7 Quick Takes, Vol. 3

1. It's been a memorable week with the passing of celebrities such as Ed McMahon, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. However, the most striking for me this week has been that the War in Afghanistan which has seemed so far off has hit home for people that I am close to and care deeply about. A friend of my brother's, Brian Bradshaw, who worked at CYO (Catholic youth Organization) camps here was killed by a roadside bomb. Because of his CYO connection, he was also known by many of my other friends. I didn't know Brian, though I think he may have come to my home once for dinner and I met him briefly. Regardless though, his passing has hit home with me and I know that many people I care deeply about are hurting right now. May his soul and the souls of all the faithfully departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

2. We've been a flutter in my house getting things organized and ready for my grandparents' and aunt's visits. They arrive on Tuesday and will be with us for three weeks. In preparation, I've been reorganzing my bedroom and took advantage of IKEA's sale going on right now to buy a new bed frame and storage unit. I'll try to post pics so you can see the final product - it's still a work in progress.

3. Classes started back up Tuesday. Hard to believe, but this is my last quarter in the classroom! Before I know it, I'll be in the clinic - which by the way has still not been resolved. I'm hoping to meet with my professor and get all the details sorted out now that classes have resumed.

4. I've discovered a new hobby...Letterboxing. You try to find boxes hidden along paths, in parks and nearly everywhere else you can imagine by following established clues. Once you find it, usually in a tuppeware container, you pull out a journal and a stamp inside. You also carry a journal and a stamp, and exchange (you stamp your book with their stamp, and their book with yours). There's a whole established community - check out Atlas Quest or Letterboxing North America for more info. I went last Saturday with some friends from church and am going again tomorrow!

5. Last Friday was the beginning of The Year of the Priest, proclaimed by the Holy Father. In this year, St. John Vienney, previously the patron for parish priests will become patron for all priests of any order. Sadly, the error of a few priests with a lot of problems have overshadowed the beautiful love and faith with which most priests discharge their office and responsibilities. Hopefully, this year will bring attention to the many good, wonderful men out there serving God through this incredible vocation.

6. Exciting times for U.S. Soccer. In an incredible win over #1 ranked Spain Wednesday, the US Men's National Team advanced to the Confederations Cup final against Brazil. The two will meet up on Sunday, it'll be a great match.

7. We had our last meeting for the summer for the Life Teen Plus bible study/meeting we started with the teens. We ended by talking about Mary, her role and apparations, with an apologetics focus. These gatherings went really well...it's clear that the teens are hungry to learn as much as they can about their faith. I hope that we're able to do it again next summer and maybe run it longer - it's always humbling to be able to teach others about Christ and his Church in this way.

Take this all of you and eat it...

Today's preparatory song at Mass was Amazing Love. I couldn't help but be struck by the words of the chorus as Fr. Jim prepared the altar and the gifts.

Amazing Love, how can it be,

That you my King would die for me?

Amazing Love I know it's true

And it's my joy to honor you.

Christ's love is truly amazing, especially in leaving us the amazing gift of His Body and Blood. May all of you have a blessed Corpus Christi and take a moment to renew your love and faith for the Eucharist.

7 Quick Takes, Vol. 2

1.
Still no word on the clinical situation...waiting patiently! My professor did say that if Spokane isn't working out she'll look into my second choice site for the spring in Bellevue. That would be a great place to end up too, so we'll see what happens.

2.
Yesterday I got a chance to head over to UW's Center for Urban Horticulture to watch the third year students give their final case presentations. It's their last "hurrah" before they graduate. Thinking back, it's hard to believe they were just starting their second year when I met them, and now their so close to being real physical therapists. I'll be there in a year, which is really not so far away :) Good luck to all of them!

3.
My sister's friend Evelyne and her husband Nelnan celebrated the birth of their first little boy, Togue this week! They are originally from Chad and have now settled down in New York. They are a wonderful, faith-filled couple and I know they'll be incredible parents -so excited for them!

4.
Graduations have been the name of the game this week, with our exiting senior class. I stopped by two parties on Saturday, and yesterday, one of our senior teens threw together a last minute going-away party for one who is moving to Colorado. It's been a lot of fun to celebrate with them and it'll be sad to see some of them go, but I know they'll be a blessing wherever they head.

