More nerdy squirrel photos.  I just can't help myself, I see them everyday.  

 This one is thinking..why is she staring at me?

 This one is ready to do some kung fu.  

 I got dressed up and went out with Katie again last night and we went to this piano bar in Lansing.  

 We parked next to the cute restaurant, Clara's, that Katie and I went to a while back.  

 This woman was fabulous.  She had a great voice.  

 We got one of these..they throw some dry ice in to make it bubbly!

I necropsied one of these the other day:  an leucistic (white) axolotl.  Mine only had one leg but apparently they can regrow entire limbs in months.  They are from Mexico and the Aztecs used to eat them.  Now they are endangered b/c of pollution and habit destruction...What a surprise.  They have both lungs and gills..in case you were curious.  

 

I wrote a 1 pg paper on atherosclerosis last night.  If you want to freak yourself out, just pick up a human pathology book.  Apparently precursor lesions to atherosclerosis can be found in almost all children.  Maybe next time I'll think twice before I eat biscuits and gravy, although it's one of my favorite foods.   Speaking of saturated fat, I've pretty much become a vegetarian while in Michigan and have decided to stay one.  I had been thinking about it for some time now and I'm liking it.  I like the American cattle industry but I figure that it will survive without my support.  And I'll still eat meat if someone is cooks it but I'll stick to vegetarian if I get the choice.  Vegan-ism is a whole other story.  Maybe someday, but definitely not right now--I drink a ton of milk. 

I decided to take a few pics of where I'm working yesterday.  

 This was sitting in the parking lot.  Maybe I'll be able to afford one of these some day, although there is so much better uses for money...starving children in Africa, world peace, protecting the environment, etc.

 Hydrangeas

 Multi-headed microscope that the residents use everyday to go over biopsies.  Yesterday, I was in here and picked up the Journal of Internal Med and flipped to the first histo photo that I could find.  I asked what is monocrotaline?  David, my fav resident here, replied a toxin from the plant Crotalaria.  I was like, "He's right!"  And he kick he shoe off.  It flew over and hit the wall just as one of the pathologists walked into the room and starting talking to me.  I was dying trying not to have a laugh attack.  

 MSU has BL-3 labs and necropsy floor

 The bldg was built in 08

 I went out with Katie again last night and met a couple of her girl friends from her class at this great restaurant.  The girls showed me how to taste wine--I really like sweet red wines--and we had brie cheese, which was fantastic.  Katie and her girl friends definitely live more liberal lives than I do but I really like them, especially Katie.  They are all gorgeous and super smart and we had some great conversations.  

It had rained and when the sun came out this morning it was beautiful!  I was sitting on the patio tonight and another Chinese girl started talking to me again.  She discovered that I believe in God and she asked if I went to church.  I said yes and she asked, "Every week?"  When I said yes she and her friend let out surprised "Oooo"s.  She said most people in China don't believe in anything.  This I already knew.  She told me that some people there are Muslims.  It is crazy to think that the largest country in the world has so little religion.  And what little religion is there is one that broke of from Christianity, believing that an "angel" told Muhammad that Jesus wasn't God.  Islam is actually the fastest growing religion.  Although Catholics still have them beat in numbers I fear this will not last.  China could use some missionaries...there is soo much opportunity there to save souls.  I think the language barrier is huge (Chinese sentence structure is pretty much opposite of English) and it is always hard to convert people, especially to a minority religion.  The girl said that their government is fairly tolerant of Christians.  I know that in some other Asian countries that is not the case.  

The Chinese girl also got me thinking about our own country and Europe.  Christianity is dying here.  You can surround yourself with it if you try, but so many people are losing their faith.  Hence, missionaries belong here too and we are faced everyday with opportunities to share our faith and save souls.  

Alright, I have managed to keep working out, but I haven't studied in four days.  I've been having too much fun!  I still haven't caught up on sleep but you only live once, right?

 Here's my nerdy photo of the day.  They have four different colors of squirrels in E Lansing.  

 This is on the wall in the study room that I use for working out.  

