how many of YOU can say this:

my scrubs are very, very purple and my shoes are blindingly white.

i thought of this fact numerous times today. especially after i had finished my morning at the hospital and was walking through the city streets to the bus. and then also when i got on the bus and rode it with lots of people dressed in regular pants and not white shoes. and then also when i got off the bus and walked home through my neighborhood, hoping to God that i have made a good enough impression by now so that, even though this sight weekly will surely undermine my credibility as a normal person, hopefully the people who live around me won't judge my fashion sense too harshly...

being in the hospital today was pretty crazy. it was my first day on the actual ward where i will be working this quarter and i had the chance to shadow a nurse there and see how it all works. clearly i have tons to learn, but i was actually pretty surprised by how involved i was able to be so quickly. i'm not going to lie--most of what i did and experienced today was not at all pretty. the patients in this wing are recoveing from an orthopedic or neurological injury or surgery. all of the patients my nurse was caring for were elderly and their bodies were failing in some pretty serious ways: broken hips, amputated limbs, lung and heart failure... my nurse was wonderful and took care of them amazingly well. i'm glad i got to see her in action and i'm so thankful that people like her exist. i just think i'll keep looking for a kind of nursing that will suit me better.

and now i'm sitting at victrola reading textbooks. there's a kid two tables over that i know from when i lived here before. i don't know if i'm just amazingly "lucky" or what, but in the 18 days since i returned to this town, i feel like i've seen an amazingly large number of people that i once knew. this is both comforting and completely annoying at the same time. it kind of makes me feel like i'm supposed to just feel really normal and comfortable here because look! i know all of these people! i know the bus routes! i know where things are! and while all of this is really nice and helpful and convenient, especially since i had to jump into things so fast when i got here, it really doesn't help me feel settled all that much. i think that it also doesn't help much that most of the people i have run into so far make me feel really anxious or bring back old insecurities.
luckily i didn't come back here for them--i came for those sweet-ass purple scrubs...