York was incredible! It had buildings there that are some of the oldest ever. Okay, I might have just made that up, but everything is really old, and beautiful as you'll be able to see from the pictures. It was a wet rainy day and I kind of had woken up on the wrong side of the bed that day with a sprained ankle from the day before, still adjusting to time, and time of month, yuck. But once we got into the city it was an awesome day. I'm glad that I made the most of it because it was definitely a day that I'll never forget!!!
CLICK ME!!!
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Scratch that
That is what my day used to be like. We found out today that we've been banned from the Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and all hospitals and clinics in the area. That's right ladies and gentleman staff has been informed that we are not to step into the hospital. I guess it is illegal in England to be registered at two different universities, and since we got ID cards for University of Huddersfield (even though we aren't registered for any classes) that counts plus BYU. We were supposed to have had some kind of visas or something. I don't even know, it's a huge mess. But they told Erin, our instructor, that we weren't to enter the hospital or any other clinics in ''the trust,'' not even to say goodbye to the staff or give them our thank you gifts that we brought. So no more 5 am wake-up calls :) . But now we aren't entirely sure what we'll be doing for the next week until we leave for Scotland. They said something about attempting to get us into the private sector but since it's such short notice that might not work either....Oh boy!
Today was fun though. It was Michelle's birthday and we went to Nando's for lunch. It's the only chain restaurant in England but it was SUPER delicious!! We then went shopping for a bit. While we were in the store there was a lady that was working there that asked where we were from. She was from Chicago and she was so happy to talk with us, for almost an hour! It was great. She told us all of the horror stories she's ran into with the health care system here. It was nice to hear that we aren't the only ones that thinks it stinks. But she told us things we should go do in Scotland and around here and when we go down to London. It was nice to talk with her.
We then found a mall in town that we hadn't seen before, I got some cute Vans for only £10 and now we are home getting ready to head out to a cricket game. But I think it might get cancelled because it looks like rain. What a surprise!
Today was fun though. It was Michelle's birthday and we went to Nando's for lunch. It's the only chain restaurant in England but it was SUPER delicious!! We then went shopping for a bit. While we were in the store there was a lady that was working there that asked where we were from. She was from Chicago and she was so happy to talk with us, for almost an hour! It was great. She told us all of the horror stories she's ran into with the health care system here. It was nice to hear that we aren't the only ones that thinks it stinks. But she told us things we should go do in Scotland and around here and when we go down to London. It was nice to talk with her.
We then found a mall in town that we hadn't seen before, I got some cute Vans for only £10 and now we are home getting ready to head out to a cricket game. But I think it might get cancelled because it looks like rain. What a surprise!
A day in Hudderfield
I have some extra time to kill this morning, I'll tell you why later. But I though I would let you know what a typical day for me is here in Huddersfield.
I go to bed each night and stress out when it comes time to set my alarm clock, which is on my cell phone. For some reason my phone is picking up a signal that makes my clock one hour slow. The clock on the computer that I have borrowed from the University is about an hour and half fast. So I never know what time it actually is. But I set my alarm on the phone and make sure that it is going to wake me at the correct time of day, even though the numbers are all wrong. I get up between 5-5:15 depending on if I need to shower and get ready to go to the hospital, in street clothes (I will NEVER BE A DAY NURSE!!!!). We hike to the bus stop about 15 minutes away (all downhill thankfully) at 5:45. It is a beuatiful walk and wakes me up in the morning so I am grateful for that! The bus comes at 6:06 (except for the first day, it was 10 minutes late and we thought we had missed it). We switch buses in the middle of town to take us the hospital to arrive at about 6:55 (side note: how to pronounce Huddersfield in an English accent-- uh-duhs-filled)We change into our atrocious uniforms and go the the units, which are called wards. My ward starts report at 7, and Brits are VERY punctual, almost to the point of no flexibility, and so I always miss the first three patients of handover. We get report from the night nurses and start medications. I will try to refrain from my spiels about the health care system here, but don't worry, you'll hear about it later if I haven't already told you! Anyways we start meds, which are called tablets. On my floor we have to wear these silly red vests that say ''DO NOT BISTURB MEDICATION ADMINISTRATION IN PROGRESS.'' The nurses think they're stupid too and don't wear them, but make me. So dumb. Anyways after meds, we go around with the doctors and write down what the plan is with the patient. We then follow their every wish...ok, don't get me started. Sometimes my nurse will disppear in the middle of an important time of day, giving baths, doing meds, admitting patients when it's really busy, etc. I find out, ''she's gone for her break'' or ''she's having her morning tea time.'' The atmosphere is so differenct in the hospitals here than in America. My shift is supposed to end at 2:30 and the nurses usually shoe me away at about 2:15 and say that everyone else has already left and I might as well go. After clinical we take the bus back to town and stop at the grocery store or just go straight to the bus that brings us the dorms. In the afternoons, we take walks, watch movies, take naps, plan our Europe trip, or just sit around and talk. At 9pm we have devotional and then we get ready to do it all over again.
