IN MOBILE!!!!!!!!

So I have made it to the "unknown" that the title is referring to and I have been in the middle of it for the last three weeks. Well, its really been 4 if you wanna get technical. I'm really liking it so far. However, it is taking me longer this year to get into the swing of things as far as school and studying go - so I am not sure that that that is a very good thing. So, yeah - third full week of PT school was completed today about 10:45 and the first major test was completed by 8:30 am (which surprisingly enough wasn't all that major). Now next week - that'll be a different story because I'll have my first Gross Anatomy test which by all accounts will be the worst thing you have ever experienced (that's according to the second year students). Anyway - to get right down to the bottom of it, things are falling into place. School is good, thanks to all the labs we have - I am now comfortable in just shorts and a sports bra in front of complete strangers, my apartment is super cozy and cute, I'm still looking for a church to feel at home at, and I have lost 17 pounds since the end of May.

So I decided that I wanted to try and keep this thing up a little better again, cause I kinda like doing it and who cares who reads it - its gonna just be more like a place to talk about my experiences. (You know living alone it makes me sound crazy when I say that I frequently ask myself how my day went - so instead ever once and awhile I'll just tell you :) )

This week I had quite a notable experience in the life of any heath care related student. I spent my first afternoon in a gross anatomy lab. We were observing the dissections of the first year medical school students - we won't actually do a cadaver lab until next semester. Now I know that everyone has varying opinions about a cadaver lab, but I was very excited and humbled to be a part of the experience. The smell wasn't as bad as you'd expect (bad to me is like what my Daddy's hog barns used to smell like, so...to me this wasn't even on the spectrum) and although knowing that these were real people lying on all the tables I didn't get upset at all. You can't - they knew that they wanted to donate their body's to science, they are the brave souls that see the need to continue to educate health care professionals so that as a nation our quality of life can only increase. And on top of that - the only thing that was lying on those tables was their shells, their souls and all the life they had were gone, hopefully to rest eternally in the arms of their Savior. So I wasn't sad - we were very reverent and careful with them but we carried out the purpose they made as one of their last wishes. We studied their bodies so that we could better understand how to treat the patients we will come in contact with when we graduate. We only studied 5 of them, and all 5 of them had completely different looking structures, even sometimes the left and right structure were different on the same person. For example, the brachial plexus (group of nerves that innervate your upper extremities) was woven a different way on all of them. Some were very similar to how the pictures in our book look but many were unique to that one person - similar enough so that it functioned the same way but different enough so that you knew without a doubt that Someone had to design every aspect of our bodies to make us the INDIVIDUALS that we are. I left with a bit of excitement - don't label me as weird or as morbid - but what an awesome event to experience. Studying one of the Master Creator's most prized works of art - his children - and knowing that each one I will have the privilege of coming in contact with over the next 40 years will be entirely unique, an intricately woven expression of how much He loves and cares for us. I praise God for the experience and for the little reminder of how special EACH ONE of us are to Him.

¹³ For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.

¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

- Psalm 139: 13-14