‘Sup With Pete

This is me climbing the cliffs at Porthkerris, Cornwall

These are my housemates! Left to Right: Rich, Peter, Me (Pete), Naomi, Liam, Katie and Jack out for dinner for Liam’s birthday.

This is the coastline near that campsite that you’d see every morning when you awoke

This is me in my scuba gear, and me in my Buzz Lightyear outfit with Minni Mouse for the Disney Party

This is Pendennis Castle at Fallmouth, Cornwall. Approx 450 yrs old

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Hey,

Wow, once again I’ve left this for way too long! I was busy for a while, and I just kept putting it off. November is a bit of a dreary month and I’ve found myself tired a lot these past few weeks, so there’s quite a lack of motivation – and now the weeks have just flown buy. I’ll be going home in about 3 weeks for the X-mas break!

So, how has the last month gone?
Right before Halloween I went on a trip to Cornwall for the last weekend of October. It is actually know as the ‘Duchy of Cornwall’ and isn’t technically part of England, although it is at the very very southwestern tip of England. It’s a very beautiful area with lots of farmland, hills and a stunning coastline. They’ve got their own language too – Cornish, but I didn’t really hear too much Cornish while I was there. Like I said, Cornwall was stunning, but it’s not very populated, so it’s got the interesting aspect of having many windy roads that are only wide enough for one car to get through. Often there’s a 4 foot high wall on the side of the road too, so you almost feel like you’re one of those lab rats going through a maze in a car. Anyways, I went there with the Bristol University Underwater Society – which I’ve joined this year. Basically, it’s the scuba-diving club. We went to Cornwall to go scuba diving at Porthkerris Reef. It was very pretty there (see my pics), but compared to British Columbia (the only other place I’ve been diving) it didn’t have as big of variety of sea life. We had a fun afternoon diving on the Saturday and then we drove back to where we were staying which was in Motor Homes at a campground near a city called Truro. We all went out that night to a Halloween party at the local social club dressed in costume (I was a demon). They gave us real Cornish Pasty’s for dinner which were awesome! Cornish pasty’s are a dinner pastry usually filled with lamb/beef and potatoes/carrots/leek/parsnips. But if you go to bakery you can get them with any kind of meat or veggie. We had an awesome party with Karaoke and dancing. The next day the people in my car decided to take a detour on the way home and we drove down to Fallmouth to see the Pendennis Castle, the most haunted castle in Cornwall. It’s basically a 450 year old fortress built by King Henry the VIII to protect England and has been updated to suit all wars up until the end of the second world war. We headed back to Bristol after that – a nice 4hr journey, but I was welcomed home to a lovely roast dinner with my 6 other housemates.

In the following week we were studying the respiratory system in class, which is a 3-week unit. It’s the usual week filled with various lectures and labs to encompass the whole respiratory system. It’s been interesting an falls back a lot on what we learned in our Cardiovascular unit last year.

That week was Halloween. I went to a Halloween party at a friend’s house from Wills last year. The theme was Disney, so I went as Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story. It was a great party, good to have some Halloween fun. Then, at the end of the week, I went to Southampton for a hockey tournament. The Southampton MedSchool invites all the teams down from the south of England and hold a big dinner/night out followed by a full tournament the next day. There were us (Bristol), Southampton, Birmingham, Brighton-Sussex, Oxford, Wessex and Plymouth-Exeter. We were amazing – my team was Bristol 1, and we won the plate final (which is the B division). I only let in 1 goal in the entire tournament! A great weekend out with medical students from other universities!

That week I was still busy. I am playing for another hockey team this year. It’s with Doctors – but they’re mostly interns, so they’ve graduated medical school, but are still training in hospitals. They didn’t have a goalie and their captain was at University last year so she knew me and asked me to play. I really enjoy playing with these guys and we practice with this team as well. So I played with them Monday – which is when our games are. On Tuesday I played squash 2 times once before class and once afterwards and then on Wednesday I played ultimate Frisbee. So, of course, after overdoing it I pulled my back on the Wednesday at Frisbee! Don’t worry, it was better after a few days, but it still acts up now and then. We also had our sports initiations that week for all the medic’s sports teams to welcome them to the teams. It was fun, as all the teams were at the medic’s bar (Dolphin Head Bar). Mainly having drinks and socializing, with a few fun games along the way for the freshers.

