Viva Las Vegas: Part II

On Monday morning, it was back to interviews at Midyear, but this time, the whole residency team was there! Although I am the only resident at my site, I have seven other peers across the country. I had the opportunity to meet them all in September when they came to visit Rhode Island, and I knew right away that I would have friends and colleagues for life. Fred and Kavita are at the site in Texas with Melissa and Giang; Lisa is in Arizona with Elizabeth; Andrea and Brandon are in Pittsburgh with Julie, Mary, and Jessica; and Sherry and Kevin are in Illinois with Lydia.

On Monday afternoon, we participated in what is called the "Residency Showcase." The set-up is similar to a job fair, except all of participants, instead of employers, are residency programs trying to recruit residents. For 3 hours, this giant convention room turned into a sea of people, all trying to find a program that is right for their needs. In years past, there had just been the resident and the director from my site, and with only two people at a booth, it can be difficult to manage the flow of traffic. This year we took a team approach and had the residents and directors from all of the sites, which made it much easier to triage the requests we were getting. By the end of the showcase, my voice was almost gone!

For dinner, Nick and I went to the Grand Lux in the Venetian, which I absolutely loved (I think I ate there 4-5 times while I was in Vegas!). I had the Asian salad (more than once-it was so tasty); I have been meaning to search for a recipe online similar to the salad I had. It was light and fresh- lettuce, carrots, crispy rice noodles (texture, people, texture!), a ginger dressing, and some type of small green herb that I couldn't identify (but liked nonetheless).

Not the greatest picture, but you get the idea

I'll have a big salad...

After dinner, Nick and I walked around the Palazzo, which is a tower that was added on to the Venetian. There are some glamorous stores on the first floor (David Yurman, Barneys New York, Kwiat), along with an illy cafe. The Illy cafe had more flavors of gellato and sorbetto than I even begin to name. Nick had chocolate (his favorite), and I tried the lemon ice and the cherry sorbettos.

Here is a picture of a fountain inside the Pallatzo... isn't it beautiful? They had another pool/water design (kind of like a modern wishing well), but I couldn't seem to get the right perspective for a picture.

I wonder who picks out the Christmas decorations for these places... I understand it needs to be over the top and a little wild (I mean, it is Vegas), but this just looked like the Loch Ness monster covered with lights.

While I was working, Nick did some research and bought us tickets to see the Blue Man Group. I have always wanted to see one of their shows (they are on my list of bands/groups/comedians to see before I die) but never had a good opportunity until now. If you've never seen them, it's a little hard to describe what their performance is like, but I think I've come up with a winning formula:

Gallagher (Remember the guy smashing all of the fruit? My other favorite was his painting of the United States)
plus the Three Stooges (At least one member of the group gets picked on/stands out/etc)

plus a mime (There was no talking during the show except for a short video)

plus Stomp (They focus on percussion, rhythm, and tone- another great show to see if you haven't already)

equals the Blue Man Group! (I know, this one is a little creepy)

You can't take pictures during the show, but here are a few highlights I found online...

The show started with these giant drums that had paint on the top and were used as drums (Dad, you would have loved this!)

Another part of the show used pipes for instruments- they changed the length of the pipes to change the sound (Sounds like a science experiment)

My favorite part of the show was when the rolls of toilet paper were passed from the back of the crowd to the front and then backwards to the back. They also had these glowing tubes that reminded me of the backbone of DNA (Wow, I am officially a nerd)

We snuck this one in before the show started... the people behind us thought they'd be funny and make faces in the background, hence the blurry face on the right-hand side of the picture. They apologized, but I don't really think they were sorry. (Note to self: do not tease young couples that want to get a cute picture together until after the picture has been taken.)

Nick headed back to Indy on Tuesday morning- luckily he wasn't delayed too long at the airport because of bad weather (his flight was changed, though, because of all of the snow in Chicago). On Tuesday we did some more interviewing, but it wasn't as crazy as Monday. I had a chance to walk around and catch up with some of my classmates from Purdue- how fun! I was told that 25% of my class was doing a PGY1 (Post-Graduate Year 1) residency, and I believe it- there were a TON of people there. It was nice to see so many familiar faces and hear future career plans.

I had been texting back and forth with Tony, a classmate of mine from Purdue, about meeting up sometime in Vegas since the previous Thursday and finally ran into him! Tony and I met the first week we were on campus through a mutual friend, David. Tony and I had so much fun during pharmacy school (I mean, as much fun as two kids could have during class)... to this day I am *shocked* that we did not have more professors tell us to be quiet or kick us out for talking during class. We tried so hard not to say anything, but something funny always happened. Either Tony spilled my Diet Coke, a professor would say something funny, I would spill my Diet Coke, or something else absurd would happen. One of our favorite activities was the "States and Capitals" game (much more interesting than medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology, trust me); we became so well versed in the U.S. version that we had to move onto other continents to stay challenged. Tony is completing a hospital-based residency program this year in Ohio and plans to work in a hospital somewhere when he's finished (specific, isn't it?).

Here we are on our last day of pharmacy school (We are still friends, I promise!)

Look at these fine young scholars at Midyear (For one person who wasn't sure of what he wanted to do and the other who didn't want to do a residency, I think we turned out just fine...

To be continued...