Right now I am sitting in a computer lab on at ''uni'' (what they call campus, or the university). I was supposed to go around the hospital today with an ICU outreach team, but they got schedules mixed up with another student nurse, so I decided to just take the morning off because Erin told us we could have one morning off during our three weeks. So a caught up on reading blogs and looking at pictures from friends and family all around the world right now: Taiwan, Ecuador, Jordan, Australia, Washington D.C., Japan, Connecticut, Utah, and England :). The computer won't let me upload photos for some reason, otherwise I would have put some up of Huddersfield. It really is beautiful here. I am so glad that we are staying in the countryside and not in the city (I don't like ciites). I will soon post pictures from York, Fountains Abbey and everyday life in England. Miss you all!!
English lingo hospital and non:
Are you queueing? -- Are you in line?
BM -- blood sugars...none of the nurses know what the M stands for.
Off-duty book -- the work schedule
Cheers -- Can mean just about anything you want: hello, goodbye, thanks, what's up?, nice to see you, etc
Love -- everyone is called, ''love'' How are you paying, love? What's your pain like, love? Cheers, love!
Tablets -- Pills or medications
Sick --nausea and vomitting. I was so confused the first time someone asked me for a sick tablet. I was thinking, ''you're in the hospital mister, of course you're sick!''
Stayin in or take-away? --For here or to go?
Cannulas -- IVs (it's like in New England they put an R sound at the end of the words that end in A like idea. But in other words, they don't pronounce R's''
CHEERS, LOVE. I'm off!
I go to bed each night and stress out when it comes time to set my alarm clock, which is on my cell phone. For some reason my phone is picking up a signal that makes my clock one hour slow. The clock on the computer that I have borrowed from the University is about an hour and half fast. So I never know what time it actually is. But I set my alarm on the phone and make sure that it is going to wake me at the correct time of day, even though the numbers are all wrong. I get up between 5-5:15 depending on if I need to shower and get ready to go to the hospital, in street clothes (I will NEVER BE A DAY NURSE!!!!). We hike to the bus stop about 15 minutes away (all downhill thankfully) at 5:45. It is a beuatiful walk and wakes me up in the morning so I am grateful for that! The bus comes at 6:06 (except for the first day, it was 10 minutes late and we thought we had missed it). We switch buses in the middle of town to take us the hospital to arrive at about 6:55 (side note: how to pronounce Huddersfield in an English accent-- uh-duhs-filled)We change into our atrocious uniforms and go the the units, which are called wards. My ward starts report at 7, and Brits are VERY punctual, almost to the point of no flexibility, and so I always miss the first three patients of handover. We get report from the night nurses and start medications. I will try to refrain from my spiels about the health care system here, but don't worry, you'll hear about it later if I haven't already told you! Anyways we start meds, which are called tablets. On my floor we have to wear these silly red vests that say ''DO NOT BISTURB MEDICATION ADMINISTRATION IN PROGRESS.'' The nurses think they're stupid too and don't wear them, but make me. So dumb. Anyways after meds, we go around with the doctors and write down what the plan is with the patient. We then follow their every wish...ok, don't get me started. Sometimes my nurse will disppear in the middle of an important time of day, giving baths, doing meds, admitting patients when it's really busy, etc. I find out, ''she's gone for her break'' or ''she's having her morning tea time.'' The atmosphere is so differenct in the hospitals here than in America. My shift is supposed to end at 2:30 and the nurses usually shoe me away at about 2:15 and say that everyone else has already left and I might as well go. After clinical we take the bus back to town and stop at the grocery store or just go straight to the bus that brings us the dorms. In the afternoons, we take walks, watch movies, take naps, plan our Europe trip, or just sit around and talk. At 9pm we have devotional and then we get ready to do it all over again.
