A Nursing Student and her Toys

I finally got my financial aid check from the college today, and my very first stop was the bank. We now have our plane tickets to go out and see my sister and brother-in-law in California and I have a few new toys. First I ordered a new rice cooker with a timer function and finally got a cooking apron. Next I went to Walgreens. A little preface, one of the main things I do in the hospital clinicals is monitor my patient's vital signs. Part of vital signs are blood gas levels using oxygen saturation monitors (it's the thing they put on your finger with the red light). Well, the little carts with the equipment on em can be hard to find, especially when everyone has to do vitals at the same time, so a nifty little device is an little monitor that I can keep in my pocket. Another toy, that was a bit more expensive is a blood sugar monitor. I don't have diabetes, but I wanted it for 2 reasons. With diabetes being so prevalent and me being overweight it's something I'm at risk for. Second, I have to take blood sugars a lot at the hospital, now I'm not going to use my monitor on them, they have their own, but after 12 lancets I think I'm figuring out where to test on my patients to cause them the least amount of pain, you can learn it in a classroom, but you really don't know where to do it unless you've done it on yourself :P

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There's a first time for everything

Exciting day! Well exciting for me that is, the bentos I ordered from j-list came in yesterday. I can understand why Japan is one of the thinnest countries in the world, talk about portion control! I bought a standard women's bento and it was definitely smaller than I expected, though it's exactly the size I wanted. G thought his was too small but I taught him better today when I put lunch in the boxes so he could see just how much food he was getting. He now agrees that it's sufficient for what he wants. He also had his first exposure to medium grain rice, and he wasn't too thrilled with it, he's been indoctrinated with Jasmine and other Indian long grain rices :P He likes 'my rice' which is Basmati cooked in chicken or vegetable broth. I might still try to get him hooked on short grain cause I reeeally don't want to have to make two different kinds of rice every morning, the rice I made today wasn't typical, I don't know what I did wrong but it was way too wet. I will have two rice cookers soon (I'm ordering one with a preset timer so I can cook brown rice, it takes over an hour and I'm not waking up at 4am just to push a button on the one I have now) so it would be possible, just real inconvenient.

Still on the bento front, I was so proud of my ingenuity earlier, though G just shook his head at me. You can't have Japanese rice without soy sauce so along with the bentos I ordered these really cute little bottles shaped like strawberries (for me) and pickles (for G). I figured out how to fill them by vacuuming it out of a bowl, but cause it was a little awkward I decided to get creative: I got a sterile 10ml syringe and 18-gauge hypodermic needle from my lab bag and used that to fill the containers, it worked PERFECTLY! I just gotta make sure I don't stab myself with a needle covered in soy sauce...

Here is my extremely awesome new cookbook to help with the bentos, I'm making one of the menus tomorrow and I'll be sure to take pictures!!!

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I love being around Christians!

This weekend was probably one of the most profitable retreats yet! I learned soooo much this weekend. If reading minds was possible I'd say Trent read mine because that was the exact topic I needed to hear and learn more about! I'm so thankful for everyone there and those who werent able to come at the last minute really missed a great weekend!

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Away for the Weekend!

It's that time a year again, we're headed deep into Southeast Texas in the middle of nowhere to study God's Word with fellow college age Christians from all over Texas. No signal to be heard of so good bye cell phone and good bye internet! It's nice to unplug for a weekend with friends. I'm supposed to study during break but I might just go for a hike this year :) gotta keep up the activity!

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Gettin it Back Together!

Welp, ever since school started I've neglected the blog. I've been doing pretty good nutritionally, but I'm having a hard time working in the exercise I need to accomplish my goal. I've decided to put in place a little bit of a challenge. There's a couple elements to the challenge so I'll just explain it from it's most basic one.

I love Japan. Before I met my husband my goal was to study International Relations and Linguistics and work for the State Department pushing papers in Embassy's all over the world. Right off the bat I wanted to go to Japan and teach English to junior high and high school students. As I married a true American who could never live outside the US unless it was a private island in the Caribbean, I kind of gave up on that dream when I walked down the aisle. So since I'm missing out on that part of my dreams to live a different part I've decided to implement certain aspects of Japanese culture and lifestyle into my own life, namely diet and daily exercise.

A recent export from Japan is the "bento"; good, healthy, balanced homemade lunches made every morning that are not only good for you but pretty. I ordered bento boxes from a company in Japan as well as other little accessories like reusable food cups, and there is currently a bento cookbook sitting on my front porch from Amazon.com and the blogger at justbento.com. I plan to start homemaking mine and G's lunches everyday and using our really cool bento boxes :)

The second import into my life is using almost exclusively fresh ingredients. Japanese refrigerators are nowhere near as large as ones in the US because they do not stockpile like we do. So rather than fill our fridge to bursting with groceries I'm only going to purchase what I need in fresh ingredients to last 2-3 days. This will have me going to the grocery store more often meaning I'll be using fresher ingredients and getting the added benefits of activity.

The third Japanese import into my life is daily exercise in the form of walking. Rather than jockey for the closest parking spot to the door I'm actively parking as far as I can safely park and walking the added difference when I go to the college or to the grocery store, as well as everywhere else I go. We live too far out of town to actually walk from our home to these places, but it's a step, well several more steps at least.

The fourth and probably not final Japanese import into my life will be work ethic. Studying for a stereotypical Japanese student is on the same level as eating, sleeping, and breathing. So I'm gonna get a move on my study skills.

I'm sure my cousin Sara, who is currently doing the JET program could correct me on a couple of these but since Japan is one of the smartest and thinest countries in the world they gotta be doing something right!

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