That week ended – and I decided to have a quieter weekend after spending 2 weekends away in a row. On Friday the 10th, I went to a joint 21st birthday party that 3 of my friends had where they rented out a hall and hired a DJ and a band, and followed that with another 21st birthday party the next night for my friend Ash at his house. Played my usual Sunday field hockey match the next day.

We had finished our 3 weeks of Respiratory at this point – so for the week of Nov 13th – Nov 17th, I spent the week in hospital doing some Respiratory Clinical Medicine. It’s always my favourite part of the year because we get to go into the hospitals and use what we’ve learned. We also get to work with patients and learn basic clinical techniques (this is what I’ll be doing in my next 3 years of med-school, but it’s great that they start us in hospital now). Because we were doing Respiratory we learned how to do a respiratory examination, including using our stethoscopes as well as palpation and percussion techniques. I get to do clinical placement for 4 weeks out of my year this year.

Another birthday ended that week which was my housemate’s. His name also happens to be Peter. We had a meal at our house and gave him his gift, which was a mini-keg of ale, and then we went out to the Coronation Tap pub – to have cider (Canada lost Wales in Rugby that night 63-26). I watched England beat South Africa in Rugby at the pub on the Saturday afternoon, but I couldn’t stay in on Saturday night though because my friends were all going out to see the new James Bond movie. I must say that Bond is popular in Canada, but it’s a lot bigger here … maybe because he’s British? So, we all went out for dinner in our black bow-ties and then went to the movies dressed as bond … and believe it or not – we weren’t the only ones dressed as bond! It was an awesome movie, and we went out for cocktails James Bond style afterwards.

I took a break and mostly stayed in this week – trying to get some rest because I’ve just felt down and tired. Looking back on it – maybe I’m just too busy. I did play 2 games of hockey as well as some squash, and got caught up on writing up my lecture notes.

This weekend I did go to another birthday house party on the Friday – my friends have this theory that because November is 9 months after February that loads of people are born at this time of year because they are ‘Valentine’s Babies’. I wonder if anyone’s tried to prove this theory? Then, last night our med-school invited all the medicine sports teams from Birmingham and Southampton for games this Sunday. We all went out the our pub on the Saturday and had them all stay at our houses, because they always let us stay in their houses when we visit them. Most teams came – soccer, hockey, netball, women’s rugby, cricket, squash, badminton, basketball, etc. It was good. All brought 2 hockey teams – our teams made it to both the plate and cup finals but lost them both. Once again, I had a good day and only let in one goal – but it happened to be in the last match, so we didn’t win :o(. It was still a great day of hockey today. I’m a bit stiff now after playing 5 games of hockey. I made myself a full dinner, and now I’m going to go relax in front of the TV.

We’re back in lectures for the next 3 weeks doing the Gastro-Intestinal system, so I’ve got a 9:00am tomorrow.

I hope everyone’s doing well, feel free to email anytime and sorry that I haven’t written a post in a while. Thanks for reading another long long long message!

-Pete

This is the team I went to Southampton with - Bristol Medics

More of the coastline in Cornwall - with a horse!

This is me at James Bond night, and my teammate Pels taking a shot at me in Southampton

This is the crew I was diving with and where we dived in Porthkerris (approx 30 people)

Down there is Porthkerris Beach where we were diving

Me and Rich at the Pimm’s Party before the ball

This is the dinner marquee at the Wills Hall Ball

This is the Counterfiet Beetles and the Ferris Wheel from the ball

The Wills Hall Ball

Monday, 19 June 2006

Hello,

I’ll be coming home to Canada, this Saturday June 24th in the evening. I’ll only be come for a couple of days because I’m going back to work at Camp Wayne for the summer. I’m really looking forward to it, and I’ll be home for most of August and September to visit my family.