5.
Speaking of yesterday's going away party, while we were hanging out at Kent Station, a group of young, good-looking guys was standing out near the movie theater handing out slips of paper. At first I thought it must have been some advertisement and took one as I passed. Once I read it though, I realized it was a million-dollar bill with a picture of a Disney Channel character on the front. Intrigued I flipped it over and it was one of those "you're going to hell because you're a sinner but just say this prayer and all is dandy" things. Hmmm. Then, much to our surprise one of these guys literally got up on a stool and began to shout to everyone the ten commandments and how all of us were going to hell because we'd broken them. The kicker is, we'd done a night on evangelization right before the end of the year that featured one of our teens on a milk crate doing something quite similar during a skit (don't worry, we were NOT promoting this as an evangelization tool!) My friend Jim, who's a big guy, but really nice went up to talk to him...FYI, good way to get them on their guard, start your conversation by saying "My name is ____, and I'm a Catholic". Right, Jim thanked him for his evangelization efforts but warned him, that his methods were not likely to bring any converts to the faith. He then told Jim, how he knew all about Catholicism and how our whole faith was based on works alone (maybe a sign he doesn't know as much about Catholicism as he thinks...), Jim tried to exit the conversation, saying he'd pray for him...and get this...this guy says, it doesn't matter because God won't hear your prayers! I couldn't believe it! People that choose to "spread" the faith in this manner frustrate me because I feel like they bring such a bad symbol to Christianity - Catholic and Protestant. It's fear-mongering, alienating, and judgemental...who is this person, who knows nothing about my friend and his very real relationship with Christ, to judge whether God hears his prayers or not? Pray for all evangelists, that they use loving, Christ-like methods to really bring people to the faith, not turn them away.

6.
Okay, long #5, sorry! Spent this morning cleaning and organizing. Still definitely a work in progress but I've gotten quite a bit done! Hoping to have everything looking great before my grandparents and aunt get here in a couple of weeks.

7.
Heading to Ordination tomorrow, it should be fun. The Seattle Archdiocese is ordaining five men to the priesthood this year, what a blessing! I love going to this beautiful Mass, and it makes me excited for the approaching dates when friends of mine will be ordained as well. We are blessed to have our seminaries getting fuller, and more people willing to listen to God's call!

Starting Something New...

My friend Kristine has been doing this for awhile on her blog The Fire Within and today I decided to go to the original blog and find out more about the 7 Quick Takes. The author of the blog started doing this on the advice of a friend to share whatever was on her mind and it's become something a phenomenon. People who have often been infrequent bloggers have been jumping aboard and doing their own quick takes for the week. Those of you who actually follow this blog know that I have my fits and starts, so why not? I'll jump on the bandwagon too and see if it gets me posting a little more often. So even though today is actually Saturday, I'll start the first week's Quick Takes :)

1.

Internship frustration!! (See below post). While it's frustrating that the one internship I really want to get (pediatrics) is the one that keeps falling through...I know God wants me to surrender and trust Him. This is often a challenge for me, but I know I need to do it, so I'll use this as a time to deepen my relationship with God and rely on faith.

2.

High school graduations are upon us and this has been a wonderful, fruitful year from our youth ministry. I've been at Life Teen Core for 4 and 1/2 years which is so hard to believe!! This year's senior class are the first I've worked with since day 1 freshman year, and it's been a beautiful experience to watch their faith and love for the Church blossom over these last 4 years. Today I get to go to one of their graduation parties and celebrate with them - it's these moments that make youth minstry so worth it!

3.

On break! Even though this coming week is technically finals week, our professor gave us the option of moving our one final - originally scheduled for Monday - to Friday, when we typically don't have class. The class was in unanimous agreement and we took and graded the final yesterday. I did really well on it and I now have two full weeks for break instead of one and a half. Very nice indeed!

4.

My abuelitos are coming to visit! They live in Mexico and I haven't seen them for about 5 years. They're in San Diego right now with my aunt and two uncles, and in a couple of weeks will be joined by another aunt from Mexico who had to delay her trip by a bit because of a family emergency. Then all three will come up to visit. I'm excited to see them all and am trying to come up with a list of things to do, since I'll have Mondays and Fridays off summer quarter. Any ideas??

5.

