four little higgs

whew! that's plenty for now...it seems that every time i work on this blog i wrap up never wanting to sign into it again...

i'm not really sure where that moniker came from, "windy city." i know 98% of the 4 people who read this blog are thinking it's obvious--chicago is pretty windy with the huge lakeshore and everything. while that's the most popular theory, it also may have something to do with politics/the world fair/rebuilding after the fire/cincinatti rivalry...certainly, this city is rich with history and we've barely scratched the surface (largely because we're now both slaves to our respective career paths...indeed, if we did not live walking distance to our gym and whole foods, we might literally never leave the house).

hard to believe tomorrow will be the two month anniversary of arriving in our new home city, not to mention we all just passed the two month anniversary (i guess those are more accurately 1/6 anniversaries) of the best wedding ever, what's up. i remember on my high school graduation my uncle asif told me that after that day, my life would fly by faster and faster as i aged. truer words may never have been spoken.

it seems like just a few days ago that we were still reeling from the wedding high while simultaneously attempting to pack our two bedroom ann arbor homestead into a sleeker, more streamlined version of itself for our smaller diggs in the big city. things were only moderately overwhelming until one fateful late-night packing spree when i sat full speed onto a large electrical plug and broke my tailbone. i got a little testy with the whole foreign travel-wedding-interstate move all in two weeks undertaking after that.

after a final all-nighter and with the help of some samina-magic, we somehow managed to get our belongings, our cats, and ourselves packed into one car (i bid a tearful farewell to the honda) and a u-haul, and began our adventure to our new home (as well as the longest drive i've ever completed by myself to top off my driving career for the next several years-- i have since vowed never to get behind the wheel so long as we live in this city). many miles of cat whining later, we arrived on the most gorgeous day of the year thus far at our new apartment building.


view from a window in our living room on day one


the night sky from our balcony, featuring the tower formerly known as sears (now willis)


first dinner in our new apartment, mexican carryout picnic on the bedroom floor. thanks to my parents, we now have bedroom furniture...


ben beginning the several-day process of recovering from our move. he refused to leave his carrying case, so we had to disassemble it and remove the top to make sure he was alive.


david holding a paint roller against a wall that i painted.

the next ten days were a literal whirlwind of unpacking/furniture shopping/painting/staining/hanging/hammering/opening and closing bank accounts/returning and buying housewares/cleaning/organizing/another healthy dose of samina-magic all in a wild frenzy to get as settled as possible before both starting our respective programs. while those may always be ten of my least favorite days ever, the slave work served us well since the last few items to be properly addressed remain in boxes in the corner and probably will stay there until one of us has more than a day of vacation in a row (september...can't come soon enough).

and while we still haven't really spent quality time getting to know our 'hood, the convenience of our location can't be beat, especially for recently moving here and the tasks that entails. we live on top of a grocery store, across from three metro lines, and easy walking distance to our gym, our bank, and several other highlights of consumer america like starbucks, potbelly, home depot, bed bath and beyond, etc etc.

our place at this point is far more than functional, and actually really feels like home. it's finally become a place we both look forward to walking into and collapsing after a long day/night/both, one we enjoy spending most of our free time in, and it's in good enough shape that we've been able to host one overnight guest and a few potlucks without having to apologize too frequently for the appearance of the place.

it's definitely a new experience living in a high-rise, but we're pretty fired up on the wood floors and huge windows. most importantly though (and this was of course my top real estate search criteria), we've been blessed with a phenomenal kitchen with luxuries like stainless steel appliances and a gas stove top...the stuff that culinary dreams are made of. indeed, i'd say a bulk of my personal free time has been spent in those few blissful square feet concocting edible proof for david of exactly why we needed all the appliances he dutifully scanned at my command when we were just kids registering for a distant wedding. slowly but surely, i'm convincing him--apparently the way to a man's heart *and* mind is through his stomach.