So what have I been up to since the start of June? Not much really. I had my last exam on June 15th, so basically I’ve been just studying these last few weeks. When I went to the beach at the end of may, that was sort of my last day out.

My exam went pretty well. I was expecting the usual 30 multiple choice questions with short and long answers. Instead, there was only short answer questions and they were all done on the computerized marking sheets (ie. Fill in the blank/text matching questions) – so I was a little over-prepared. I can’t really complain though. So, I’m definitely anticipating a pass. We’re also getting the marks back from our last exam from April, that was postponed marking until the lecturer’s finished their strike. If I should fail (hope not) then I will not be coming home, and staying to do re-sits (keep your finger’s crossed!).

Just before the exam, I was invited up to my friend Rich’s house in North Wales. Because most of the people in my hall had finished exams – it was quite noisy. So we headed out (as did most Medics). Rich’s house is in a place called Pantymwyn, just in from the English-Welsh border near the city of Chester. It was a beautiful house, a great place to study and Rich’s parents were just great – they gave us loads of time to study and cooked us some amazing food (steak, salmon, lasagne, chicken pie, desserts, etc). We also took a few good breaks to watch some of the World Cup Soccer on TV.

After finishing our exams last Thursday, a bunch of the medic’s went to a pub for a few drinks and celebration of finally finishing. Then, I met up with some friends for a BBQ. We were at one of the Halls in Clifton that has wonderful ground (garden’s and hills, etc) and hung out in the rare British sun. Then, I went back to Wills and watched the England vs. Trinidad-Tobago in the world cup, then out to a club with medics and friends.

This Friday was the Wills Hall Ball. It was the big final event for the end of the year. It wasn’t just for Wills, but for anyone who was up for coming (ie. Really big). There’s two big ones here at Bristol, the other one is in the Clifton Halls, which is pretty similar, and it was last night – I just didn’t have the strength to attend 2 of these, or the funds.

We started off at 5:45. It was a Pimm’s party (cocktails) and entertainment (Morris Dancers). Then we headed in for the meal. It started with a champagne reception, then a 3 course dinner of Tomato and Mozzarella Salad some fancy salad, roast guinea fowl and Vanilla Terine for dessert. Very good. Also included was our wine. They had things going on at dinner such as a Jazz band and a string quartet.

At 9:00 the hall opened up for entertainment. So, them meal was mostly for Wills, the Ents were for the other 800 people attending. There was basically 2 big rooms with live music and a huge outdoor tent with bands. They had an awesome headline band called ‘the mackabees’ and the counterfeit beetles. There was also many other Ents such as a Casino, Cotton Candy, Bumper-Cars, a Ferris Wheel, Fire Eaters and a Chip-Wagon. I had one of the best nights of the year – saw loads of people and had tons of fun. I stayed up until 6am, and got to watch the sun come up, and even when I went to bed some of my friends were heading over to play some football until 7am!

So as you can assume, I spent most of Saturday and today recovering. I’m mostly just spending these last few days with friends that are still out and about in Bristol, until we’re all kicked out of Wills this Saturday. I played some tennis yesterday, laid in the sun, and today we had a huge BBQ.

It’s a day late, but I hope all the father’s I know enjoyed father’s day yesterday.

I’ll let you know when I’m home!!!!

Hope all is well,
-Pete

The Grounds at the Wills Hall Ball (outside)

This is us after the sunrise at 6am and a pic of the dining hall before the meal

Me in my suit

Me and Kate on the Ferris Wheel.

This is me sitting at the back of the boat on the Champagne Cruise

Friends of mine playing Baseball on my birthday on The Downs near where I live. I’m already on first base.

These are pictures of a)Bristol b) ‘The Matthew’ - the replica of the ship that carried John Cabot to find Newfoundland and the SS Great Britain - first cruise liner.

This is a pic of Clifton - the area where the Uni is located. From the boat.

Thursday, 18 May 2006

Hey,

I can never seem to keep up with these updates. After all that studying, I seem to keep myself busy with all the free time I’ve had. But now, my last exam is 3 wks away, so it’s getting back to the books again!

