Wednesday, 23 September 2009

• Graduation, Boards and San Diego Vacation

  Alright, I’m going to try to make another dent in what I have to catch up on.  So, after mom and dad left us, I only had a couple weeks of PA school left.  July 31^st was my last day, and when I left the clinic that night, I had graduated.  It was kind of strange.  Since we had our graduation ceremony in May with the rest of the school, there was no fan fare when we actually finished.  I didn’t take any time off after graduating, but went straight into full time studying for boards.  I had been working through one review book during the month of July, but I really turned up the pace in August.  Because I did so well on my final in June, I felt pretty confident in scheduling my boards for as early as possible.  I also knew that I was pretty worn out and couldn’t sustain studying full time for very long. 

  August 10^th came pretty fast, but I’m glad I didn’t put it off any longer.  I was thankful to find there was a testing center only 10 minutes from our home and also that one of my good friends in the program decided to take the boards with me that day.  It was nice to see a friendly face when I showed up at the testing center that at 8 am.  I finished the exam at 1:30 and I felt like I had been run over by a truck and I was really questioning my decision to take the exam so soon.  Thankfully though, in the age of electronic testing and email, I didn’t have to wait long to find out my score.  Three days later, I got an email informing me that I had passed my boards.  Hooray!  Not only that but I had scored a 729 (350 is passing) and had landed in the 97^th percentile.  I was in total shock, but thrilled.

  A week later, Micah and I headed out for some much needed relaxation and celebration.  After church Sunday, we drove down to San Diego to get away and enjoy seeing the city we live so close to but don’t really get a chance to explore.  Micah found us a great deal at a nice hotel downtown in an old historic building.  I loved the modern décor in the rooms.  We had a great view and we were so close to all the things we wanted to do. 

  After checking in, we went to Balboa Park to see a production of Twelfth Night at the Old Globe Theatre.  Since we were there a bit early, we walked around the park a bit to kill some time.  The theatre was a very cool outdoor setting.  We really enjoyed the play and the acting was fantastic.  So much fun.

   

  

  The next day, we crammed in a lot: Seaport Village, Maritime Museum and Old Town.  Each of the locations were neat, but you certainly couldn’t spend a whole day there.

  
  

  In the evening, we went on a dinner cruise around the harbor.  We left just as the sun was starting to set. The food was pretty good and we enjoyed cruising around and seeing the city at night.

  
  

  Tuesdays are free admission days for many of the museums at Balboa park if you live in San Diego County, so we headed back there and went in a lot of the buildings we’d never been in before.  After that we went up to Mission beach and enjoyed some time lounging out on the sand.  Later on we walked around the Gas Lamp district before taking in a baseball game at Petco Park.  We got all you can eat seats, which was very fun.  Little did we know that it was a special bring your dog to the park night!  Before the game, there was a parade of pooches all around the field.  I loved it!  All during the game you could hear barks from the section where all the dogs were.

  
  

  On Wednesday, we drove over to Coronado Island and walked around the Hotel Del and spent more time on the beach.  I love the sand there.  It sparkles with little gold flecks.  When we left, we went back to our hotel room to get ready to go the Broadway musical Wicked.  We ran a bit short on time so we opted to eat in the nice restaurant in our hotel instead of trying to go elsewhere.  The singing in the play was fantastic as were the costumes and sets.  Some pretty obvious postmodern philosophy tainted our experience a bit, but overall it was a great production and we really enjoyed ourselves.

  
  

  We checked out of our hotel on Thursday morning and drove up to the Scripps Aquarium.  It was a bit disappointing after some of the aquariums I’ve been to, but it was fun to see all the pretty fish nonetheless.  Since the aquarium was so small, we had time to kill when we were done before our next big activity for the day, Kayaking!  Later on that afternoon, we went back to La Jolla for a 2 hour cave tour kayaking experience.  The water was soooooo warm it was incredible.  There was a lot of wind that night so we had to deal with some choppy waters, but we had a blast.  I was surprised my arms weren’t more sore the next day from all the paddling we did.  It was a great way to end the vacation.

  Okay, blog on job related stuff will be next!

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