yes, we and the cats seem to have settled into chicago fairly well, but our lives have changed in many obvious ways aside from granite countertops (ben is expressing his distaste for these changes by howling--not meowing--at the top of his lungs every morning at 4:30). i have been adjusting to life as a full-time student once again, and while i'm usually pretty adaptable to heavy courseloads, this program is on a quarter system, so i pretty much get murdered every other week (at least) with exams, papers, and various other projects. my classes range from boring to really captivating, but my overall consensus is that i'm thrilled to be in nursing school and find myself more than ever before very, very eager to do all i can to get my hands dirty. in addition to studying in sometimes sickening amounts and my weekly clinical rotation at a nursing home in evanston, it has been pretty wonderful living as vicariously through david as i can to glean off some of his experiences as well.

david just finished up his first month as an official practicing m.d. at lutheran general hospital, located out in the northwest suburbs of chicago. he was working trauma-surgery, so in addition to his time in the ER, he also took call a few times a week and had the daunting and thrilling task of caring for every surgical patient in the hospital. i saw him leap from an understandably anxious medical student to a confident and competent doctor in literally a matter of days--truly remarkable. every morning he left for work at 5:30 am, returned at 8:30pm (or 12 pm the following day), and had only great things to say about his rotation, his peers, and his patients.

every night we would discuss his patients at length, and it quickly became obvious that his passion and experience will serve me very well in my own studies, as i saw myself understanding our classwork on more profound levels than many of my peers. not to mention it's pretty handy to have a doctor around when studying for pathophysiology that it seems like he could have handled in kindergarten... should we ever happen to have a few free hours overlapping, we eat, sleep, go to our *awesome* gym, and read read read read. david is extraordinarily patient since these "study dates" are actually just me interrupting his studying every four seconds over several hours to ask him to explain something to me.

david had so much autonomy in his last rotation that on a couple of call nights, i had the pleasure and privilege of donning a white coat and student id and following him around all night on his various doctoring adventures. with so many students around, i was relatively anonymous and thrown into the mix of traumas and patient visits. it really was amazing to see david at work--not surprisingly, his patients adore him and his students and superiors respect him. it was just so cool seeing him take on so much responsibility, and to move almost effortlessly between prescribing medications, ordering tests, taking histories, conducting exams, paying visits, talking to families, or handling traumas. and of course, knowing what i'd been studying that particular week, he made sure to point out how what i was learning was relevant to any given situation. what a rock star.

i've been grateful for those extra clinical experiences and ravenous for more--clinicals for my program right now are totally focused on developing a therapeutic relationship with a client (it too has been very interesting comparing nursing education with doctoring education), so we are stationed in various extended care facilities. i though my therapeutic relationship was going great, and then my patient unfortunately passed away last week, which put a damper on it. it's one of the draw backs to nursing homes, i suppose. as much as i enjoy the chatting, i've been really excited to get an inside look about the different roles of nurses in different areas of the hospital, as well as try and get some exposure therapy for my newly developed blood phobia. sounds like a contraindication for nursing, but i keep telling myself i'll grow out of it.

my first night on call with david i had a near-disaster when observing the placement of a central line, which involves inserting a 3 foot needle under a person's collar bone and then stabbing them with a box cutter for a purpose i'm not actually sure of. i was really intent on observing this procedure, but noticed after a few minutes that i myself was about to become a trauma, and woozily skulked into a corner where i thrashed out of my layers of personal protective equipment as discreetly as possible (not very).

later that night, i practiced my zen breathing while i watched my husband wield a scalpel, cut open a living, breathing chest, and shove a plastic tube in between two ribs and into somebody's lung to let out all the air and blood that was making breathing very difficult for that individual who had recently jumped off a 30 ft highway overpass. i had the foresight to remain seated for that one, and made it through without going into a severe state of shock. all the hard work seemed to come undone, however, when a few days ago my finger grazed a newly sharpened knife ever so slightly, and though i didn't even *see* the blood, i had to sit with my head between my knees in my own lovely kitchen for several minutes until i could blindly fumble a bandaid around it and try to move on with the day. sigh, much more work to be done, it seems.

