Dum dum dum duuuuuuum! The long awaited post has arrived, but I´m not really sure what to put in it, so I´ll shoot for the highlights.

The quinceanera was pretty kickin´. I borrowed a dress from a friend and got my hair done for the first time. Unfortunately all the ecuadorians were fairly shy, so I only danced with Jenny´s brother and my friend Marcos.

We had to do a big project for physiology: a research paper plus a 20 min presentation on something physiological. I did it in 3 days, and it was over how sleep deprivation makes you fat. Chew on that, why don´tcha : P

We´re done with finals, except for the tests we have to take back at Taylor, so that´s a relief. I think they went alright, but we never have any clue what our grades are so who knows.

We went to the beach about a week ago for a weekend. It was alrighty. I came back without a tan, having lost my camera (still don´t know how, and this will severely deplete the pic supply), and a suitcase full of sand. On the plus side, we went to a beach which in spanish is called ängry/grumpy¨beach which had some pretty sweet waves.

Towards the end of our rotations I sat in on neurosurgery. The patient was an old woman with a head lesion from a fall. It was sooo cool. They peeled back her forehead, took out a piece of the skull, and opened up her nasal cavity and the eye socket. the surgeon was actually cutting into the back of her eye! Then he drained out all the fluid that had been pushing on her eye and distending it, removed part of the nasal septum that had gone bad, and put everything back together.

This week has been the time for catching up with people. We´ve been hanging out nonstop. Tomorrow I´ve got a racquetball match, pizza party, and more hanging out at night. It´s super nice to finally have time to be with people, but it´s awful that it´s right at the end. I´m not quite ready to go.

Random story from phys class: in our spanish physiology class I was asked to be the example so the students could take my bp. Afterwards they let me take the bp of one of the guys. It was 140/90, which is rather high for a 19 year old. The teacher asked him if he was nervous because such a beautiful person was working on him. Poor kid, he was very very red. I´m sure that didn´t do much for his bp.

We managed to get Taylor to pay for all of us to get matching tracksuits which we´re going to wear on the plane to get back to Taylor. Sooo tight!

See you all soon!