It has been about one month and three weeks since I last posted.  Yeah, I know that’s long.  I’ve had blogs since junior year of high school and I’ve never gone on such a long break.  But you should know that it wasn’t a break at all.  I’ve just been too busy to post.  Seriously!

For now I’ll just tell you about Halloween (or rather the most interesting part of Halloween).  I went out to a gay club with a friend of mine.  And about 15 minutes after walking in, I saw a guy in little shorts standing/dancing on a chair.  There was another guy standing on the ground, facing him near his shorts, and doing…you know…  Right there in front of a whole crowded club!  And then when we were about to leave, my friend was tapped on the shoulder by a gentleman and then was shown something on a nearby table.  Then she showed me.  You know what that guy offered us?  COCAINE.  There were lines of cocaine on the table.  I think there’s a word for that-lines of cocaine.  Whatever.  Anyway…Interesting night.

I think I’m going to have to quit my part-time clinic job.  As it is now, my daily schedule looks like this:  school from 7:30 to 2:30.  Then I rush to clinic and see kids from 4 to 7 (or 8).  Now I have a new adult patient that I’ll be seeing 3 times this week.  And blah.  Yeah, lots to do. 

-Chicago Speech Girl

I haven’t updated in a while.  I got a tattoo today.  It’s the the left of my belly button and it’s the Polish eagle.  It looks pretty awesome and I love that it’s so not girly-It’s a freakin’ eagle with talons and a crown. I’ll take a picture of it when I can take the bandage off.  It didn’t really hurt that much.  It felt like somebody was sort of stabbing me with a sharp staple and then dragging it across my skin.  Hm.  What else.  I got my first pay check last week.  But it’s pretty much all gone now.  I have gone down from a size 12 to a small 8 (sometimes 6) so I had to buy new clothes.  I’m going home for a weekend at the end of September and I’ll be able to bring back some of the smaller stuff.  Grad school was a really unhealthy time for me food-wise.  Here I walk A LOT.  Plus, I go to the lake to walk/jog.  And I don’t go to Chili’s and Wendy’s anymore.  In fact, I haven’t had any fast food since I moved here.  Seriously.

This weekend I discovered the world’s most amazing farmers’ market.  I have to take the bus to get to it, but it’s HUGE and has so much stuff.  I bought loads of fresh fruit and vegetables and it was way cheaper than things were at the Carrboro farmers’ market.  For the past few weeks, I have been searching for the perfect vanilla latte.  And I finally found it.  The coffeeshop is called Intelligentsia and it reminds me a little bit of Open Eye.

What else?  I got my hair done on Friday.  It’s darker and redder than it’s ever been.  And I ended up buying some hair products (that were expensive).  But I thought that I might try them this time and if there is a noticeable difference in my hair, then great!

When I went walk-jogging yesterday, I wore one of my UNC shirts (it’s blue and says CAROLINA in huge white letters).  One guy who ran by said, “CAROLINA?!?!?”  It’s a weird question, exclamation, yell.  Another guy yelled, “Go Duke!”  And another one showed me his UNC calf tattoo.

Work is going pretty well too.  We’ve been making playgroup better.  And I’m getting some older kids (like 4, 5, and 7). And a Polish adult.

I think that’s all.

-A

I’m doing better!  Yay.  We’re trying new stuff with playgroup this week, so I’m worried/excited.  I also have 4 evaluations to do this week.  One is an adult (will explain soon) and the others are kids between 4 and 5 years old.  So for the adult…  I got a call a week or so ago from a guy at work who does a bunch of office stuff and he asked me if I would be willing to evaluate and treat a Polish-speaking adult TBI patient.  I said sure, but I sort of felt like I had to do it because I was new.  So then when I started to talk about how uncomfortable I would be doing this (because I don’t think my Polish is good enough), he made me feel guilty about it.  If I don’t do it, then he’ll just get an English-speaking therapist and a Polish interpreter, which won’t be as good.  Man.  I’m nervous.

I visited the famous bean in Millennium Park today and also the water fall/face thing.  And this morning I went out to the lake with a giant latte to read.  It was nice, but cold.

And now for my other good, kind of embarrassing, news.  Everybody around the house has been talking about match.com and dates and stuff.  And I was feeling bored and didn’t want to spend money to do match.com.  So instead I put up an ad on Craigslist.  I ended up with a bunch of replies, a few were even pretty good.  And last night, I went out with one of the guys.  He’s really funny and he’s doing a medical fellowship at a really good hospital/university here and he’s actually good-looking.  And he has really nice arms.  I don’t know how old he is though-maybe 30?  We went to get drinks at a bar with a jukebox and boardgames and checkerboard vinyl tablecloths and then we went to a music/street festival nearby.  It ended up being a lot of fun.  After I got home I was worried that I hadn’t done anything to let him know I was interested.  When I told this to one of my roommates, she told me to send him a text that was something like-last night was fun, thanks.  So that’s what I did.  And I just got one back!  He said we should get dinner.  Now I’m in a good mood.

-A

My first week and a half in Chicago was pretty tough.  And Monday was worst of all.  It was my birthday and I was away from my family and from my friends.  I talked to my dad on the phone that day and then cried right afterward for like 10 minutes.  But then Wednesday was great.  And so was the rest of the week.  I was really worried about seeing one child in particular because the week before hadn’t gone well.  He wouldn’t do anything the first session.  But he was great last week.  And after I was done with all my kids on Friday, I had a meeting with my supervisor and the heads of Peds.  They want me to restructure playgroup.  Totally.  Right now it’s basically an hour of free play, some random art, and singing.  They want me to make it more of a speech group with actual lesson plans and themes.  Ugh.  Work.  Expectations.  Super.  But I will admit that I am a little excited.  I like structure and organization.  Also, I might be getting a Polish adult patient.

Um.  I went to the giant library downtown today.  I wanted to go to the children’s books to start getting ideas for themes.  And while I was there you know what I saw?  They have Polish children’s books.  So that made me think that they must have adult books in Polish too.  So I went and asked and I got one.  I need to work on my grammar and vocabulary and reading in Polish should be good for that.

Um.  I’m getting tired now.  I took house pictures this morning and I’ll eventually get around to posting them on facebook.

Night.

-A

I am overwhelmed.  By Chicago.  By work.  By little kids.  By doing therapy in Polish.  But not in the totally scary way.  It’s just a lot of change and a lot of information in a very short amount of time.  I hope my brain makes it though okay.  I guess I’ll write about the past four days, but start now instead of at the beginning.

About an hour ago, I got back from this really awesome cupcake place.  I went there with one of my roommates and two of her friends, after going to this thing called “Faith and Brew” at a Catholic Church.  The topic tonight was-Friendship in a fast-paced world: ‘Friending’ or face to face with others and God.  I didn’t pay much attention when the speaker brought God up at the end, but the first half of the discussion was kind of interesting.  It made me think of how, when, and with whom I use text messaging/AIM/emails/facebook instead of face-to-face time or even phone conversation.  My roommate’s friends are so funny.  I laughed so hard that I cried a bunch of times! 

Earlier today was my first real day of work.  I went in yesterday too, but it was all orientation-type stuff and no seeing kids.  Today there were two playgroups (one at 9 and one at 11) and then a seperate little girl I saw at her home.  The kids are so cute.  SO CUTE!  Most of them are between a year and a half and three years old.  And I pretty much want to take every one of them home with me. 

I’m too tired to write anything else now, but I will this weekend.  I promise.

-A