Day 27: The Infamous Mack Lipkin Picture!

So finally i got a picture of my preceptor, my Sophie mentor, and myself in one picture, simutaneously!

But i think i suceeded, don't you??

That afternoon after some shopping therapy (YEAH!) i met Li to play "table tennis", also known as ping-pong. I mean Li is serious about this game it is his sport in China.

I tried ...

...but failed miserably... after defeat i just walked away :(That night i went you with Manu to spend a night out with his friends. He met them at Family House, where he has volunteered at for the past 5 years. They are wheel chair bound, but are wonderful people. We went out and Sonia spent time trying to find me a perfect Italian male, lol. Then Marchelo wrote me some poetry. And we spent the night talking about wheelchair hockey, and how sexy the statue of the Greek god Neptune was...

i had a lot of fun...but i was also very aware of how Genoa does not really accomodate for those who are wheelchair bound. Because we all had to walk and wheel for a very long time until we found a place that was on the street level that did not have stairs to get in. And there was only one. I think that Genoa needs to place more importance on integrating the disabled by allowing proper accomodations.

Also "M" was telling me that she was interested in getting a PhD degree in Neuropsychiatry (which doesn't exist in Italy by the way), she is actually obtaining her degree from the robotics department of IIT, because they do not have a department that focuses on rehabilitation for motor disorders. For example, she was telling me of a patient that she had that was a 13 year old that fell into a coma for 1 month. He sucessfully came out of a coma. But there was no rehabilitation for him. There was no speech therapy, there was no play therapy, there was nothing for him to gain back what he had lost over the past month. Instead they wrote 4 sentences on a discharge notice, and he was never heard of again. And he is just one of many...

i mean that is sooo upsetting because you would think that with all the advances we have in sciences, and research that something could be done for him, and the thousands like him. I find it quite contradictory that in a place where everyone rides in scooters, and lives quite recklessly that there is no safe-guard if something indeed does happen.

smh.

...after these thoughts ran through my mind on the very long walk back to the Family House where my friend's lived, me and Manu went to Erbe ( which is the main hang out spot) to meet with Andrea, and Vivi and went to spend the night chilling...

And this weird hippie dude was climbing a tree after the club closed,

thankfully he crawled back down.
ciao.

Day 26: Focaccino and Nutellino

these do sound like names, but indeed as most of my interests they are food. So today i had nutellino, which is like a Ferroro Roche chocolate in dessert form, one word to describe it AMAZING!

and then Alessandro and his girlfriend took my out for dinner in Camogli. It was this outdoor place that sells like the best Focaccino. Which is like a Foccacia but with the cheese neaty tucked inside :)It is so popular that when you get there you take a number and your wait can be from 20 minutes to 2 hours. Luckily since it was only 3 of us, our wait was 23 minutes not bad considering we had 13 people ahead of us.

So we took some pictures of Camogli at night.

Then we sat and discussed the vast difference on the travels of trying to acquire our medical degrees. For example, Alessandro has his National Exam next week, which is the equivalent of the USMLE.

I was perplexed by his relaxed nature considering the importance of this test, but then i was schooled that this was an open-book exam with multiple choice , that was only 3 hours long. Also that nobody in Italy takes that exam seriously. I was stunned!

So yeah America is harder, but i sure hope that the quality is better too!

After to top the night off we went to this Gelateria that is famous for its gourmet ice cream.

I was feeling a little fruity that night so i got one with the works!!

ciao.

fragola!

Day 25: A Nuova amici

... her name is "M" and she is doing her PhD at IIT (Italian Institute of Technology) that my lab collaborates with. So i now have a buddy to terrorize Alessandro with the TMS...you can see his discontent...hehe!So today was experiments as usual, and i got to shadow Dr. Abrussezze in the movement disorder clinic today. I saw a couple Parkinsonian patient's and watch some data acquistion from the fMRI.

i ate dinner at a place near my residence, and spent the rest of the evening discussing the tomatoe salmonella outbreak, and Li's questionable 3 month old turkey dinner that he defrosted from the freezer, with my friends in the residence kitchen.

buona notte.

ciao.