Apple Harvest Festival

It's apple season! The roomie & I decided to head out to the National Apple Harvest Festival in Arendtsville, PA. It's about an hour from Hershey in the middle of nowhere.



This is us on a big yellow school bus taking us from the parking lot to where the festival was being held. Please note my apple shirt that I wore specifically for the occasion. :)



Here is a picture of a cider press. The man dumps the apples it and they are ground up into pieces that drop into the brown cloth in the bucket below. This bucket then has a piece of wood placed on top of it and a person cranks down and smushes the apple chucks. The juice flows out of the apples into another bucket. That juice is then strained through a piece of cloth and is used to make cider.



There was more than just apples at the Apple Festival. There were lots of crafts and some silly fun. Also, a giant wall of kettle corn! I have never seen so much kettle corn in my entire life. And yes we did buy a giant bag of kettle corn. Haven't put much of a dent in it yet. I told Waseem to wait until Wednesday night and we'll sit on the couch eating our giant bag of kettle corn while watching Glee on the tv! :)



And what would an Apple Harvest Festival be without a tour of an apple orchard? The tour consisted of driving around in a big yellow school bus listening to a tape playing over the loudspeaker telling us about the history of apples. The voice on the tape was creepy. If you have ever watched Family Guy, then you might know the perverted old man who walks around with a cane and always hits on Chris - well that's what the voice of the guy telling us about the apples sounded like.




I learned that the reasons we can buy apples in the grocery store all year long, despite apple harvest happening in the fall is because the apples are harvested and put into a climate controlled environment. This climate controlled environment has all of the oxygen sucked out of the room and it is replaced with Nitrogen. This causes the apples to stay fresh all year long!



Me apple picking! Yum!

Bushkill Falls

I am happy to say that fall is starting to creep in. The leaves are started to change from green to golden yellow, burnt orange, and fiery red. I LOVE the fall. The chilly air that causes you to want to curl up on the couch under a blanket and watch tv, while drinking hot chocolate. YUM!

In order to enjoy fall I decided I need to take a hiking trip on one of my last free weekends for a very very long time. While on the plane this past week, I read about the Niagara Falls of Pennsylvania - Bushkill Falls. It is located in the Poconos mountains. I thought it would be a great time to go with fall just starting. Saturday mid-morning I headed off on a 2 hour road trip to Bushkill PA.



Above is the largest fall, which is about 100,000x's or more smaller than niagara falls, but I will say that Bushkill Falls had more trails to hike and was less touristy. And the weather was amazing - cool and crisp, but not cold.



I hiked over 2.5 miles along a little stream and around to view I think in total over 8 falls.



Self-portrait on the trail.



I fell in love with the golden tree growing straight out of the rock wall. So beautiful in all it's glory. I took quite a few pictures of this beauty. At Bushkill, the leaves were changing colors, but the variety was slim. Mostly yellow & green trees, very little red or orange to break it up. The hike was not a colorful as I had hoped, but still beautiful.



My favorite fall of the day. Bridal Veil falls.



A little trick for the eyes. Look at the above picture - can you tell what is off about it. What seems wrong? Think for a second. I'll tell you at the end.




Beautiful sunset on the drive home. It was an all around great day!



The other picture is a reflection in the water, you can see leaves resting on the water and the ground at the top of the picture.

Oklahoma!

I had a nice relaxing weekend in Oklahoma! Ashley, Scott, and I did a lot of relaxing- which as a medical student is hard to come by and much appreciated. Ash and I caught up since it's been over 2 years since we'd seen each other!
.

We ate yummy Mexican food! It has been a while - since Pennsylvania is lacking in that department. There was also a request for a souffle baking lesson, which I was more than happy to oblige! Yummy x2. And....what sort of weekend would it be without a new baking adventure. Emeril's Chocolate Chip Pie w/ Brandy & homemade whipped cream. Yummy x3.



We had a little trouble with the Chocolate chip pie - a little overflowage and not cooking it long enough the first time, but in the end it was delish!


Happy Souffle's! Now Ashley gets to teach her husband Scott!


Then what would a weekend be with one of my Trinity girl's without a musical and dancing? So....we saw FAME and watched a documentary on the production of 3 high school musicals in Indiana. These musicals were big productions - one had a budget of $60,000! Ash & I decided that Nava - you need to come back to the states and become a high school drama teacher - with musical productions! Thanks!

It was a great weekend with two of my good friends! So I guess if I end up in Tulsa it would be ok - Ash & scott will only be 1.5 hrs away. Thank you two for a fabulous weekend. Miss you & love you both!


And....even though it sounds like all fun, there was work to be done! Interview #1.

Me before heading to my interview




The city of Tulsa was nicer than I expected. A little bit eclectic, but with more to offer than Hershey! Interview #1 went pretty well, except for me getting sick afterwards, but that's a story you don't want me to share.


Only in Oklahoma....

the start of the interview trail

Tomorrow morning marks the beginning of my adventures on the interview trail.
My first stop will be Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I have the pleasure of staying with my good friend Ashley Melson and her husband Scott for the weekend before heading to Tulsa Oklahoma where I will have my first interview!!!!