david has since begun his second rotation, this time in the ER of his home institution, U of C. it's been a challenge for him to switch from a well-to-do state of the art hospital to a more understaffed, underresourced, and underserved locale for his work, but such is the nature of his training and he continues to grow exponentially as a physician. challenges in medicine, of course, are not limited to different patient presentations, but very much include the environment in which you must treat those patients. i've passed the halfway point in my first quarter, and am looking forward both to my two weeks off in september (one of which will miraculously overlap with david) and to my next set of classes and clinical assignments. we seem to have a system more or less down--the study schedule, the sleeping schedule, the eating schedule (though david's changes frequently), and the obviously pervasive theme for all is medicine, medicine, medicine. we eat, sleep and breathe it, and it seems neither of us can get enough.

i'll end with an anecdote that i think does well to illustrate our life in chicago: we had one common saturday night off this entire month, and after an outing to the gym, we found ourselves back at home, showered, on the couch, each with a glass of wine, riveted by an episode of "trauma, life in the er." and we couldn't have been more content.

we hope everyone is doing well, apologize for being woefully out of touch and for the fact that that may not change for the next few years, and hope that you'll come visit us in the windy city (or way may not otherwise see you...).

take care- ash & david

a: my wonderful husband, at threat of death, has been kind enough to sacrifice one of maybe 10 free hours he has this month to finally conclude our costa rican adventures. of course, i'll be adding my own thoughts here and there...

d: the hike out of corcovado was so excruciating (especially for roger), that i couldn't even gather myself to finish the beer i had so been looking forward to all day. truly an unforgetable day, but it hit us when we finished that we'd pretty much lost what wind we'd still had in our sails. after exiting the park, it was another 1/2 mile to the base of a hillside, on top of which sat our home for that night. this was the one night of the trip that we splurged in luxury-- our night at the lookout inn. the lookout inn is owned by a man named terry, who decided at some point that he'd spent enough time in the united states and headed down to costa rica to find himself a tican wife and open up this ecolodge. he's done a fanstastic job.

a: while he's done a fantastic job on the appearance of the place, it doesn't take more than five minutes with terry to understand why our fantastic guide roger told us terry treats his staff like dog mierda. it's not that terry is a bad guy by any stretch...just a classic example of how owning a business completely run in a foreign country by foreigners can be a challenge, particularly if you're unwilling to budge on your way being the right way. it would, in my opinion, behoove terry to have a little more cultural competence rather than assuming he's constantly in the right...might lead to a more productive and responsive staff. but what do i know about the hospitality industry...








d: we stayed the night in a 3-walled little hut on this steep hillside with a beautiful view that faced out through some forest to the ocean below. everything at that place was 3-walled. the showers were delightful in this setting; and pooping with a view, of course, is an experience we won't soon forget. but this place's main attraction has always been the food. for the first time in quite a while we were able to eat (like champions) food that had been gourmet-ly prepared. several courses at dinner really put a smile on our faces.

a: david forgets that after emerging starved and hypovolemic from corcovado, we were served up a heaping pot of fish soup, a big platter of tuna sashimi, and grilled john dori. while he ate three times his weight in various ocean creatures, i forced a smile at my plate of rice and summer squash and took solace in the fact that david was eating enough to comp the cost for both of us and probably six other people.

d: at breakfast the next morning, ashley came face to face with polly, the resident macaw.


a: ie, a large bird of prey suddenly swooped onto a counter within four inches of my face, started me down for a few seconds, then marched aggressively to my cup of tea, grasped my my spoon in its' death beak, and threw it on the floor. i was bitten on the ear lobe by a "pet" parrot when i was 3...meeting polly has only substantiated my conclusion that birds are evil.

d: polly has neurological problems, encouraged by terry's adult daughter who positively reinforces aggressive moves towards guests' breakfast plates by giving it exactly what it's looking for-- pineapple and tea. ashley wasn't amused. later that morning, polly decided to say hello to us by flying into our room (remember, only 3 walls) and chilling out. more special, polly. we took a bird break and spent some quality time completely alone wading in ocean water at the foot of our cliff that, again, was so warm that urine actually cooled us off. nobody was in sight on this unbelievable black sand tropical beach. needless to say, we considered staying a 2nd night but decided the money would be better spent elsewhere... that afternoon, we headed north for a stay at playa manuel antonio.