Right now I am sitting in a computer lab on at ''uni'' (what they call campus, or the university). I was supposed to go around the hospital today with an ICU outreach team, but they got schedules mixed up with another student nurse, so I decided to just take the morning off because Erin told us we could have one morning off during our three weeks. So a caught up on reading blogs and looking at pictures from friends and family all around the world right now: Taiwan, Ecuador, Jordan, Australia, Washington D.C., Japan, Connecticut, Utah, and England :). The computer won't let me upload photos for some reason, otherwise I would have put some up of Huddersfield. It really is beautiful here. I am so glad that we are staying in the countryside and not in the city (I don't like ciites). I will soon post pictures from York, Fountains Abbey and everyday life in England. Miss you all!!
English lingo hospital and non:
Are you queueing? -- Are you in line?
BM -- blood sugars...none of the nurses know what the M stands for.
Off-duty book -- the work schedule
Cheers -- Can mean just about anything you want: hello, goodbye, thanks, what's up?, nice to see you, etc
Love -- everyone is called, ''love'' How are you paying, love? What's your pain like, love? Cheers, love!
Tablets -- Pills or medications
Sick --nausea and vomitting. I was so confused the first time someone asked me for a sick tablet. I was thinking, ''you're in the hospital mister, of course you're sick!''
Stayin in or take-away? --For here or to go?
Cannulas -- IVs (it's like in New England they put an R sound at the end of the words that end in A like idea. But in other words, they don't pronounce R's''
CHEERS, LOVE. I'm off!
Thursday, May 7, 2009
A Tale of Two Cities: LIVERPOOL
Liverpool is the home of the Beatles, the greatest band ever!!! We left early in the day to get as much in as we could. The train ride there was absolutely beautiful with lots of flowers all along the way. The city was more of a "modern" city, even though there are still a lot of old beautiful building. I walk down the street, even in little Huddersfield and am completely amazed by the architecture. Every building is so old and tells it's own powerful story. I wish the buildings could talk.
I explain the whole trip in the captions of the photos here!
For those who have already looked at the pictures on facebook, I've changed them. Added caption, and made sense of them. Facebook wasn't supposed to have published it yet, oh well. It's ready now.
I explain the whole trip in the captions of the photos here!
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Friday evening
On Friday we took a stroll through the woods that are outside our flat. It was probably only a 10 minute walk, but we took 2 hours because we stopped and were taking all sorts of pictures! It amazes me how beautiful it is! I am going to make a facebook album and post the link here to it so everyone can see the pictures and the captions. It's easier to upload pictures onto facebook is massive amounts. :)
Click me to look at pictures of our stroll.
I'm going to keep a running list of England-isms that I come across during the days:
1) "Are you you queuing?" Some asked us this as we were waiting for one of us to get some pounds from the ATM, it means "are you in line?"
2) Last night we were sitting in the flat and knew there were drinking games going on because we could hear the "marryment" across the way. At around 11pm, we started hearing some chanting, "BOOTHROYD D! BOOTHROYD D!!" There were some drunken men yelling at our windows to come join in the fun. It was rather hilarious. We didn't amuse them, but then they started yelling profanities, good times.