What have I been up to lately? Well, after my last post, I had my 23rd birthday. On May 3rd, I was at a sports club dinner with my hockey team, and the other medics sports teams (rugby was also there, but I haven’t played as much with them this year). Everyone donned their fancy dress – typical in England, so, the hockey team when as convicts/burglars. I came as a sort of gangster . . . or who knows what, but at least I looked dressed up! I did manage to drink enough that night, before my birthday, which began on May 4th at 12:01 am, when a series of shots arrived the moment I turned 23. I did make it home in one piece and to my 11:00 lab the next morning. Except hangovers don’t seem to help on your birthday, and when looking down microscopes! I was fine by the evening of my birthday. We ate dinner at Wills and then I took loads of people out to try and play baseball. Everyone was very keen to play, but there’s a sport here called ‘Rounders’ which people think is similar to baseball, but it is really quite different. (It involves a tiny bat, a tiny baseball, an extra base, you can run without hitting the ball, and you can hit it behind the plate, which are only some of the rules). So with no one know the rules of baseball except me, everyone seemed ot think I was making up all these rules. I’ve never seen so many people make baseball seem so complicated! It ended up being a sort of mix of baseball and rounders – everyone had great fun though. Afterwards we went into the Wills pub for a drink.

The weekend was pretty relaxing. We had our end of the year formal on the Friday night. Sadly, it ended in a food fight – getting loads of chocolate cake on people’s suits and gowns, and there’s not going to be a returner’s formal for us to return to next year. It was the last formal of the year though. Everyone did get cleaned up and went to a club for the night. On the weekend we went and saw one of my future housemates row down the Avon in a competition against University of Bristol’s rival university (University of Western England – also located in lovely Bristol). After watching his team win – we headed downtown to watch Mission Impossible III – a great action movie!

On Sunday and Monday of last week I didn’t get up to much (or much I can remember this far away). I know I mostly stayed in and socialised with people in hall. I did manage to take part in some ‘Morris Dancing’ – another of my future housemates is a Morris Dancer. Morris Dancing is an English Folk Dance (mostly with skipping and hitting sticks – reminds me of going to watch something like Irish Dancing). Jack taught us the dance and we did it at a Wills music night – great fun.

Classes are going pretty well, we’re doing ‘systems-based learning’ now. Meaning, we study a concentration on body systems encompassing Physiology, Anatomy, Histology, Pharmacology, Pathology, etc. Right now it’s Cardiovascular – we’re learning about Heart Attacks, Arrhythmias, Angina, Blood Pressure, etc. It’s feeling a bit more medically relevant at the moment from what I was learning in the first two terms (although they formed a basis for what we’re learning now).

Tuesday night, we had a bar crawl with all the first year medics. It sounds like all I’m doing is going out drinking, but we were finished exams, and non-medics are finishing their year’s and starting to study for their exams now, so everyone was up for partying. The dress-code (again) was ‘School-kids.’ In England, most high-schools still require uniforms, so we were all out in ties and slacks, and the girls were all in pig-tails and skirts. It was loads of fun, and a good celebration of the end of exams!

Wednesday, I got to play this ‘Rounders’ game. It was great fun, but I’m still more of a baseball fan. We were having such great weather all week, so it was nice to spend the afternoon outside, soaking up the sun. Thursday and Friday I attended my classes, and stayed in most of the nights.

On Saturday, Wills held a champagne cruise. We all dressed up in Lounge Suits (girls in dresses) and we headed down to the waterfront for a boat ride up and down the Avon through Bristol. It was lovely, however, slightly chilly that evening. I was glad I was wearing a suit! The jacket kept me nice and warm. We had champagne on the boat, and then headed to a bar for some munchies and dancing/drinks/etc. This was the sort of end of the year event – so great to be out with friends from Wills!

