Pre-COVID Stories

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

So after some prodding, I thought I would write a little update for anyone bothering to read – how about a breath of fresh air of pre-COVID times? Right now I’m in California and I will describe my pandemic experience in some later entry, but for now we can take a little trip back in time to before the madness began because I could certainly use that.

I left off in my last entry in November after finishing Human Structure & Function which was essentially the boot camp of medical school, a very intense class that transformed my entire life into school basically for that entire period. It was a powerful experience and I learned an unbelievable amount, and my summer project has been to try to review and recapture some of that knowledge before the next semester. The class finished at Thanksgiving and I went back to Maryland for the holiday, returning to Rochester for a chill two-week biostatistics class until winter break. This little class was the most rejuvenating period of the entire semester for me because I felt like I could finally breathe again after such nonstop intensity. For one of the weekends in December I took a trip up to Toronto to see my cousins there since it had been since winter of 2018 that I saw them last, that time was a brief interlude on the way back to Rochester from from Ottawa.

Lafayette, Louisiana

Lake Martin, Louisiana

I finally got far out of town for Christmas – I went to New Orleans, which was my first time in Louisiana, and took a couple of days to visit with Ryan and Lacie in Cajun country which was a real pleasure and made the trip worth it. I met them in Baton Rouge and we drove to their place in Lafayette and had a fantastic evening of Christmas-themed drinks and a little tour of town. The next day we went out to Breaux Bridge way in the bayou and went out on Lake Martin (seeing gators and all!) and it was super cool to see all of the wildlife there and to get some impression of the scenery. It was especially cool to have Ryan and Lacie tell me about the culture, the food, the history, and to see about the towns they’re from and their experience there, I don’t think I ever would have appreciated the really rich culture of the area without them. We also managed to have an evening walk around Baton Rouge, including LSU, making sure to catch Mike the Tiger. And of course, my few days New Orleans were very chill and lots of fun – I’ve heard many people complain about the city, saying it’s messy and complicated and describing the crime, etc., but in contrast to that I had a really good experience there and was amazed by the culture, architecture, music, and preservation of its past. The jazz on the street corners was especially wonderful, for Christmas Eve people were absolutely everywhere and going bar-hopping to listen to all the different music was great. The place has an enormous amount of culture. I went out there with some people that I met at the hostel there (indeed there are hostels in the US!) and while the interactions were certainly short-lived it made for an exciting few days. Highly recommend! Plus I found vegetarian gumbo and po-boys so I had a very exciting time culinarily. 

New Orleans, Louisiana

I spent the remainder of winter break in Maryland and New Year’s out in DC with Chris, a friend from med school, who I’d never gone out with previously. It was an exciting night, a little pricey since it was a barty, but decent vibes and good pretzels and drinks so I thought it was a good way to start 2020 (little did we know of course how things would play out). Ironic isn’t it, starting 2020 at a bar?

Seneca Lake, New York

Shortly after, I returned to Rochester for the spring semester which began with a class called Molecules to Cells which was essentially medical genetics. I actually really enjoyed this class and the professor and even though it was challenging like all of them are I really had a great time, plus it was less lecture than first semester and more time for stuff outside of class, like weekend travel or daytrips. Some friends and I went to some of the Finger Lakes wineries in January which was delightful and I took a trip on MLK day to Pittsburgh to see Jason and his friends at school there which was fantastic and definitely one of the most unexpectedly exciting places I went to this year! Pittsburgh is much more lively than I’d ever thought and the scene is great for going out and exploring. The only other time I’d been there was extremely brief, in passing from my climbing trip to West Virginia on the way back to Rochester, and I didn’t really see anything other than the big buildings in the city center. The parts I saw in January (namely, Shady Side, East Liberty, and South Side) were much more exciting and vibrant, which is impressive given the below-freezing weather. The company was fantastic there and I think that made all the difference.

Vancouver, British Columbia

The exciting part of school during this time was that I became a bit more active in extracurriculars, and in a program called EMPEx which essentially allowed medical students to help out in the Emergency Room with placing IVs. This was all especially exciting to me since I’d only done it once before back in 2016. So this was the first time I really had the ability to practice on patients, especially on “difficult” patients with veins that were quite hard to stick. It took me a good amount of time but I finally did place a few good ones by the beginning of March which was a morale boost since I’ve never really done such types of interventions like that before on real patients. Of course it’s been all called off because of COVID but while it lasted it was enjoyable. I also got a bit more experience with the student-run medical clinic in doing physicals which was great practice.

Whistler, British Columbia

With the end of MTC at the beginning of March, we had spring break, and I flew to Vancouver. This was the beginning of when COVID was hitting the US and its epicenter was in Seattle, so I was quite concerned about going out west, but decided to in the end. Nothing had shut down anywhere in either country at this point so it actually was a very exciting time, but it was with growing trepidation as the outbreak worsened, and tried to avoid places with concentrations of people and became very conscious of hand hygiene. COVID aside, I found Vancouver to be a charming city with a lot of life in it and some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen in a city in North America. The mixture of mountains and ocean is breathtaking. Incidentally the ramen there is also excellent! The highlight my time there was a day-trip I took to Whistler – I didn’t go skiing because it was way too expensive but I did go hiking around the lake there which was really beautiful and it’s the first time I’d seen the mountains for a very long time, probably since my time in Spain. And the drive there was Vancouver was jaw-dropping, it’s called the Sea-to-Sky Highway which is an apt name, starting from along the Sound way up into the high peaks of the Pacific Range. I think the trip would have been worth it for that drive alone. I was also fortunate in Vancouver to meet up with Carley and Allison, which was our first reunion since our time in Rotterdam and The Hague, so a decidedly different location but again a great meetup.

Vancouver, British Columbia

Onward from Vancouver was Seattle and Portland, but since that’s the start of the Corona saga, I’ll save that for next time.

Los Angeles, California; 6 July 2020