3) At the grocery stores it's a whole nother world: the cashiers sit, you bag your own groceries, with your own bags that you own, the "trollies" you have to put a pound in to get one and then you get it back when you turn the trolley back in. This saves the store from having to hire someone to collect trollies through the whole parking lot and also from people stealing them.
4) Driving on the other side of the road isn't really that weird until it's time to merge onto or off the freeway. And CIRCLES!!!! SOOOOOOO weird going clockwise around the rotaries!!!
More to come :)
Click me to look at pictures of our stroll.
I'm going to keep a running list of England-isms that I come across during the days:
1) "Are you you queuing?" Some asked us this as we were waiting for one of us to get some pounds from the ATM, it means "are you in line?"
2) Last night we were sitting in the flat and knew there were drinking games going on because we could hear the "marryment" across the way. At around 11pm, we started hearing some chanting, "BOOTHROYD D! BOOTHROYD D!!" There were some drunken men yelling at our windows to come join in the fun. It was rather hilarious. We didn't amuse them, but then they started yelling profanities, good times.
3) At the grocery stores it's a whole nother world: the cashiers sit, you bag your own groceries, with your own bags that you own, the "trollies" you have to put a pound in to get one and then you get it back when you turn the trolley back in. This saves the store from having to hire someone to collect trollies through the whole parking lot and also from people stealing them.
4) Driving on the other side of the road isn't really that weird until it's time to merge onto or off the freeway. And CIRCLES!!!! SOOOOOOO weird going clockwise around the rotaries!!!
More to come :)
Travel Day(s) ??
I will be using my blog for a journal on this trip so mostly all of my adventures will be on it. I'm going to try to put up as many pictures as I can and I will probably post a slide show because there are SO many pictures. I got an 8G camera card for my Europe trip at the end of England, but I honestly don't think it is going to be enough. I took so many pictures in only the first couple days!
So our travel days were crazy! To be perfectly honest, they were rather calm. Nothing major happened, it's just that I was up for a really long time. I'm not quite sure how long because of the time changes. But I got up on Wednesday morning, was up all day for immersion days (lots of class time talking about culture and stuff). I finished doing errands on Wednesday afternoon. I talked with Cha for a couple hours. We had a tearful goodbye. Cha is going to China next year for a long internship and she won't get home for a year. I will have graduated by the time she gets back, so we aren't entirely sure when the next time we'll see each other is. But we talked for a while and then Michelle came to pick me up Wednesday night at 10pm. At Michelle's we tried to watch a couple movies but ended up sleeping through both of them for the most part. We were trying to stay awake the whole time so that we could sleep well on the plane. By the time the second one was over, it was 3:30 am and we took off to the airport. We got to the airport, Michelle's brother took us, at about 4:30 and turned our bags in, 45.0 pounds :).
We wandered around each terminal of the airport to stretch before getting on the plane. We boarded and the captain said that we would sit on the tarmac for an hour because of weather in Chicago. I was okay with that and I got my best sleep or the whole trip during that hour. During the flight we had some people sitting behind us that talked so loud the whole time!
We walked around a lot during our six hour layover, changed our voicemail, got a McFlurry, explored the airport, took some pictures, waited for the plane, went to Chili's, played some cards.
Manchester!!!
Michelle and Heidi, these are my two travel buddies for after our England trip is done and we're off to Europe. :)
Chicago is "trying out" for the Olympics in 2016, we took a picture under the Union Jacks :)
Waiting in the airport...
On the plane to England (on my gosh, I'm in England!!! AHHH!!!) It was long...I guess I shouldn't be complaining compared to groups that went to Taiwan and Australia, but I felt like it was forever, only about 8 hours. They fed us "dinner" and then put some movies on and turned the lights out. Unfortunately I didn't sleep that much even though I was so tired. It was quiet too, I just couldn't sleep. Plus the headphones were broken on our side of the plane, so we couldn't listen to the movie. Oh well, I dozed, and people watched, and walked around since nobody else was up. We landed at 8am, England time, on Friday morning, got through the border okay, which was a relief. Michelle's passport says she's male, so we were scared. It gave us a good laugh when she noticed but it was still scary. She had called the Passport office to figure it out before we left and they told her that it probably wouldn't be a big deal, but to bring her birth certificate along with her just in case.
