Visiting Baltimore

Today I took off for Baltimore to visit the school that is at this point, my number one choice. To kick off my wonderfully exciting day, I was hit by a car. Yes, you read that right. I had just gotten to Baltimore and had parked. I was trying to navigate my way around the campus to meet up with my tour guide for the day. As I was crossing the entrance of a garage, a car that was going in suddenly stopped and backed up. Meanwhile, there I was, absorbed in reading the map and walking my merry way when I didn't know what hit me -- Literally. It took me some nanoseconds to realize that a car had just attempted to make me roadkill. Fortunately, I'm a big girl and the car wasn't going fast. I think I bruised my elbow and knee a bit though. I was probably more stunned than hurt, but I glared at the driver with the famous Emily withering death look. I was thinking to myself, I so could sue this person and make his life living hell. Instead, I just walked off, as I didn't really want to turn this incident into the next Days of our lives soap drama.

Anyway, the next few hours quite compensated for that unfortunate incident. I went first of all into the school's health sciences library. It was so new and brightly lit and just absolutely fabulous. I thought that nothing would be more wonderful than to have the privilege to study there. I know, the thoughts of a tried and true nerd, what can I say? Then my gracious host showed me the hospital and I swear, the interior decor reminded me more of a mall than a hospital. It's starting to go the trend of, we are so pleasant, don't you want to be here? There are shops, a promenade, a display of reindeer and santa claus and just some spectacular arhitecture going.

The coolest part of the day however was attending a trauma clinic with my host. He's on his child psych rotation and trauma clinic is basically a meeting where psychologists and nurses and social workers and med students get together to discuss new patients and admits. The things that I've heard today...I swear, no child should ever have to go through. Unfortunately, these appear to be common phenomenons for the urban poor. things like drug addicts for parents, being shuttled to relatives' houses, being sexually abused, being chronically neglected, violence, etc etc.

In short, I left the campus today more convinced than ever that I really really want to go here...I just hope the school can pick up on my friendly vibes and send on over some positive reciprocal vibes. =)