(1) Jared took his first set of midterms for his FINAL term here in Grenada, and, no surprises, knocked 'em out of the park. He came out of them really worried since they were some of the hardest tests he's taken so far, but the curve saved him. He got straight A's. Thass my guy.
I feel like the only time you hear about Jared on this blog is when I'm like, "Jared took a test today. Aced it." "Jared studied less than usual. We even went outside." "Jared studied more than usual. I got so much work done." That's because med school has taken all of his former hobbies and ground them into our tile floors. There is NOTHING to his life besides medical school. It's fine because studying medicine is the best hobby ever in his mind and I do surprisingly well being left to my own devices all the time. But it still makes me a bit sad for him. It is what it is though, and will continue to be this way for at least six more years.
(2) I made another video for a cute little family. It's not done yet, or else I'd post it. I offered to do a mini photoshoot for them too because I want to get some practice. However, what with med school being the way I described it in the last point, Allie wanted to do the photos and video all at the same time because her husband couldn't afford to take more than one two-hour period off from studying. I love that every time I do one of these shoots I learn so much--like never ever do a photo and video shoot simultaneously. Whoops! It turned out fine, but was crazy stressful.
(3) We submitted our clinical rotation preferences! Much thinking and praying and strategizing went into our decision, but in the end we went with Nevada, California, and Georgia. Obviously we're hoping for our first choice, but we could essentially be put anywhere. Even somewhere not in our top three. Like New Jersey. But honestly, that would be fine. It's only going to be for a year or so. Now I'm spending all my free time looking for housing options in all of the areas we put on our list. It's so fun to imagine what our life will be like six months from now. We won't find out where we're placed until mid-July, and then Jared's rotations start mid-August. THANKS SGU. Fingers crossed we'll be able to find decent housing two weeks in advance of us moving.
(4) I finished putting together my first blog book. It covers my first two years of blog posts and is 250 pages long. Sheesh! It was waaay more of a time investment than I thought it would be. I worked on it several hours a day for two weeks straight to get the formatting right. I used lulu.com because it was the best value and we so poor. It'll be good to have a physical copy of this space in case the Internet ever mysteriously disappears.
(5) We pooled together all the Amazon gift card money we've received for birthdays and Christmas over the past year and bought an expensive camping pad!!!! It's like a cross between an air mattress, a foam pad, and an actual real-life mattress. And it's big enough for the two of us. I've been dreaming of this camping pad for months. I love love love camping. Jared kind of likes the idea of camping, but struggles with the sleeping aspect of it. Hard. Like one time sleeping on the hard ground caused him to throw out his back and he was basically paralyzed and in extreme pain for two solid weeks. I've been making it my mission over the past year to slowly collect all the most unreasonably comfortable camping gear on the market so that camping can be something we both enjoy. For Jared's back and med school schedule we'll probably be confined to car camping, but that doesn't bother me. We'll be sleeping like royalty out there.