Sunday – I played in another Rounders match against friends from Hiatt Baker – a neighbouring residence (rivalry again). It was a great game, I played a sort of centre field position and made loads of great catches (memories of the days when I played centre field as a kid in baseball). We won by ½ a rounder – yes, rounders even has half-points. I then played in a doubles tennis match with my partner Izzy, we won 2 sets to one against two other future housemates (Rich/Naomi). We finished off the lovely afternoon with a barbeque – you can buy these portable barbeques here – so it’s easy to have one anywhere (as the name suggests).

On Monday I got my NHS (national health service) ID card for the hospitals next year. So now, I’ve got an ID card to say that I can be in the hospitals as a student (we do a couple weeks in hospitals in the 2nd year to get used to being there). We also got our white-coats. Bristol has you wear a lab coat on the wards, but it’s short and only goes to your waistline – so they look really funny. They’re meant to be to identify the students from the Doctors/Consultants. I went over to a medic buddy of mine’s for some fajitas and a movie with a couple other friends that night.

For the past two weeks we’ve had stunning sun and warm weather – now it’s rainy and cold every day so I’ve not been doing as much outdoors lately. Tuesday – classes, squash in the afternoon. Wednesday – classes, squash in the afternoon. End of the year hockey meal. We went out as a team to a restaurant (I had mussles – mmmm) – then to a pub and a bar. I got the award for “Male Newcomer of the Year” -> so I’m guessing I might be continuing to use my goalie skills next year!

Today – labs all day long. However I did get to meet S.T.A.N. STAN is a ‘standard human’. He is one of two STAN’s that are part of the medical school at Bristol. STAN is set up to have several areas for taking pulse, he can have blood pressure, ECG, cardiac output and much more measured/controlled by computers. He is controlled in a room, so he can have a voice, blink, vomit, etc. He, along with his counterpart cost the school almost £250,000 each. That’s over $1,000,000 CDN together! They’re quite important because they allow medical students to observe and treat effects that we cannot induce in volunteers and patients. For example – today we observed a loss of 3000ml of blood to the system. 3 litres is a lot of blood, you could never voluntarily take that much blood from someone! Stan can be defibrillated as well and can be given drugs, and will even change what is expired in his air! It’s pretty amazing! I’m sure I’ll be spending more time with him during my time at Bristol.

I came home today and got in another game of squash, and now I’m off to bed. This week I’ll be getting caught up on all my work for the term, and will be at the last hockey of the year on Sunday (hockey tourney in Weston).

Also, I passed all my exams! It’s a relief. I don’t know the marks yet, as there’s a strike on with the lecturers at the moment, but we do know if we pass/fail.

Hope everyone is well, and all the mothers and grandmothers I have/know had a great Mother’s day last Sunday!

Hope all is well,
-Pete

This is me and Jack at the last formal dinner

This is me getting my award at the Hockey dinner - my nick-name is “Ice Man” if you’re wondering and I got the award for best male newcomer.

‘Morris Men’ - the guys I morris danced with and some of us school kids (1st year medics)

Me in my Ganster oufit, with two other gangsters of different eras, and a random pic of me to fill in the space

Geneva, you can see the “Jet D’Eau” (jet of water)

Giant Chess and the Wall of Reformation (leaving Catholisism)

The U.N. Building, Geneva

The Red Cross/Crescent building and the General Assembly theatre in the U.N. Building

Me, Andrew and Alberto skiing off piste at Les Contamines

Friday, April 7, 2005

Hey,

I’ve been away this past week visiting family friends in Geneva, Switzerland. It was great to get out of Bristol for a week, see some close friends, get outside and eat some great home cooked food.

I flew from Bristol to Geneva last Wednesday in the early afternoon. It’s easy for me to get to Bristol airport and it was easy for Mrs.Turvey to pick me up there from their home in Geneva. It’s about 1-2km from the French border right near the base of some of the mountains! They took me to their home there and their son was already home from school. That night was basically just seeing everyone again. It was weird flying into Switzerland, because there were no formal questions/forms to fill out, nothing. All they do is look at your passport and allow you into the country, well, it also helps that I was flying in from a European Union country.