We drove on the wrong side of the road to Huddersfield from Manchester Airport and the countryside is just beautiful!!! It reminds a lot of home, green and trees and rolling hills, random rock fences everywhere. There a tons of sheep and cows out in the fields. Everything is so charming and it is beautiful. Every building with it's architecture tells a story and you can just feel the history here, it's amazing! Friday we took a nap and then crashed at about 9pm to get early and have an all day field journey to Liverpool on Saturday, another post to come.
So our travel days were crazy! To be perfectly honest, they were rather calm. Nothing major happened, it's just that I was up for a really long time. I'm not quite sure how long because of the time changes. But I got up on Wednesday morning, was up all day for immersion days (lots of class time talking about culture and stuff). I finished doing errands on Wednesday afternoon. I talked with Cha for a couple hours. We had a tearful goodbye. Cha is going to China next year for a long internship and she won't get home for a year. I will have graduated by the time she gets back, so we aren't entirely sure when the next time we'll see each other is. But we talked for a while and then Michelle came to pick me up Wednesday night at 10pm. At Michelle's we tried to watch a couple movies but ended up sleeping through both of them for the most part. We were trying to stay awake the whole time so that we could sleep well on the plane. By the time the second one was over, it was 3:30 am and we took off to the airport. We got to the airport, Michelle's brother took us, at about 4:30 and turned our bags in, 45.0 pounds :).
We wandered around each terminal of the airport to stretch before getting on the plane. We boarded and the captain said that we would sit on the tarmac for an hour because of weather in Chicago. I was okay with that and I got my best sleep or the whole trip during that hour. During the flight we had some people sitting behind us that talked so loud the whole time!
We walked around a lot during our six hour layover, changed our voicemail, got a McFlurry, explored the airport, took some pictures, waited for the plane, went to Chili's, played some cards.
Manchester!!!
Michelle and Heidi, these are my two travel buddies for after our England trip is done and we're off to Europe. :)
Chicago is "trying out" for the Olympics in 2016, we took a picture under the Union Jacks :)
Waiting in the airport...On the plane to England (on my gosh, I'm in England!!! AHHH!!!) It was long...I guess I shouldn't be complaining compared to groups that went to Taiwan and Australia, but I felt like it was forever, only about 8 hours. They fed us "dinner" and then put some movies on and turned the lights out. Unfortunately I didn't sleep that much even though I was so tired. It was quiet too, I just couldn't sleep. Plus the headphones were broken on our side of the plane, so we couldn't listen to the movie. Oh well, I dozed, and people watched, and walked around since nobody else was up. We landed at 8am, England time, on Friday morning, got through the border okay, which was a relief. Michelle's passport says she's male, so we were scared. It gave us a good laugh when she noticed but it was still scary. She had called the Passport office to figure it out before we left and they told her that it probably wouldn't be a big deal, but to bring her birth certificate along with her just in case.
We drove on the wrong side of the road to Huddersfield from Manchester Airport and the countryside is just beautiful!!! It reminds a lot of home, green and trees and rolling hills, random rock fences everywhere. There a tons of sheep and cows out in the fields. Everything is so charming and it is beautiful. Every building with it's architecture tells a story and you can just feel the history here, it's amazing! Friday we took a nap and then crashed at about 9pm to get early and have an all day field journey to Liverpool on Saturday, another post to come.
Friday, May 1, 2009
I've never gone this long....
I made it safely to England, I'm here and exhausted, too bad it's noon and I really shouldn't go to bed yet. I've been up for 48 hours, I've never gone that long...some how I need to force myself to stay awake until at least 8pm tonight so that I can get into the rhythm. More to come...
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