School Zones

We live very close to both the local high school and TNT Primary School.  The school zone lights here aren't very useful, and this causes some confusion in the area.  Nobody takes them seriously or slows down for the flashing lights, which is not what I'm used to, but that's probably because they're almost never applicable when they're on.  The schools are also over a mile apart and there's no real break between school zones.  Just...1.5 miles of school zone speeds with no children in sight.  What's in between the two schools?  The county jail and police department. Because the schools are on the same street and end at different times, the county decided that they'd just turn the school zone lights on 30 minutes before one school ended...and keep them on until 30 minutes after the other one ended.  Same for school starting.  And so...when are the lights on?

The lights are on from between 2-3 hours every morning and every afternoon.  The lights are on every weekday.  The lights are on on weekends.  The lights are on during the summer.  The lights are lit on Christmas day.  One can only guess what they do with daylight savings.  Maybe they'll just extend them!

I'm used to slowing down for lights.  You know, that being the law and everything.  Plus you have to pass the police department between the schools and don't want to get in trouble... But nobody else here obeys, and I can see why.  It doesn't appear to matter much.  Oh, and my favorite part of this scenario is a little off-shoot road that apparently doesn't see enough traffic to merit its own light but does connect to the light-riddled road.  It has pretty generic rules: "School zone from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm."  School zones...FOREVER!!

TNT

We live in Tazewell.  We barely, barely miss the line for living in New Tazewell.  They're kind of the same city, and we share most of our services.  To specify that they're for both Tazewell and New Tazewell, some things will have a little prefix: TNT.  Tazewell-New Tazewell.  This can be sort of funny at times.  For instance, we have:

-TNT Primary School (an explosive elementary school)
-TNT New Baptist Church (they have fiery sermons!)
-Police cars with "TNT Police" on the side (don't mess with them)
and my personal favorite:
-TNT Fire Department (specializing in dynamite)

The Cashier Chronicles 2

A few anecdotes from my job:

Yesterday I had two unrelated customers in line, a man and woman.  They were talking about food, and they were both overweight.  The first lady says, "I love food!  You don't get fat from starving!"  The second man said, "Yeah, but I don't have much appetite for food these days."  After the first lady left, I asked the man why he didn't have an appetite for food anymore.  He said, "Eighteen years ago my wife died.  Ever since then I've mostly only had an appetite for drinking.  That's why I'm so big."

There is a customer who comes in every other day or so.  His accent is thick and he mumbles, so I have a hard time understanding him.  He usually quotes Elvis and tries to get the cashiers to say "Thank you, thank you very much" to him.  The other day I understood him more than usual when he came in the store and we had a nice chat.  Later, I went to go bring in shopping carts and he came out while I was headed in.  He had me stop pushing the carts and then took my hand and kissed it, saying, "You are a gorgeous soul!"  I said, "Thank you, thank you very much!"

Less of an anecdote and more of an observation: all the cashiers at all the stores here call people "sweetie" or "sweetheart."  Occasionally they'll do "sugar," but mostly not.  I can't quite bring myself to do it because I think I'd sound insincere.  Many customers are not very sweet.  They call that being hateful or being aggravating here, e.g. "I was getting aggravated at all the hateful people today."

I have only had ONE day at work so far in which something like this has not happened: someone will say something like, "You're not from here, are you?"  When I ask them how they know, their answers vary.  "Your accent."  "You don't look like it."  "I can just tell."  Usually they laugh.

One customer jokingly asked me if his cashier was any good (I was not his cashier at the time).  I said, "Yep!  She's the fastest cashier in the West!"  They both stared at me.  "In the East?  South?  In the state?" Nothing.  Apparently that's not an expression here.

There's a nice man of American Indian descent who comes in regularly.  (I have a hard time understanding his accent and low voice, but he's really nice.)  One day he came through my line and said, "You're nice.  Do you like jewelry?"  Why yes, yes I do.  "What kind of pendants do you like on necklaces?" Um...turquoise?  "Okay." Then he left.  He returned two minutes later and opened a box for me, showing me a turquoise necklace.  However, the necklace was in a child's length and was therefore something of a choking-hazard for me.  He said, "Drive around out back with me here," meaning for me to follow him to his car.  One of the other cashiers motioned that this was okay (and presumably safe), so I did.  I stood outside his car while he tried to find the right length chain, but I had to go back in and do my job before he found one.  The next day he came through my line again and gave me a lovely necklace!  He insisted I put it on then and there, and he lady behind him in line jokingly asked, "Are we witnessing an engagement?"  Another cashier says he gives jewelry to the the workers he likes.  "That's why I try not to do that with customers," she said.  "Sometimes this stuff happens."  That's why she tries not to...what, be friendly?  Say hi?  Incidentally, she does not have a necklace from the nice man.

