We're baaa-aaack.

It has been a crazy week or so for Zack and me.  We started out sightseeing with my cousin and her husband last Thursday.  We were very impressed with our Independence Hall tour guide.  We have had a couple of not so great ones in the past so it was really nice to have someone who was really on target.  Also, one fun thing about sightseeing with other people is that Zack and I actually got a picture with us both in it.  Totally cute!

The day after sightseeing with my cousin, I attended my nursing school orientation, which was enlightening and also scary.  I am so excited to get started.  Looks like this term I'll be doing mostly book work, with one day of practice clinicals, which involves going to a lab and practicing the things we learn on dummies and each other.  For the remaining 3 terms, I will have 3 separate clinicals each week.  Each clinical will center around some aspect of nursing (pediatric, geriatric, psych, etc).  That sounds very exciting, and I am anxious to get started.  There is one down side to it though.  They want us to have a variety of clinical experiences including hospitals, urban settings, more rural settings, clinics, and so forth.  That means that they can (and will) assign me clinical locations all over the place, across several counties in Pennsylvania, and also in Delaware and New Jersey.  I get no say in where they assign me to go.  Some of the locations are not accessible by public transportation.  That means getting to and from clinicals could become a very, very complicated, difficult, and time-consuming process.  We are considering buying a car to deal with this situation.  We still have a couple of months to  think about it since the real clinical rotations won't start until second term.  It's a hard call though.  First, buying a car means paying for it, which is not exactly the easiest thing for poor students such as ourselves.  There's also the high insurance rates and parking hassles that come with living in Philly.  We had planned to just skip the car thing for at least another year to avoid those issues.  No matter what we decide, we'll make it work out.  We both believe very strongly that education should be a priority for us at this point in our lives, and we feel that the benefits of our decision to invest in education will far outweigh any costs we incur at this time.  It will be good to get a variety of clinical experiences also, despite the hassles.

Jumping to the next topic, we just got back from our vacation to Florida.  We couldn't have asked for a better trip.  The weather was amazing, the company was nice, and we had plenty to keep us busy.  The first day we were there, Zack and I got to go to the Magic Kingdom alone while his parents went to a spring training game.  We had a blast.  I have always loved the Haunted Mansion and this trip was no exception.  What an awesome ride.  I also rode Space Mountain (without crying.  In my defense, I was like 8 years old last time I had the chance to ride it and I didn't learn to enjoy rollercoasters until I was probably 12 or 13).  We were pretty tired by early evening since we flew into Florida after midnight the night before so we called it a day at like 8 PM.  We got to enjoy it plenty more though because we went back to 

the Magic Kingdom on Monday with Zack's parents and sisters.  That day, we discovered the Buzz Lightyear ride, which is really fun.  Don't skip it if you go to Disneyworld because it's easy to miss but it's really cute and fun.

We also hit Hollywood Studios (wow, the Tower of Terror was even more awesome than I remembered).  The Rockin' Rollercoaster was fun too, but I think Tower of Terror takes the cake for funnest ride at Disneyworld.  For our last day of vacation, we were going to go to Epcot, but changed our minds at the last minute and decided to go to the Animal Kingdom (thanks for the correction honey).  Boy were we glad we did!  We LOVED it.  The Everest ride is our second favorite after Tower of Terror.  They also have this Dinosaur ride that we're crazy about.  Plus they have one of those safari rides where you ride around in a truck and look at animals... who wouldn't love that?  So, 3

 days at Disneyworld, a day at the beach, and a couple of delayed flights later, here we are, home    again, and looking forward to having Zack's mom over for Easter.