2013-09-23

MY WEEK IN PICTURES

Tried to make my mom's famous soup...it turned out pretty good actually! This whole pot fed me for a good three days. I was a very happy camper

Also, I extremely missed Charlie this week. So I signed up to volunteer at the local animal shelter and met this little pug. Isn't she the cutest roundest little thing?

Happy mid-autumn festival!! I ate substitute moon cakes because the Asian store in Tampa ran out of moon cakes. Pad thai + roast duck = one happy me!

Randy visited this weekend! We went to Busch Gardens on Friday and Dali Museum in St. Petersburg on Saturday. He also fixed my door that was chewed up by Scout as well as a few more things around my apartment. =) I'm now a very happy tenant.

Lastly, meet my new foster Teco! She's a Shar Pei/ Pitbull mix (potentially?) and she reminds me so much of Charlie. Very food driven and loves to play tug'n war. Hopefully when we leave her tomorrow, she will behave and not poop/pee in the house. *********************************************************************************************************** I've actually had a pretty stressful week in terms of school. Finished my gross anatomy final and a dental anatomy quiz. I'm excited to finish dental anatomy this coming week and start on restorative dentures. I also started Kaplan training for online TAing - it's really nice because I don't have to travel anywhere and can "teach" a class in the comfort of my home. I really just help the teacher who is actually on camera/mic while I'm off camera and on the sidelines. Yay for extra income.

2013-09-14

We made models of our teeth this week in school. It was a difficult because this was the first time we worked on another person with taking impressions and pouring stone. It's really interesting to see your actual set of teeth and how your teeth occlude together. We didn't have any tests this week, which was great! But we are nearing the end of our courses, so there's a bunch of finals coming up. >< I'm applying to the National Hispanic Health Association scholarship. When I first received it, I thought, "oh, well I do work with a lot of underserved Hispanic population" so I was excited to apply to it. But then somewhere along the way, I talked myself out of it by thoughts like "I'm not hispanic; I don't know much about it". Another classmate reminded me of the deadline that's coming up and I finally decided to just go for it. There's nothing stopping me except myself, so I'm going to apply for it. We'll see what happens. This week's also the one year anniversary of Charlie's passing. I've been feeling weird all week and I figured this is probably why. It also made me really want to adopt a dog, which is a very impractical thought. I can probably care for one, but not the extent the dog needs, since I spend so long at school and studying in general. So in honor of Charlie, I put in an application to volunteer at the local animal rescue shelter. I saw a German Shepherd mix that looks so much like Charlie and went to see her; Too bad, she's already adopted since she's so adorable.

Funny picture sent from my mom: Dad: "Come here!" Marc: "NO!"

And my attempt at Tom Yum soup

2013-09-06

One of my wise classmates said, "dental school is just like final's week. Except it's final's week EVERY WEEK." With that said, I'm done with my exams for the week! In sim clinic, we took alginate impressions on each other and created a mold. I will upload pictures once I mount it with the proper alignment of my jaw next week. I also worked on composite and amalgam restorations (aka fillings) on the posterior teeth. It was really cool to work with my hand pieces again and drill into teeth. I'm beginning to realize what a different 1mm makes..between enamel&dentin to dentin&pulp. Look at my fillings on the maxillary & mandibular second molars. My amalgam didn't turn out as great because I overcontoured it and I didn't burnish (make it shiny) it at this point. After our exams, a few of my classmates hosted a korean bbq night. It was a smashing success (surprisingly, since everyone was so tired after a 12 hour day) and we continued the night playing card games and reminiscing about our college days. This weekend will be a lot of catching up on sleep and reading for next week. I think I'll update this blog mostly on Fridays and Sundays when I have a bit of free time. Special thanks to Dmitriy for making my week with a care package! :) :) :)

dental school: a new beginning

Wow, it's been awhile since I've written anything...well, I'm finally in dental school (YAY!) It's been a long journey after graduating Berkeley but it feels good to make it here. I've had a wonderful year in NJ completing my Masters and now comes the fun part of studying nonstop all day everyday. I actually really like my program because we do have a lot of free time. Unfortunately, most of that free time is spent at the school's library or starbucks. It still feels a bit surreal sometimes that I'm actually in Florida working on teeth. I'm blown away by the amount of information I'm learning. Who knew teeth was actually complicated? :X I've been in school for two months now and I feel like I'm just starting to get the hang of it. We've just been drawing teeth in sim clinic for the past month, now finally moving on to some composite/amalgam restorations. We're going to be making impressions on each other this Thursday so I'm excited to see what my teeth actually looks like. I'm going to document my dental school journey here. Yay for new beginnings!