On Thursday, I went into Geneva, but as it was raining pretty heavily I decided to do some indoor sight-seeing. I went to the Red Cross/Red Crescent museum first. It was really neat; you could follow the Red Cross/Crescent (a Swiss organization) since their beginnings in the 1800s. It was started by a Doctor that had been passing by a war zone on his way to a meeting and he saw people laying on the battleground that had been left there for days and days wounded. He got ahold of a nearby church and along with other people helped move the men there and treat them. From then he got his idea to start the Red Cross/Crescent (in Geneva) and it has been going on ever since. One thing, in the museum there was a sign for every year since the Red Cross/Crescent began and on each sign there was listed the wars that year with the number of deaths, the number of natural disasters/deaths associated, and various treaties and aid organisations that were set up that year. (The Red Cross/Crescent is set up to aid people in wars and natural disasters regardless of race, nationality, etc.). It was sad to see that in every single year since the Red Cross/Crescent was founded, there have been more deaths due to war than due to natural disasters. There were other cool things there, like old records, info on the World Wars, etc. The Red Crescent is for Muslim countries.
After going to the Red Cross Museum I went to the United Nations building, which was practically across the street from the Red Cross Museum. I first felt a bit rude, because after being in England for so long, I forgot it was French in Geneva. I started speaking English to the guard who turned to me and said, “En français, s’il vous plait!” Geneva has the second biggest UN building in the World after the one in New York. You have to have your passport to enter, and you go through all the metal detectors like at an airport. You hand in your passport and have to go straight to a tourist centre (you are only allowed on the grounds supervised, you can’t wander around on your own, which is sad, because the grounds are stunning). I was led around on a tour, but after spending 2 hrs in the Red Cross museum, I wasn’t really in the mood for a tour, but I took it anyways. It was pretty interesting and cost about 8francs which is about $8.00CDN for a student. Then headed home for the evening.

Friday was a beautiful day, so I decided to go into Geneva. Mrs. Turvey was going in for a meeting, so we took the tram in together. I walked around Bristol on my own for the first hour. I saw some Geneva sights like the Cathedral de St. Pierre, the reformation wall, the Old Town and the University of Geneva. Near the university were giant chess boards, but I forgot to go back with someone and play a game! The old town was pretty neat as it was all build on a hill and had narrow, windy lanes throughout. At the end of that hour the Turvey’s eldest daughter Kristen took met up with me and we walked around the waterfront and the bank district (everyone knows about Swiss banks!). Kristen has long breaks in her last year that are study periods for International Baccalaureate Students. We then met Mrs.Turvey and their other children, Sarah and Andrew for lunch – They’re at school in downtown Geneva. I had an awesome ham and swiss cheese toasted sandwich, which by the way was not called swiss cheese, just cheese, as I was in Switzerland). The kids went back to school for the afternoon, and Mrs.Turvey and I walked around more of Geneva and stopped at a café before returning home. We also went out to a mall to rent my skis for the weekend.

The weekend was filled with 2 days of skiing in France. Mr. Turvey came home after travelling abroad on the Friday night. On the Saturday, I was taken to a place called Grand Massif where we went to a resort called Flaine. I swear there was a different kind of chair lift at every group of runs. There were only a couple of normal chairs, then one that looked like an egg, one that looked like an ice cube that you stood in and a normal gondola. There was me, Mr.Turvey, Kristen and Sarah and we me up with 4 other people. However, at the bottom of the mountain it started raining – I’ve never skied in the rain – so we had to go up to the very top 2200m where it was snowing. After about only 3 runs we were starving and the snow was becoming blizzard at the top, so we stopped for lunch. I had a plate of steak and frites. After lunch, the blizzard was worse. We tried skiing once more, but 1) we were absolutely white after taking the lift up, and 2) we were skiing in a white-out and could see nothing. So we gave up after 5 runs and headed home, soaking wet as it was still raining at the bottom of the mountain. Dinner that night was great, we had a cheese fondue and veggies.