 This is the fabulous patio where I like to chill.  I am sitting on it right now and just had a charming conversation with a Chinese girl.  She told me that the Chinese government limit people's usage of fb (limits productivity I'd guess) and they monitor what movies are shown there.  She said Ted would be too scandalous for instance.  She said that you can get software from computer geek friends to jump over the government firewalls and explore the "outside" internet.  Wow, life sure can be different outside the good, old USA.  She gave me her name, email, and number and said she show me around if I ever come to China.  I would be all over that if plane tickets were free!

 This is Katie, a fourth year Michigan student that I met on Saturday.  She is soo nice and super interesting.  We have quite a bit in common.  She want to do a neuro internship and residency and, like me, doesn't know where she is going to end up for sure.  She happens to be a violinist (which I am totally jealous of) and    played in the national symphony in europe when she was in undergrad and is a fablous line dancer.  We went line dancing here at the Whiskey Barrel on Saturday.  Totally fun!  I had no idea that there are so many different line dances.  And I thought that I was from the country.  

 Kirk, whom I also met on Saturday, is an equine-only vet west of E Lansing.  He has his own solo clinic with a huge clientele and he's only 28--not a bad achievement.  And he's a lot of fun like Katie and better at line dancing than I am.  Unfortunately he has a thing for blond women b/c he looked at Katie and I and said two brunettes are as good as one blond.  Thanks Kirk.  

 On Sunday, I went up to Saginaw to visit my friend Cassidy LeClaire.  We went to this huge, beautiful garden.  When we were about to leave it started raining, but the rain was really pretty and who doesn't like running in the rain?

Amish cockscomb

 A labyrinth!

 We went to Meijer to get some pita bread to go with the hummus that we made and saw this guy driving his scooter down the road.  

 I went out to dinner with Katie last night and she took me to this super cute restaurant in Lansing that used to be a train station.  

 The train

 The capitol bldg in Lansing

 Katie took me to really classy bar in downtown Lansing to get martinis.  

Some of the best conversations happen over a couple of good drinks.  Katie actually gave me a whole new perspective on life last night!  She told me that she is going to have a career that is going to be part of what makes her happy and she won't let anyone hold her back, even if she loves them.  I really respect her for that and think she is truly independent.  It can be sad, but at our age it can be best to let people go to follow our dreams.  New places bring new people that are just as wonderful as the people you left behind.  Sometimes certain relationships or plans aren't meant to last and better plans take their place.  

Speaking of better plans taking the place of old plans, I just finished reading Genesis (finally!) and absolutely love the story of Joseph.  The man was sold into slavery be his brothers when he was seventeen and he ended up in jail for several years only to end up in charge of all of Egypt and feeding the whole world during a seven year long drought.  Clearly God has a knack for changing his people's hurt into prosperity.  

Hi all, if you're wondering what I'm up to in MI, I'm either eating, sleeping, working out, or studying pathology.  Michigan State appears to have a good program.  They all go over biopsies together every day and have a high biopsy case load.  The school is huge and has acres and acres of campus and research farms like ISU.   MI has more woods than IA and it is rather pretty up here.  

My last day in CO.

 Goodbye Rockies.  I will miss Matt and Branden a lot.  After 820 more slides, my class ended with a practice gross path boards test.  Now I know why they say that they don't have to make the tests tricky for you to fail.  You get 1.25 min per question to look at a slide, write a morphologic dx, the causative organism,  and sometimes the pathogenesis.  I know that I will be able pass that test eventually but I have a lot of studying to do.  The amount of information that the 3rd year residents have put in their brains is amazing.  

 Got to go to see my family on the way to Michigan.  

This is my first photo from MI.  There may not be mountains here but people are super friendly here.  I'm sitting in  a student lounge on campus and the girl sitting next to me is talking in French or something.  Another girl walked up to me earlier and asked if I wanted free ice cream.  And tons of people say hi when they walk by you in the hall even though they've never seen you before in their life.  

My externship has started off well with an alpaca necropsy.  It was a suri, a valuable type that has hair as fine  as mine.  I try really hard to ignore how cute some of the animals that end up on the necropsy floor are.  I'm going to be writing more reports here than at CSU and will have the same great mix of gross pathology and histopath.