More vacation? Roasted Boar? Yes, please!

The Arch in St Louis!

Celebrating Halloween in Madison

So I’m sorely behind in my blogging and promise to attempt to be better from here on out!  The good news is that my lack of new posts is not due to a lack of excitement J  Rather, the past month has been full of some of the biggest news I’ve ever received!  My last posts were written while at home preparing for my first med school interview.  Over following two weeks, I pulled a road-trip blitz all across the country, logging over 3000 miles driving on my way from Rice Lake to Cedar Rapids to Iowa City to St Louis to Madison to Ann Arbor to Chicago to Madison to Eau Claire to Minneapolis to Rice Lake to Madison to Rice Lake to Minneapolis and then flights from Minneapolis to Chicago, Chicago to Paris, and a train from Paris back to the south.  It was wonderful to see some family and friends, but the trip went by extremely quickly.  Thanks especially to Melissa, Rob, Kaitlin, Mary, and Gramma/Grampa for hosting me during my travels! 

I won’t bore you with all of the details, but my interviews went really well at all of the schools.  I was really impressed with the effort the schools put in and it was interesting to see how each school put a little bit of a different spin on things!  As far as hearing back from schools about results, I was given everything between “you’ll know on November 12^th at 5pm” (Michigan, with the 12^th being 2 weeks to the day after my interview) to “don’t worry if you don’t hear from us until April.  No news is good news and means you’re still being considered” (Dartmouth) to a more typical response of “three weeks at the earliest, but more likely 5 or 6” (Wisconsin).  I found out that I was waitlisted at UVM while I was visiting my grandparents in Chicago, so I thought that Michigan would be the first chance at a full-out acceptance.  However, UVM didn’t wait long- I was only on the waitlist for a couple of days before being admitted on the 8^th!  Life’s continued to be exciting since- I was admitted at Michigan on the 11^th and Wisconsin a few days later.  I’m so happy to know that I will be going to medical school in the fall!  However, it’s going to be really difficult to choose because I know that I would be happy at any one of the schools.  We’ll see!

The boys tending to the boar

Laugh away :)

Anyway- life in France!  There are several notable things that I haven’t chronicled yet, so I’ll probably have a quick flurry of posts and then will develop a more normal rhythm.  I came back to France on Saturday (the 6^th), meaning I arrived in Paris on the 7^th, only to find out that Thursday was a national holiday (Armistice Day), which meant that I had 2 days of work before a five-day weekend.  Crazy!  I spent the day off with David, Guillaume, Sébastien, Benjamin, and Renaud, who had invited me to come join them for le sanglier roti (roasted wild boar).  David picked me up around 11 and brought me back around 6:30… so it was a full day of French culture for me!  I had an absolute blast- they really reminded me of some of my best guy friends in high school and even though it was a lot of time, it really flew by because I was having so much fun.  In case you’re wondering, the boar was delicious, though since it took 5+ hours to cook, I can understand why they don’t eat it all the time J  Guillaume said that maybe we’ll do something similar after winter break.  I hope that I’ll get to spend time with them throughout my time here- nothing forces you to speak French more than spending all day with native speakers!  

Guillaume, Sébastien, Benjamin, et David!