Sunday I went skiing with Mr. Turvey, Andrew and one of Andrew’s friends. It was a beautiful day again with clear skies so you could see all of the Alps for miles. We were also in France at a place called Les Contamines. It was honestly like a huge basin that you skied in, and skiing in the Alps is so much higher, that there’s fewer trees, so you can go off the sides of the runs onto the un-groomed snow (Quebec has dense forests, so you can’t leave the runs as easily). We did about 18 runs throughout the day. We went off-piste skiing a couple of times, and the black runs in the alps are un-groomed, which also felt like off-piste skiing. We also had a great lunch of Kebabs, Salad, Frites and Häagen-Dazs ice-cream for dessert. That was a great day of skiing. That night we had chicken from the market, with chessecake for dessert – see I really love the home cooking!

The last 3 days were not too exciting as I mostly just studied for my exams that are to be at the end of the break on Apr 24th. So, that’s what I’ll be doing for the next to weeks, study, study, study! Except tomorrow night where we’ll be seeing some fireworks that are on in Bristol at the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Also, Happy Birthday to my brother John, who won’t be a teenager after tonight.

Hope everyone’s well,
-Pete

Alps, France

Geneva - the Bank District

Flaine, you can’t see the top of the mountain in this pic

Pics from skiing in France

This is me and mom atop Cabot Tower (below) while she was visting me in Bristol earlier this week.


This is a picture of Bristol University from atop Cabot Tower

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Hello,

I have just seemed to be so busy lately!!! I should be doing work, but instead I’ll procrastinate and update my website.

After a lovely bout of MUMPS, I spent the Saturday afternoon in my room trying to do work, but mostly just finishing my novel: “Jonathan Strange & Mr.Norrell.” It was a pretty good book (long), but it was as if a scientist had written it and it had little footnotes in it, but it was all fiction. It was a basically about 2 English magicians in the early 1800’s and how they helped Wellington beat Napoleon and brought practical magic back to England. I’d recommend it as long as you can get past the first few chapters. I’m now reading DaVinci Code, enjoying the story.

By Sunday, I was pretty much normal (see bottom photo), so I went out around Clifton again for a hike. We went across the suspension bridge, that’s been in my photos before, we went up into a tower and saw this 150year old sort of camera that took the scenery and bounced it off a mirror onto a HUGE white dish. You could see people amazing clearly outside, it was really cool. We also went down into a cave that was on the side of the cliff. It wasn’t one of the ones that had stalactites and stalagmites, but it was still pretty cool, because the cave just opened out onto the side of the cliff that we had previously been on.

On Monday, I returned to lectures, face back to normal. After getting back into it, I did a medical school tour in the afternoon again for visiting interviewees of next year’s medical school class. It was fun to take them around, and I got to do it with my buddy Rich who I’ll be living with next year. We had a Bristolian bus driver who took us to all the sites and told us facts about Bristol that we didn’t even know. Eg. Bristol is built on 7 hills, because most of it’s in the valleys, that’s why it never gets snow (melts before it gets into the valleys). We also went by ‘the Matthew’ the replica of the ship that took John Cabot to Newfoundland in the late 1400’s. That night we had a hockey practice with the interns (PRHOs in Britain) from the Bristol Royal Infirmary. It was a fun match and I did manage to score a goal for my team (which is hard seeing as how I’m a lefty and all field hockey sticks are right handed). It was nice to get back out and do some physical activity.

Tuesday and Wednesday was mostly getting caught up. I played a few games of squash and worked on my GP essay which is due next week. I did purchase my Wills Hall Summer Ball ticket (at a wonderful £65) – this is sorta supposed to be the event of the year. It’s after my last day of exams in June, it’s a black tie event that they spend something like a couple thousand £££ budget on – so I’d better be awesome! Same thing Thursday and Friday, went back to my GP and had a lovely house visit. Friday, we had a long rehearsal for the play I’m in, which is getting more hilarious each day I go to practices.