I've suddenly realized how many of my friends are either pregnant or just had a baby. I guess I'm at that age! However, not always so good when your biological clock is ticking...okay Mr. Knight in Shining Armor, I graduate in a year so anytime you want to swing on by and meet me...

6.

Last Wednesday, I submitted an abstract for a research project I've been working on to a national physical therapy conference! It was pretty exciting, especially since my prof told me I get to be primary author on it. If they accept it, I'll get to present a poster. My project this summer is to begin work on a research paper that she'd like to try to submit for publication. I feel all scholarly all of a sudden!

7.

Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning...that's one of my goals for this break (don't worry I'll still have fun too!) With my grandparents coming and the busyness of the end of the quarter over the last couple of weeks, I want to try to get some good deep cleaning and organanization done over the next two weeks. We'll see how that goes :)

Frustration...

Grrr! That's all I have to say. I was going to post to say that internships were nearly figured out, but of course another wrench has been thrown into the plan....I'll back up and explain.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was planning on going to St. Luke's Rehab Institute in the Fall, as a rehab (pediatrics) site. When I submitted for my acute care sites, it turns out that my rehab site was incorrectly entered as acute. So when the submissions for rehab came around I resubmitted for rehab in case the fall site didn't work out. They had not yet replied to my professor's email about whether they'd have a spot for me in the fall or not. I ended up getting placements at Valley Medical Center (near my house ) for both acute in the winter and a pediatrics site in the spring. My prof said we'd just can attempts to keep the Spokane site in the fall and find an outpatient site for me. I was thrilled, it seemed it was going to work out great. The newest development - the person in charge at the peds clinic at Valley accidentally double booked so that site is not available. Now I'm not sure where I'll be in the fall (Spokane? If they ever get back to us) and somewhere for outpatient in the spring - I didn't submit because I thought it had been a lock to be at Valley. To say I'm a little frustrated is putting it mildly - hopefully this will all get figured out soon. Sorry for the vent, but wanted to update on the clinical situation since I'd posted about it. This is a good lesson in surrendering and putting things in God's hands...

The Waiting Game...

Last Wednesday I submitted my choices for my acute care internship...now it's just wait and see :) For those of you who I haven't told much about my program here's the way it works...

The first two years of the three year program we spend in the classroom, cramming our heads full of anatomy, physiology, tests and clinical reasoning skills. Amazingly enough, that two year block comes to an end for me this summer in early August. We have one, short four week clinical in the summer between our first and second years. I spent my time at Apple Physical Therapy in Federal Way brushing up on my outpatient skills. During the third year, we have three different 10 week clinicals, one each quarter in the following areas: rehab, acute care (hospital) and outpatient orthopedic. One must be out of the Seattle area, and from all four, including our first four-weeker, one must be in a rural location.

We pick clinicals based on calendar year, not academic year, so last year we picked for 2009 - our first 10 week clinical in the fall. I'll be at St. Luke's Rehab Hospital Pediatric Outpatient Clinic doing a pediatric internship which counts as my rehab clinical. I'm SUPER excited about this one because the more I'm in the program, the more I'm sure I want to do pediatrics. I'm excited for the hands-on experience. Now we're picking for 2010. Acute sites are submitted and I'm hoping to stay in the Seattle area, so we'll see what happens. The plan in the back of my mind is that if I get to do my acute in Seattle, I can head north to Bellingham and do my outpatient/rural internship in that area. We'll see..thankfully in about three weeks I'll finally know what my year next year will look like.

On a completely unrelated topic...I'm most definitely a fan of our new Major League Soccer Team, the Sounders FC who are starting off with a great season. Seattle has been so overtaken with soccer love that the Pemco Insurance Company added a new Northwest Profile poking fun at the soccer fans: The "I know I am, I'm sure I am" Sounders FC Fan. They played the Colorado Rapids on Saturday - check out this article in the Denver Post about the sheer awesomeness of our team! The Rapids are in Seattle tomorrow for a qualifying match for the US Open Cup and I'm going! It will be my first Sounders game - the game on Saturday ended in a 2-2 draw so Tuesday's game should be a great rematch to watch!!

Another video...for our Mom during her special month.

I saw this on another blog I subscribe to, by Greg and Jennifer Willits hosts of the Sirius satellite radio show "The Catholics Next Door" and the creators of the Rosary Army Apostolate. This video is so well done, has some great music and is all around fabulous. Enjoy!!