Winchester, UK

So, I arrived in England yesterday morning after flying out from Charlotte, via JFK, to London Heathrow Wednesday evening. I took the National Express coach from the airport to Winchester where my hospital, the Royal Hampshire County Hospital, is located. The flight was uneventful other than my missing my original flight from JFK to London, but I was able to catch the next flight out an hour later. (I told security that it was my flight they were announcing "last boarding call" for, but they just kept saying, "Oh you'll fine, you'll make it. You have plenty of time." They were wrong.) Flight times were decent with a little under 2 hours from Charlotte to JFK and a bit over 7 hours from JFK to London. I had a 3 hour layover in JFK and thanks to a handy dandy free voucher from my Dad, I stayed at the posh Oasis lounge. People if you travel a lot and have loads of money, invest in one of these airline club memberships. Free hot and cold buffet, well stocked open bar, Starbucks coffee, decent tea, free wi-fi, comfy seats, bathrooms with nice looking showers, and all that first class service. Plus it makes you forget that you haven't gone through security yet and to take that time into consideration when catching your connecting flight ^_^

Accommodation here is fairly basic, but works. I'll see about getting pics after I actually get my room kind of straightened up, but suffice it to say that my homestead for the next 6 months is very much like a 4 bedroom duplex. 2 bedrooms on the downstairs and 2 upstairs. There are 2 bathrooms (1 half, 1 full) a common living room, and common kitchen. One of the big perks is there is a sky light in each room which I love, but I need to get me some higher wattage light bulbs if poss, cuz for those who know me, I love me some light :) Each bedroom comes with a twin bed, desk, wall shelf, 2 chairs, a dresser+mirror, night stand, ottoman w/ storage, tiny closet, and sink. Bed linens were standard hospital issue.

I'm looking into getting an internet "dongle" (mobile internet key thingy) here that will give me internet access on my laptop, as there is none to be found in my complex. Only access at the moment is at the medical library about a 2-3 minute walk away. It's not bad, decent connection, slow responding computers, IE 6, Office 2003. Right now it looks like it will be fairly expensive ($25 or 40/mth for 3 or 10 gb down/mth respectively), but I think it's something that's fairly important (or maybe that's just the withdraw speaking) as there are some things that I will need to do regularly online.. It'll also give me free calls home and back using Skye... But really, a 2-3 minute walk every day isn't that bad. I walk further to the hospital every day...

Anyway, I did my first full day of Ob/Gyn today. It went very well, though I'm still kind of nervous for Monday when I will be pretty much on my own. The teaching style here is very much "self-directed". This means that you're given the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it. If you want to learn a lot you can go out and be proactive and do a lot. If you don't want to do much, no one's making you do anything. So basically you can spend as much or little time as you like in the rotation. There are 2 other students in my rotation. They are from the Southampton University School of Medicine. They've been very helpful and nice so far, so I think we'll get on well, though I'll prob only see them mostly in the teaching sessions we have together.

The weather here is cool and fairly dreary for the most part so far. I've seen some sun, some rain, and there's still a lot of snow on the ground. It's been about 2-4 degrees Celsius (35-40 F) here lately and I'm told this is quite chilly for this time of year. My room was cold last night and I woke up around 1:30am to put on a jacket and add 3 more doubled up blankets to my already 3 layers of blankets. These blankets though fairly thin are uber heavy so it felt like I was sleeping under a sheet of metal. But at least it was warmer and I ended up waking in a sweat and had to take off my jacket. Afterwards, it was fine. I'll have to call housekeeping on Monday to see if I can get a comforter, or I'll just get to their equivalent of a Walmart here somehow and buy one...

I'm not too jet lagged, but I do think I will be sleeping in hopefully tomorrow.

Anyway, I guess that's all for now, I'm going to head home now.