one of the medics with whom we worked in san jose has a ranger friend at this beautiful national beach park. a brief phone call was all it took to hook us up with a volunteer position for 5 nights that allowed us to stay for free within the park boundaries-- all we needed was our own bedding (ash chose pink ice-cream-cupcake princess sheets at a san jose mall; i got the far more manly blue dinosaur variety).

at the time the plans were made, we didn't appreciate how awesome this hook up was. turns out the park is very small and is only open between 8a-4p. for a few hours each day of fun work (clearing trails and picking up trash in the morning; manning a first-aid station in the afternoon), we got the opportunity to have the whole place to ourselves early morning and all evening/night. all for $3/day, including meals. it's a bit unfortunate that we did corcovado (the king of raw nature) first, because as beautiful as the scenery was at this park, there was something (as ash pointed out) sort of amusement parkesque about this place. some of the trails were actually paved and even had some man-made steps and handrails.

while i can appreciate that this park would be great for people not able to get into the unadulterated jungle, it made for a bit of a letdown for the two of us after having just had such a transcending experience, especially when we'd see so many tourists in one place (the loud and very disrespectful group of american dudes playing football on the beach were probably the low point), or hear that recently thousands (no exaggeration) of native squirrel monkeys have been dying after jumping onto live electric wires, or when we'd see white-faced capuccins stealing someone's lunch and drinking the Hi-C. very disheartening.

all that aside, however, my opinion is that one beach in particular at that park was the most beautiful that we laid eyes on throughout the whole trip. and after 4pm, we'd again find ourselves completely alone in this dream of a location... who needs clothes at a time like that? in addition, the park had what we'd consider to be the best view of any that we saw during our entire trip. as we climbed higher up this cliff, the whole view really just got to be ridiculous. we took some pictures that frankly look fake because it's hard to believe that anything could actually look like that...

we decided that the rangers who live in the park are officially immune to all gastrointestinal viruses, bacteria and parasites. the kitchen gets about a D- for food safety (fortunately we never saw rats, but we had to be very careful to close all doors tightly to keep the crabs and the racoons outside). we mostly survived, in part because of trip we took to a farmers' market in a nearby town to stock up on fresh goodies-- although ash briefly suffered from the trots that she probably got from rice that had been left out for approximately seventeen years without being covered or otherwise refrigerated.

a: i'm serious when i say i must have eaten my weight in b. cereus.

d: carlos was the head volunteer who'd been there for 9 months and works as the main cook. we're still not sure if it's a cultural thing, but he took serious offense when we told him we weren't hungry enough to eat 3/4 of our plates loaded with seventeen-year-old rice. after the first night when we didn't quite finish everything he'd served us, he pretty much stopped being pleasant around us and focused his attention to any other human with boobs. carlos is about 5'2" and obese, which isn't funny in and of itself, but it's funny to see those with boobs when he approaches with a hug/grope at the ready.

throughout the stay, we actively avoided the cereal because of the ants that had pervaded the bag. one morning, ramiro (whom ended up being our favorite ranger) asked me if putting a dry bowl of cereal into the microwave would explode. i told him i didn't think so without really considering the question. next thing we know, we find out that he'd zapped the whole bag in order to kill the ants and was proudly scarfing a nice breakfast. that's resourceful if you ask me.

we stepped out of the park on few evenings to check out the surrounding area and found ourselves hurrying back in after finding a tijuana-like atmosphere of white people in a foreign country with few goals that didn't involve getting f*kked up and being loud. especially after recently experiencing such a privately religious natural experience in corcovado, it was a scene that we were just not prepared for or in any way able to embrace. it was clear that the people who came to this part of the country were on vacation to party and merely dabble in nature, whereas we clearly were there to nature and merely dabble in party. we were very glad to have the park as a refuge every night and spend our quality time with the howlers and sloths. admittedly, however, on our last night that we had in the area, we snuck out to several beautiful locations high up on the cliffside to have some drinks overlooking the sunset... gorgeous. despite this awesome manuel antonio stint, we were ready for our last large swing of the trip: monteverde.

