah to live with for these last 3 months.  Maybe now I'm ready for a job.  Being married to Hannah is incredible, but maybe in order for me to be an incredible husband back to her meant I had to solely be a husband and not do anything else.  And if thats the case, I'm thankful that I've been able to do that.

     Another lesson I think I can take from all of this is money management.  I have to be honest, I've never had to worry about money.  Even after moving out of my parents house, my job in the ER, even only part time (0.5), was enough for me to live off of easily and still save money.  Now, on the other hand, I almost literally have no money.  All my life's savings has been depleted getting married and living for 3 months without a job.  And even now that I finally have a job, we're still going to struggle with the little money I'm making.  Hannah is much better at managing money than I am, so I'm thankful for her, and I'm still learning.  But this is all a life lesson!  And even if it sucks, big time, maybe its for the best in the long run!  At least I'm choosing to view it that way.

     Lastly, I think I am now with this new job to learn a new lesson, one that is going to really be painful for me: humility.  I love the medical field!  It's incredible!  If you don't, I don't understand you, and thats ok.  But working in the ER for me was an awesome experience!  I got to work with incredible people and learn SO much.  But I'm not sure it was good for my ego.  I know I was only a nurses assistant, but I took great pride in working in an ER.  Not to mention in the same ER as my dad once worked in, in the same hospital my grandpa worked in.  After working in the ER for 5 years and graduating from college, I felt like I was "lowering" myself when apply to Gap or a grocery store.  So now that I finally have a job again, I need to be thankful for it, really thankful!  A lot of people graduating from college are in the same boat I am!  It's hard to describe, but I think I need to learn humility through this barista job.  I'm not learning how to put in a chest tube anymore, but I am trying to learn how to make a mean espresso, and thats ok!

     I believe I have learned a lot while without a job, even if I am unable to articulate it well enough for you as a reader to understand.  I have to thank +Karina Biggers (Swanson) for sending me a link about a month ago to give me a reminder in life, especially on a day when I was really depressed.  It was, to summarize, a podcast talking about God's wisdom.  And to really summarize, what to remember was that God's wisdom entails the best possible results by the best possible means.  Now, it has sucked not to have a job, or any money, or not have any close friends near by, or any family.  But maybe thats all for the best possible outcome......  rereading over what I have already written in this post, I think I've had a lot to learn lately, and would I have learned it as well or at all if my life had gone the way I wanted it too?  I think this goes for my future aspirations too.  I really thought I wanted to go to medical school and get my M.D., but it took me bombing the MCAT twice to take a step back and see that maybe medical school is awesome, but I want to be a dentist.  Life lessons are hard, and I think I need to go through sucky situations because I'm all the more stubborn!  God really has to slap me in the face to teach me.  I have to be eaten by the giant fish before I go to Nineveh!  Maybe I have to be thrown into Château d'If before being rewarded.  I believe God will give us situations in our lives that we cannot handle.  But He has a plan and I guess we just have to deal with that, because evidentially it doesn't exactly line up with ours!

     Now, aside from the biblical standpoint, perseverance is key.  Our economy sucks big time, but you have to keep trying.  Yes I previously worked in an ER for 5 years.  Yes I graduated from college with  degree in Cellular/Molecular Biology.  Yes I minored in Philosophy.  Yes I've done a years worth of undergraduate glucocorticoid research on mice.  And yes, I'm now a barista.  I really have to thank +Dave Schneider for encouraging me not too long ago.  You really kept my head up.

     And as for all my other friends, which the list would be huge to name off, I thank you all for your encouragement!  And for anyone who is reading this who has been praying for me to get a job I thank you.

     Please post your comments or questions below!  I always enjoy hearing your feedback.

Apartment Tour

Hey everyone!
   Sorry that it has been so long since my last post, but as you can imagine, I have nothing exciting happening in my life!
   But I decided to do something for you and make a tiny little tour of +Hannah and my apartment.  It's not a good video so don't get excited!  But it does show you the apartment..... so you may as well watch it anyway.
   I hope this works by the way......

Brief thought on Aristotle's Ethics book 1

     To anyone who is trying to regularly check this blog in its adolescence, I apologize for posting another entry so swiftly.  Also, thank you for reading!

     So my incredible friend Twigz and I are on a personal quest to read "The Great Books" following their 10 year track.  So far we have read a little of Plato, Aristophanes, and we are now on book 1 of Aristotle's Politics.  But our pervious reading was of Aristotle's Ethics (book 1).

     Now, if you are looking for a good summery of this reading I would suggest looking into Twigz's blog, because he is documenting in fine detail what we are covering in our readings.
What I am just hoping to cover in this post is just a brief thought over a small segment in book 1.  And I must apologize a head of time for this being such a weak thought, I'm afraid it is nothing too deep or insightful.  But since I have this blog, I figured I may as well post it and have you make of it as you will.