Yesterday a lady came in as we were closing to get groceries.  She was a very large woman and was very clearly not wearing a bra under her spaghetti-strap shirt.  When the time came to pay, she reached into her shirt and pulled out a $10 bill.  From between her breasts.  The bill was damp and warm.  And then she put her $1 change back in there.  After she left, the manager came over and said, "No, she did not just take that money from her boobs!  How did she keep it in there?!  Those are not pockets!"

White Coat Ceremony

This last Saturday was James's White Coat Ceremony.  If you're anything like me, you've never heard of this before and/or don't get what it is.  Good news!  I now know and will explain it to you.  Towards the beginning of their medical school career, med students have a ceremony called the White Coat Ceremony that celebrates this transition into med school.  It's kind of like a pre-graduation.  At this ceremony, they take the osteopathic pledge (a pledge to treat patients well, to follow the tenants of their schooling, etc.) and they receive their white coats.  This is the coat James will wear in all patient encounters until he completes med school.  This includes rotations, volunteer hours, and his simulated patient interactions.  Here's James with his fancy new coat:

He's really a med student now! Medical schools do this ceremony at different times (first week of school, a few months in, etc.), but for us it was after 8 weeks of school.  Presumably anyone who decided they actually didn't want to do this would have dropped out by now.  The ceremony was nice, with some good speakers.  The "coating" (I love that...it sounds like he's being marinated) took longer.  He feels and looks legit now, and I'm so proud.

The Cashier Chronicles

I recently got a job here as a cashier at a local grocery store.  As the newest cashier, I've been shadowed by some coworkers to make sure I don't mess anything up too badly.  How busy the store is depends on the time of the month, as most of our customers are on Food Stamps and WIC, which are issued at the beginning of the month.  The end of the month is pretty slow.  It's interesting to see how different people will spend this money versus how they'd spend their own money.

I've also learned some new stuff about produce.  I've never actually seen okra before this week, except when Tiana made gumbo in The Princess and the Frog. Who knew?  Fascinating item.  Another produce item with a twist: cucumbers.  Our store carries two sizes: normal and small.  When I got the small ones, I spent forever trying to find it on our produce sheet so I could enter the code into the system.  It turns out their official name is not "small cucumbers" or "mini cucumbers" or "midget cucumbers."  Nope- their official name is "picklin' cukes." Picklin' cukes!  I love it.  It's a good thing I was being shadowed that day or I'd never have found them.

In addition to okra and picklin' cukes, we sell bags of ice.  We do not sell blocks of ice, however.  I was trying to make this distinction with my trainer ("Well, what do I type in if they want a block of ice instead of ice cubes?"  "Who would want a 10 lb block of ice, Sariah? What would you even do with that?") and explained what ice blocking was.  She responded, "That sounds amazing.  Why haven't we done that?  I reckon it'd be great on our hills...hmm.  Do you need grease for it?"  (She puts oil on the bottom of her inner tube to go sledding in winter.  I've never heard of this.)  In return for my explanation of this fun new pastime, she told me about a Southern alternative: muddin'.  Muddin' is where you go out driving (preferably in a mud-friendly vehicle) through mud puddles.  How muddy you yourself get depends on if you're in a truck instead of ATV and if the windows are open.  I feel like ice blocking might be a cleaner option, but still, if we get bored, we'll know what to do!

Heavy Driving

Since moving here, I think that on average we're in the car at least 45 minutes a day. Just to put that in perspective, I bought gas yesterday and have already driven 100 miles. Crazy. I know. Basically everywhere we want or need to go ends up being about 20 minutes away. I think that I'm starting to get used to it, but that's just me talking. At any rate, there is flea market that is, you guessed it, about 20 minutes away. Sariah and I went once a couple weeks ago just to see what it was like. The only thing that I've experienced that was remotely similar was a thing in Argentina called a feria. People have booths that sell a wide variety of things from bootlegged DVDs and CDs to food to animals to old tools. These things are a Southern tradition as the sign proudly proclaims. As a brief side note here before the point of this post starts, the first time we went, Sariah and I were amazed at how many things are sold there illegally. She looked at me and whispered, afraid of offending the wrong booth-keeper, "This is illegal, isn't it?" To those who aren't sure, it is. It's grossly illegal. Maybe I'm wrong; this is the South after all. Things are a little different from what we're used to.