By the way, I must mention our newest course. It’s call whole person care. It’s learning to study the ‘whole person’ and not just the disease. It’s just really hard to take seriously because it seems very inventive on principles and methods. New words come out like ‘Holons’ which are mostly just interrelating the person with their surroundings. I’m not trying to bash the program (too much), I think I can understand why we’re examining this area of medicine, but often it just feels quite silly. For instance we looked at a case about a sore elbow, but then we record all this extra information about a troubled marriage a pregnancy, depression, smoking, trouble at work, he had a good day, etc. Then we relate everything together and try and help the whole person, not just the sore elbow. It’s all new medicine, as they say in whole person care, we’re onto level 5! (I digress)

So, back to my life. This weekend I had another interesting run in with the men’s hockey teams at the University of Bristol. Due to lack of field hockey goalie’s last weekend, I was asked to play for the Bristol 4ths hockey team to give them a goalie, no matter how bad I played. There we playing about 5 mins away from where I lived so it wasn’t a problem to accept. But, a few hrs later I was contacted by someone else, who plays on the medic’s team. He told me that he needed a goalie for the men’s hockey team. I said, not to worry and that I was already playing. He said, ‘Oh no, this is for an away match for Bristol 2nds’ – they apparently were allowed to steal me because they’re higher up. But, in the end, their normal goalie came and I was able to play a game for the 4ths. It was a great game we (Bristol Uni) won 4-2! That night (Saturday) was a Wills event, called the ‘Back to the Future’ party. Basically, you take one of the 3 eras in the Triolgy (old western, 1950’s, 1980’s and go in a costume). I went as 80’s which consisted of a bandanna and a shirt that said Costa Rica ’83 on it. It was loads of fun. There was an old Delorean (the back to the future car!) with a photograph (I’ll put up a photo of it later). There was a big band playing 50’s music and a rockin’ DJ playing songs for mostly 80’s but some 50’s and western. It also had a mechanical bull with pads all around if for when you got thrown off. It was good fun, and a good night in at Wills Hall.

On Sunday, I got up at 10:00 to play Rugby for Wills. There was not a full team, so I just went back to bed. Got up for 12:00 to go to my hockey game. It was a weird game. We played well, but I didn’t seem to play so hot. Every time I tried to kick the ball ( a big part of a field hockey goalie) I’d flub it. The other team’s first goal too, went off our teams stick and got a spin on it and rolled in the net! We played well, and lost 1-2. Our other team played that day on a real grass pitch (like in Canada, here – most hockey is played on Astroturf, so it’s like ball hockey in Canada), but they also lost 5-2.

That night my Mom arrived in England with her friend Louise. They had flown all night, and upon arriving in Bristol found no one at their hotel! We walked down to a nearby bed and breakfast and they found a beautiful room there with 2 beds for three nights. I took them out for a pub roast dinner that night, upon arriving there the football (soccer) was on, so they got to see how busy the bars are here when sports are on. On Monday, I skipped class in the afternoon and took them on a massive walking tour of Bristol. I took them from the university to Cabot Tower (in honour of the guy who found Newfoundland), then through Clifton to the suspension bridge then around the downs and up to Wills (took us about 3 hrs of walking). Showed them my room and hall, and then we went out for a nice dinner that evening. They went on Tuesday to Cardiff. Sadly, it rained on them all day, but they still really enjoyed the city. They got to try the Welsh beer BRAINS, and mom found a store that sells tartans. She ended up buying a Roberts scarf tartan (her maiden name) which is a beautiful blue and red tartan that I’ve never seen before. Today they headed up to York and will be arriving in Newcastle on Thursday. I’ll be flying up there from Bristol this weekend! ( we may also go to Edinburgh in Scotland)

Tuesday, I just went to lectures, had another ‘wonderful’ afternoon of Whole Person Care and went out for a nice dinner again with Mom and Louise. Today I spend the afternoon filming a scene that’ll be shown in the play, and the evening rehearsing.

Now I’m swamped with work to get done before the weekend.

Hope all is well,
-Pete

Us on our walk to Clifton Suspension Bridge

Me, Lulu and Andy at the ‘Back to the Future Party’ - me (in my bad attempt) and Lulu are 80’s and Andy is 50’s - but you can’t see.

Me, practically Mumps-free