Running & Mardi Gras in NOLA and a huge, incredulous thanks to Craigslist!

Hello again!

I’ve officially made it through the first third of this semester, yay! Annnnd, its Mardi Gras weekend so celebration is in the air. Even best, the parades and swarms of people on the street this time of year do a great job of inhibiting transportation, so Tulane just considers it (Mardi Gras and the Monday before) a holiday and I am happily enjoying a four day weekend J

Let’s see, first I went on a super-fantastic long run through Autobon Park. I passed through the “Fly” which is a park along the Mississippi river that students love to hang out at (enjoying the passing of riverboats as well as NOLA’s open container law…) I also passed by the majestic Tree of Life (thanks for the recommendation Ben Tryon if you’re reading this), a beautiful cemetery and got to spot a few giraffes looking over the fence outside the zoo!

Autobon is such a lovely park

Hello Ms. Giraffe!

The Tree of Life :)

Bead tree: apparently its good luck to make a wish and add your own beads to this tree on Tulane's campus - I may or may not add to the bead pollution with a wish and beads of my own soon...

The MS river at the "Fly"

I'm not a cemetery person, but they're beautiful around here

I also went to one of the road blocking parades – it was a lot of fun, but my migraine head did not appreciate the couple of hours I spent cheering for parade throws (throws are what the participants in parades throw to the crowds, usually beads) so the festivities cost me a half a day of migraine fighting. However, my apartment is now uniquely decorated with LOTS of beads!

The best for last: WINE!

The biggest news of the week is this: I got hired as a part-time health coach with Omada Health! They’re a start-up company from San Francisco, CA and they offer online programs for those at risk for diabetes or high-blood pressure. I will be leading one of said programs. It’s still so recent, it’s a little unreal. First off, I haven’t applied to a lot of jobs – I’d just begun my part-time job search in Jan, so I feel super fortunate that I found something quickly! Second, it’s crazy that I found out about this position through Craigslist... It was late at night while I was job searching and I decided it couldn’t hurt since I was having trouble finding part-time health related jobs. And voila! There it was, too good to be true. Since it was Craigslist, I obviously Googled the opportunity and it was legit so I applied! A couple of weeks later I got asked to fill out a survey, I was asked to interview just last week and here I am ready to start end of this week with training! This position is ideal in so many ways: I’ll get some public health work experience, I’ll be getting a paycheck and thus be able to take out fewer loans to pay for school, it’s virtual so I have zero commute, and it’s diabetes prevention which is very dear to my heart with my mom having lost her eyesight from diabetes.

So that’s about it for now, have a great week and I’ll be back!

Best,

Holly

French, volunteering and fun in my "spare time"

Bonjour!

Another week down and its feeling like grad school…so much to do and so little time! But it’s awesome getting more involved and la vie est absolutement belle! (life is absolutely good!)

First up, French - I must say that it feels really good to have French at the forefront of my mind again! Yesterday I went to a French conversation group that’s set up through the Masters International program to help those who’d like to practice the language they’re going to use (or that they used for the returned Peace Corps volunteers) in the Peace Corps (although anyone’s welcome.) While I have a year until I need to apply and I can’t get a guarantee that I’ll get to serve in a French speaking country, I’ve heard that there are fewer speakers of fluent French applying so I do have a decent chance! However, yesterday showed me that Madame Eschrish was quite correct when she warned “if you don’t use it, you lose it!” My speech is most definitely rusty; I can remember the words but when I go to pronounce some my mouth stops working. Good thing this is a weekly gig so I’ll get to practice up J

Health Literacy – Yesterday was the first time I volunteered at a health center here teaching health literacy skills. I figured it’s a great way to delve into gaining public health experience and getting a perspective of what people need and what services are out there. I’m really glad I went, I met some fantastic people (including an AmeriCorps member and a man from Ecuador who both work there) and I think I got my message across to those I spoke with. I’ll bother you all with my message too because it’s a really good resource! Next time you go to look up drug side effects or the prognosis of a disease, check out http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/! A simple Google search of “medlineplus” will do the trick and the reason this is such a good resource is because it’s a source of nonbiased, reliable health information. There aren’t any ads trying to sell you anything and because it’s not a .com or a company, it’s our taxpayer dollars being put to use, you can rest assured that the website’s single interest is to provide you with research-backed information and not try to get your money too. Also, know someone who has a hard time understanding medical terminology? There’s a link in the bottom right corner of the homepage which will take you to Easy to Read documents that were made, well, easy to read. Annnd, if it’s easier to read in another language (or like me you enjoy refreshing your French skills,) many documents are made in multiple languages (see that same bottom right corner of the Medlineplus homepage.)

Swim4Success – I applied to be a volunteer lifeguard through a school org called Swim4Success. They teach swim lessons to underprivileged kids at our rec center pool. It was actually competitive with a legit interview because there were more applicants than positions but they accepted me! So until the end of the semester I’ll get to splash around the pool with some kids on Sundays as a fun way to volunteer and destress J

Carnival Season in New Orleans – I went to another parade last weekend. It was…interesting in a raunchy, risqué manner. But there was a Krewe de Seuss there! And after talking to people this week, it turns out I happened upon a unique one early; this weekend I’m hoping to catch the Barkus parade…bark as in dogs barking!!

Can I blame this silly pic on studying all day? This is the souvenir I got from the Krewe de Seuss!

In other news…        

• I had my first test and two more are coming up next week. It’s beginning to look a lot like college!
• I’ve also been putting in some yards in at the pool. Like my French, I’m rusty…but the neat thing about sports is that if you put the work in, you get results. Already my 500 time has dropped a half a minute! (But we won’t talk about how my time is a couple of minutes slower than I could race in high-school…)
• Bug update: no sightings since last week! Fingers crossed the roaches stay out of my apartment (or even my line of vision…sometimes ignorance can be bliss!)
• Tonight I went to this cool global research event. Initially I was just interested in the types of projects that are going on (and the free food didn’t hurt…) but I got the chance to speak with a very interesting professor about his international experiences. I found out that not only has he just gotten out of being under an Ebola quarantine, he’s currently working on determining whether MMS (miracle mineral solution) is safe. If you haven’t heard of MMS, I hadn’t before tonight either. Just Google it and judge for yourself – seems too good to be true, yes? Anyways, it was quite fascinating, very real and I’m really happy I went.

Well, it’s time to finish reading all the glorious details of the Affordable Care Act (fun fact: people have criticized Obama for being vain enough to dub it Obamacare, but he didn’t do it, his opponents did hoping the association of the law with him would help it fail!)

Take care,

Holly