I can't believe it's actually starting - interview season. Let's just say it only gets hectic and crazy from here. Now maybe I'll have more to blog about - I will take you on the adventure with me. Over the next few months we will be traveling across America and back again! To the great plains, far enough south that it might as well be Mexico, and what sort of adventure would be complete without a stop in Sin City...Las Vegas here we come!

So hang on...the fun starts tomorrow!

Adventures in the Kitchen

I mentioned before that my new roommate can bake like nobody's business. Well since he finally finished his surgery clerkship he has taught me a thing or two! Before my mom came to visit we had a souffle baking lesson. He taught me to make Blue + Parmesan cheese souffles and of course chocolate souffles. I in turn taught my mother. As is said - see one, do one, teach one.



Below is a picture of the cheese souffle. Mom is about to pull them out of the oven. See how pretty & fluffy they are!



Yummy!



Next chocolate souffle...



This is the folding in of some egg yolks that have some sugar added and have been beaten to the consistency of ribbons. (don't ask, it didn't look like ribbons)



Bigger cups for the chocolate ones. They don't look as puffy, because these little dishes are wider on top than the bottom. Still yummy!


Next up...the roomie had the craving to make creme brulee. I'm not going to argue. He even has the torch to caramelize the sugar and everything! I didn't help with this baking process, but I did help with the eating process.




I'm starting to think - it's probably not the best thing for my health and my waistline to be eating creme brulee at my computer while studying. It's not one of those things that's supposed to be an everyday dessert.





And then...since creme brulee takes quite a few egg yolks there were tons of egg whites left over. Well he couldn't let them go to waste.
So when I got home today from school - this is what I found.




a fridge with 4 bags filled with tiny meringue cookies - chocolate, lemon, and apricot-nut (or something like that)!




Should I not tell you that souffles are easier to make than they look? I'll try and get the recipes this week and if you are feeling adventurous - you can take stab at it. Even if it doesn't turn out - I can pretty much guarantee that it'll still taste good.

In the coming month - my roomie and I should be having more baking days, because we'll both be on easier rotations. The irony is that I'm on a rotation entitled - "The Clinical Managment of Obesity." We'll see how this turns out.....

Interviews

Sorry I've been a bad blogger lately. I have a good reason though. Ever since my mom left I have been studying for my USMLE step 2 exam. This is the second part of the test I studied for last summer. This time around it's not supposed to be as bad. We'll see though. I'm only studying for 2.5 wks compared to a full 4 weeks last time. Wish me luck - I take the test next Saturday.

In addition to that I'm taking a humanities class. It's called Putting It Into Words. I have written a reflection, a short story, imagist poem, haiku, free verse poetry, and now most recently a sonnet. Most of them have to deal with medicine of some sort. So I have been busy trying to get my brain to get back into creative mode after 3 years of being uncreative. Not the easiest thing in the world to do. I'll share some of my work on the blog later. Some of it is still in the revision stages. Others I'll save I can blog more later...haha

Anyway - as you know my applications went out and....I have heard back from some residencies and....I have set up some interviews. So come October, November, and December - I will be traveling quite a bit. So any advice on packing light and traveling well - would be appreciated.

My first interview is October 16th in Southern Cali - the really exciting part is the day after my interview I get to meet up with my Mom and Aunt Ed and......go to the happiest place on earth! (aka Disneyland). The following Monday October 19th I'll be in Fort Worth. (Ash let me know if you will be there then, highly doubtful since you're in school - haven't heard from Tulsa yet, but will let you know) If I'm coming in a direction near any of you I will be sure to let you know.

So busy busy busy. Here's the suit with me and messy hair in a messy room. Can't see much - mostly black. Also the necklace will only be one or two strands. I'm going to take it apart and make it not so big.



And....a skirt too!

Application Submitted!

This morning, I woke up and finally pushed that submit button for my application to residency. It's done! I finally finished filling in all of those experiences and am finally happy with the dreaded personal statement. I picked my programs -26 right now, but I will likely increase it to 30 by the end of the week. There are a few more programs I need to do some research on and apply to.

Quick explanation on this application process for those of you who don't know how it works.
1. apply to residency
2. wait for interviews
3. go to interviews
4. rank schools 1-20 (or however many) in your preference of where you want to be
5. the residency programs rank the applicants they interviewed in order of their preference 1-100 or whatever
6. the rank lists go into a computer and then some mathematical magic happens and
*poof*
7. you hope a match works out between your rank list & the programs rank list

I know it's confusing.

So....I'm sure you are wondering where have I applied?
- I have applied all over the U.S. - from as far west as California to as far east as Illinois, including everything in between - utah, nevada, arizona, texas (who ever thought that I might end up in texas again? - and actually there are a few programs I really really like there), nebraska, missouri, and more

and I'm sure you are wondering why in the world did I apply to so many programs?

Well...the glitch in the plan is that...I've found someone



This silly boy who somehow convinced me to date him for over the past year and who buys me ice cream (see above) - I can't imagine going to residency without. So....we're going together!
Sief and I are couple's matching, which means we apply to programs in the same area (they don't have to be the same program, preferably near each other in geographical location) and then when we enter the match our rank lists are connected.

This was a really big decision for us, because since we are applying together that expanded the number of programs we applied to in order to increase our chances of matching.

Wish us luck!