     The other night as I was laying in bed attempting to fall asleep, I couldn't stop my mind from wandering.  I couldn't help but start thinking about how wonderful a moment I was caught in.  There I was, laying back to back with my beautiful wife ( +Hannah Dégallier ) listening to her sleep and for some reason I was completely over come with joy!  How would I describe this moment to my children one day?  How would I describe this moment to anyone right now?!  I couldn't help but think back to this reading of Aristotle's.  He was trying to discover in this book 1 what was the supreme Good, and how that Good was happiness.  But later on in his writing he tried to make the debate that you couldn't truly evaluate a person's life as a happy one until they died!  Now, while this might immediately catch you funny, he says you can't say that they had a Good and happy life until it is over because you never know what is coming next.  You could have everything one moment and lose it all the next.

     While I think Aristotle has an interesting point, I had to take myself a small step further.  In this case of laying next to Hannah trying to fall asleep, I was happy!  It was Good!  But that instant died.  We move along in life linearly and we don't get to go back to change or re-experience.  Every waking moment we have, essentially, dies immediately after that encounter.  So can't we justly evaluate these passing moments as good or bad?

     I wonder what Aristotle would say.  I do think it served as a good reminder to me at the time though to enjoy the 'dying' moments that I'm encountering.  I currently live in an area where I know no one, I have no money left because I have no job, I have very little to occupy my days because of both of these perviously listed things........ and yet....... here I was, just laying in bed, thoroughly enjoying this moment passing me by, with my sleepy wife, who loves me!  I'm still happy!

     Like I said...... nothing too deep this time, but I still have 10 years of these books to read!  So I'm sure I'll conjure something up eventually!!!  In the mean time, please leave me your thoughts and check out Twigz's blog on our progress through the Great Books!
http://blackbirdwinona.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/unrobed-and-unadorned-thoughts-on-lysistrata/

Solo Chicago venture

       The other day I decided to take an adventure. Not the sort of glorified vacation as to the likes of +Jarrod Tembreull or +Luke O'Neil, but a reflective solo adventure none the less.

       To those who don't know me, I tend to lean more on the introverted side of the social scale. Even growing up in Winona, I really don't think it was even until college that I really began to get out on my own. So as you can imagine, moving into the near suburb of Chicago has been difficult for me! So on Thursday, I decided to push myself on a little challenge.

        

       I haven't really gotten out much since moving to Oak Park.  Despite what I just got done saying up above, I don't think it has so much to do with me being introverted, but more because I have no money.  I think I'll be writing a different post about that later, so moving on, I just haven't gotten out much.  But Thursday I just had enough.  I've been wanting for weeks now to take a solo trip into downtown Chi-town while Hannah is away all day in surgery, but I just haven't found, in my mind, the "right" day to do it.  Thursday was the "right" day.  It was beautiful outside, it had been dawning on my mind all morning, and the main deciding factor, was that I had spent the whole day killing flies in my apartment.....  I have NO clue where they were all coming from, but by 4 o'clock, and after killing my 16th fly, I had to leave.

     After giving my phone and computer a few more minutes to charge, packing my bag, and filling my water bottle, I was off!  I walked the 2 blocks down the road to the Green Line and jumped on.  While approaching downtown the train conductor came on the loud speaker reminding everyone that this train was only going through the Loop, since it was rush hour.  I didn't think much of it because I was going to get off on the 3rd stop after entering the Loop.  What I failed to realize, and what the train conductor failed to mention, was that during rush hour they did in fact only go around the Loop and not out the other way but that they also entered the Loop going the opposite direction than usual!  

It's hard to explain the thoughts that were going through my mind at the time when we got to this first stop that I wasn't expecting, only because I made a silly mistake, and immediately after doing it I realized what I had done wrong.  I decided to get off on that first stop, and I don't know why, because right after I got off it was like the clouds parted and I suddenly realized what an idiot I was for doing it.  The train was just going to keep looping!  I could have still made it to my desired stop if I would have just waited longer.  So after standing there for a few minutes, I just decided to walk.  This turned out to be a fine thing anyway, because by the time I was passing the stop I was initially going to get off on, I saw people that I was sitting by walking off the platform.

     The rest of my time I spent trying to walk to the water front.  This ended up being a little farther than I had expected, but it really wasn't that bad of a walk.  My original plan was to go sit on the beach for a little while, but by the time I made it to the beach it was completely packed, and since I hadn't thought to bring a swim suit anyway I didn't feel like parking it on the sand.  Instead I found a path that lead me out past the beach.  I walked all the way out to that point and watched everyone out on their boats and read for awhile.  It was about as halcyon a place as you can find in Chicago.

    Not that I needed this adventure to discover this, but I am really not meant for the city life.  The whole time I was downtown I felt rushed.  All the waves of traffic, people driving not caring that you are walking by, and just the sheer populous!  Its just not my cup of tea!  Don't get me wrong, I think its going to be an incredible experience to live here for the next year, and I like Chicago well enough for entertainment, but I have no idea how people live here their whole lives.  

    Over all, I enjoyed myself well enough and made it back home safely.  It felt good, surprisingly, to get out into the big world alone.  I'd easily admit that I've enjoyed myself much more when I've gone downtown with +Hannah Dégallier and other friends, but I felt like it was a noteworthy experience none-the-less!