monteverde is a jungle at higher altitude, making it a cloud forest. i believe that the actual rainfall is much less than at the lower tropical locations, but there is so much moisture constantly in the air that the plants have more than they need to thrive. it's amazing how different the experience is from one part of the country to another, especially with such little distance in between. we spent our nights in a nearby town called santa elena. the locals have mixed emotions about what's gone on here over the past decade or so: a complete evolution from beautiful, simple home to tourism mecca that provides lots of opportunity to make $$. the classic example is one young lady talking about how her favorite climbing tree as a child was now the centerpiece of a restaurant that had been built around it-- next to the tree hangs a sign advertising free Wi-fi.

it's mostly sad, i think. on the other hand, it paved the way for a helluva taco stand, the locals have a much easier time finding work, and there is so much conservation on the minds of those in charge that only 3% of all of the cloud forest is accessible to tourism, preserving mostly all of it for the natural claim-stakers (plants and animals) to continue on as normally as possible. our first two days consisted of hiking around different portions of the huge forest-- again, after corcovado anything paved was a bit of a letdown. but there was no disputing the beauty of our surroundings. we succumbed to the tourism industry and sign on to a tour one day that involved huge ziplines that took us high above the canopy-- unfortunately there was not much time to soak in exactly where we were because of how fast we were moving and because of the adrenaline we felt. we're glad we did it once, but not sure if it's something we need to do again in the future.

one company has constructed huge bridges that allow beautiful views over the canopy, giving us our closest look yet at a troop of howler monkeys-- we also were able to catch a glimpse of what most birders in the area consider the grandest prize: the quetzal. this is a bird covered in shimmering green and red feathers-- their body is about 10-inches tall but the tail covers about another 2 feet. it's magnificent. and it put a nice little show on for us at relatively close range, showing itself off as we stood in awe.

a: seeing a quetzal literally almost moved me to tears. we couldn't get a great picture of it, but those irridescent green feathers against this scarlet red belly plume was just resplendent. i've never seen anything like it. seeing as there are only about 40 pairs left in the park, we felt pretty lucky.

d: towards the very end of our final hike, i felt a brief sting on my right wrist-- looked down to find that a SECOND GODDAMNED TICK of the trip had decided that my body was comfortable enough to settle in for a meal. unlike grody a week prior, this one pissed me off enough that i decided not to name him. i was unaware that tick bites could be painful, but this one stung. ash again plucked it out for me (she's quite a caregiver)-- and we were on our way back to san jose for our final night before leaving the country and returning home to prepare for our wedding two weeks later.

a: i also slaughtered a small scorpion in our hotel room. i'm very brave.

d: quite a trip. since we've returned, we frequently think back to what it was like to be there, stress free and enjoying the ride. some countries get crossed off the to-do list but this one is a place we will certainly return. there is so much of it that we didn't get to see-- the northwest coast and all of the caribbean included. while our experience in san jose was great to tuck away in our back pocket, we don't see ourselves staying there in the future for any more time than we need to... the real value in this country is getting away from the people as much as possible. unfortunately, tourism is approaching everywhere... we'll hafta find new ways to isolate ourselves next time to again fully appreciate the natural entertainment that is offered. very much looking forward to that.

a: i've tried to explain to many people since we've come back that i only feel culture shock when i return to the states--never when i travel. while it's wonderful not to have obligations to work/school/whathaveyou when on vacation, it's really the lifestyle of costa rica i yearn for, or anything less american in the very negative american ways. relief doesn't accurately describe what it feels like to not have a cell phone for several weeks, to have limited internet access, and to literally disappear without answering to anyone. anxiety hardly summarizes what it feels like to return home and again get sucked into the constant invasions of privacy, over-availability, and general fast pace of life (directly resulting in decreased pleasure of wonderful things like food, nature, and relationships) that make up life in the states.

while of course there has to be a happy medium (for example, i doubt it was much appreciated that for my own mental health i had to keep my cell phone turned off the two weeks before our wedding)--if you want to thrive in your surroundings you must be flexible. but i do continue to fight the tendencies so quintessentially american and i hope i always will...it seems to be the only way to upkeep that certain joi de vivre that seems so easy to achieve and embrace upon crossing the various boundaries, political and otherwise, that we do when we leave the u.s.

we will post more pictures and a couple movies from corcovado through the end of the trip next time we sign on...