Anyway, we decided to make the 20 minute trek to the flea market for a rug. We found a lovely, Moroccan tile rug that was just the right size for our living room. We even haggled with the guy manning the table and got 5 whole dollars knocked off the price. Life was looking pretty sweet at this point. We gently tossed the rug into the back of our truck and got ready to go home and let our feet bask in the soft fibers of our newly purchased rug. Due to the popularity of the flea market, we were forced to park on the shoulder of the highway. Now if you've ever tried to turn left on a highway, you know that it can take a while to do so. I quickly remembered that we were close to a local BBQ that is supposed to be the bee's knees and it just so happened to be to the right of where we were pulling out. Being the impatient driver that I am, I suggested that we turn right and go on a little excursion to find Heavy's.

I honestly thought that this would be a quick drive and that we'd be back home 5 minutes later than had we just gone home after the flea market. We both thought that. It seemed like a good decision at the time. I'm still glad that we did it because it was kind of fun trying to find this place. Anyhow, we turned right and then turned right again where the sign for the Heavy's was. Things started off well enough; we passed some homes and a few churches without any sign of the place. We thought, "It must be a mile down this road. Surely they wouldn't make their restaurant hard to find." Wrong! We kept on going another mile,which turned into five, which became 20. The road we were on became pretty narrow with barely enough space for two cars to pass each other. However, it was a pretty road. We saw plenty of the soft green water of the Powell River through the dense trees. We even saw some small strips of tobacco plants here and there.

Eventually, the road ended without any sign for Heavy's. We had a choice to make: left or right? I chose right. For whatever reason, Sariah trusts me when it comes to driving. I hope that I didn't destroy that. We drove on and on and on and on. I kept thinking that we would make it back to the main highway any second. Suddenly we saw a sign that said a familiar-sounding highway was coming up on our left. I breathed a sigh of relief and made a turn there. After driving for roughly 15 minutes, we had passed into another county and I knew that something was wrong. Our tank of gas was starting to run low too so my anxiety started to rise. We turned around and drove back the way we came until we ran into a relatively nice couple that were doing yard work together. I got out of the car and asked them how to get back home. Apparently we had gone the right direction, but we shouldn't have turned down that highway that sounded familiar to us (I could have told them that); we should have kept going straight. We hopped back in and drove for another 20 minutes and made it home.

What should have been a fairly short trip to the flea market ended up being a 2 hour escapade deep into the back country of Tennessee. I enjoyed it, even though I got us lost. It was nice being with Sariah. Plus we were listening to Jim Dale read the last Harry Potter book, which we both highly recommend. That man does a fantastic job narrating. But I digress.

Missing Sariah or Where I go all the time

Can I start by saying that I miss Sariah? Even if you don't want me to, I'm going to say it: I miss her. It's not like I don't see her either. It's that when I do see her, either my mind is distracted or it's in very short bursts of usually 30-60 minutes (obviously there are exceptions such as date night or Sundays, where I try not to study at all. Those exceptions rock). Such is the life of a medical student.

My day typically starts at about 6:45. That isn't too bad, especially since I had to be at work by 6:30 for my last job. I get ready and, if I'm driving myself, I leave Sariah home to sleep on. My first class starts at 8:00 with lectures every hour until noon most days. These aren't your typical lectures either. We cover a semester's worth of undergrad material in a couple hours. And then do it again the next day! It is honestly like trying to drink from a firehose. In the afternoon, I have a lab or two that keeps me on campus until roughly 5:30. Then I finally get to go home hungry, tired, and often smelling like formaldehyde. I eat and then study again until 10:30 or 11:00.

I'm going to throw in a little something here about how awesome Sariah is. Most of the time when I get home, she is already making dinner, the house has been cleaned, and laundry has been folded. I am constantly amazed by how willing she is to do those things to make my life easier. This has been a huge sacrifice for her. I mean, she gave up a very promising career at an incredible school to follow me out to the middle of nowhere Tennessee. Not only that, but she left behind all of her friends to become a foreigner wandering in a strange land, and strange it is. She is quite honestly alone out here.

School is hard, but I have friends at school. I'm kept busy by the insane amount of information that I need to know. I don't have very much spare time. It's not all that bad though because the things that I'm learning are so interesting. This is what I wanted to do. However, leaving Sariah behind in the morning and not being "home" when I'm home has been one of the hardest things about med school thus far. I miss her. So for the next few years, the image of Sariah that will be most common for me to see is her rolling over to fall back asleep.

In the end, it will be worth it. She'll still be there when all is said and done. Then I'll be able to crawl back in on my side of the bed, put an arm around her, and just be with her.