Back from Philly

I flew to Philadelphia on Wednesday afternoon and took the regional rail to Conshohocken (1.5 hr ride) instead of renting the car. By good luck and chance, my hotel was only 2 minutes from the train station and 5 minutes' walk from the testing site, so everything was within walking distance. I saw a few KCOM guys studying in the hotel lounge, but chose to study on my own in my own room. The Residence Inn at Conshohocken was one of the best places I've ever stayed at. They had continental dinner AND breakfast, free Internet access, friendly staff, and a very comfortable bed. The only downside: the train tracks were outside my window and I could hear the train blowing its horn every time it pulled into the station. Thank goodness there was no train service after midnight; otherwise I would have gone nuts. (It DID wake me up at 6 a.m., but I needed that)

I was the only student from my school taking the PE that day; of the other eleven, there were 4 KCOM, 4 VCOM, 1 WVSOM, 1 LECOM, and 1 DMU-COM. Needless to say I wasn't very talkative since the others all had other people to talk to for the most part; the girl from DMU was very chatty and talked to everyone. We had our little orientation meeting and then started. We saw our first four patients, then had lunch. After that, we saw another 4 patients, then took a 15 min break. Then we saw our last four patients, and we were done for the day. I won't go into details about cases and stuff; I just hope I passed.

After the test was over (and what a relief it was), I met my parents in central Philadelphia where we proceeded to spend the next two days touring Philly. We went to see Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, the National Constitution Center (very cool place to go), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. To get to the museum we got to ride the "Phlash," a bright purple trolley bus (very hard to miss). The museum was awesome; I saw a bunch of paintings that I'd only read about in textbooks (i.e. works by Monet, Pissarro, Degas, Renoir) I think going to the museum was the best part of the trip; it's been years since I've been so excited about Greek mythology and paintings by Impressionists (sadly, I abandoned my interest in art for medical school). It was nice to reclaim something I had forgotten.

Pictures are up on Facebook if you want a look =)