Health and Stuff

I'm going to do something a little different with this post. Instead of an update of WHAT I've been doing, it'll be more of an update on HOW I've been doing. And instead of writing to explain the pictures that I took, I'll be taking pictures as I write this post to try to illustrate things.

Lots of things have changed since moving to Nebraska. It's true that there are a few things that are similar to my lifestyle in Oregon, such as watching Psych with a bunch of other Psych-os (but now we get to watch it from a projector instead of an old-school television). But mostly, I've had to adapt my lifestyle a little bit. For example, now I solely rely on other people to drive me to places I need to go. I tried being self-sufficient today by biking (then again, I was actually borrowing Erin's bike). I thought I might be able to psych myself out and at least get across the bridge over the river and make it to the nearest town of Inglewood. Then one day, I might become brave enough to go over the second bridge into Fremont. But I took one look at the road with the first bridge, and knew there was no way. There's no bicycle lane OR walking lane on that bridge, so I'd have to slow down traffic and annoy a bunch of drivers in order to get to town. Therefore, the only place I am able to get to without the assistance of anyone else is the golf course, which I may or may not take advantage of one day.

This was actually my first day biking. My normal form of exercise is hiking on the trails here at Rivercrest. I try to do this everyday, but I've been slacking the past week, so I decided to get back to it tonight. The trails can be pretty interesting. There's several miles of trails and I still haven't gone down all of them. Tonight I was walking down a new part of a trail and realized that I had ended up in the paintball range. (So much for the boundaries being clearly marked! jk) I walked through and continued on the trail, which was getting more and more overgrown. Soon there wasn't really a trail at all, but I kept on going because there appeared to be a pathway ahead, or at least an open place without any trees. After a few steps, a branch-like thing flipped up and hit me in the shin. When I felt a little bit of pain, I figured it was some sort of thorny plant, but when I looked at it, it was barbed wire. I walked back to my room with my leg bleeding, and after cleaning up I looked at the damage. The cut was just a little bit longer than a Perry the Platypus band-aid lengthwise. (The cartoon-themed bandaids complements of my mom!) It'll heal.

This scratch made Perry sad. :(

My sister said that I won't need a tetanus booster for running into barbed wire, and she's the authority on that kind of stuff so I'll believe her. But even if I did need a shot, at least I know where the immunization clinic is now. On Wednesday Erin took me to get a tuberculosis test in town. Finding the clinic was easy, but finding out where we were supposed to go was the confusing part. It turned out that the correct door was right under the big sign that read "Immunization Clinic" but, hey, third time's the charm! I had to go back on Friday for the results. The injection gave me a weird-looking bruise on my arm, but other than that it was fine so I was declared tb-free. Erin and I celebrated by eating unhealthily. I had a tall peanut-butter dipped soft serve cone and deep fried cauliflower (it's still a vegetable!).

It's small, but I will be super-glad when it's gone.

The "kitchen" (the microwave and big fridge is in the shared living area).

Besides that unusually unhealthy lunch, I've been trying to eat healthy, and it helps that I have a roommate who tries to eat healthy as well. We get a lot of free food from the kitchen (i.e. this week we got grape tomatoes, yogurt, and eggs in a milk carton), but we still have to buy most of our food. On Wednesday, since I was in the car with Erin anyway, she took me to Omaha to shop for the upcoming Mother Daughter retreat. For lunch we stopped at Whole Foods, which is a grocery store that I have wanted to visit for a long time. I got all kinds of healthy, organic, fair trade, whole food to last me the week, and for lunch I got pesto pizza and a Sambazon Supergreens smoothie. Making food is kind of difficult in the conditions we have. We don't have a kitchen or an oven, and we do have a toaster oven, but the rack is missing so it's pretty much pointless. We also don't have a kitchen sink so we do our dishes in the bathroom. We do have a hotplate, microwaves, and the blender I brought from home. Because I got to the point where I was really missing baked goods, I made no-bake cookies and microwave cake over the past few days (good thing I got cocoa powder, raw sugar and coconut oil at Whole Foods). But although I'm trying to be mostly healthy, I'm also trying to be cheap. Today I finally made a list of foods that I should regularly shop for because I keep missing out on things. On my first shopping trip to Walmart, there were a lot of things I should have bought but didn't, but at least I bought almond milk. On my recent trip to Whole Foods, I bought things I had been waiting for like spinach, oatmeal, beans, and bananas, but of course I forgot the milk/milk substitute. I should have gotten flour and the larger carton of spinach, but I didn't realize that until after the fact. I'll learn eventually. But I'm doing fairly okay budget-wise. Not counting the times I've eaten out, I've only spent about $50 on groceries since I got here, and it's been three weeks already! Also, while I try to eat balanced, I don't have to worry too much because I've got Flintstones vitamin supplements (also complements of my mom).

What I should regularly buy (the letters next to the foods helped me ensure that I had every food group covered).

Well, that's enough about my physical health for now. Health isn't all about exercising and eating! In middle and high school we learned about how health is like a triangle, and to be ultimately healthy, the physical, mental, and social sides should all be equal. Clever, but I knew even then that it was missing something. Later down the line I read an article that compared health to SPIES, that is, instead of three aspects of health, there were five: Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, and Social. I really hope this year at Rivercrest can help me strengthen all these aspects of health, especially spiritual. I'm really blessed to be a leader within the Relevant student ministry, and I'm even going to be taking a class through the church that will help me be even better at this part of my job. Our first small group meeting was this Wednesday and it was a lot of fun (and I got to eat cookies that were baked in an actual oven). It's possible that this could turn out to be one of my favorite aspects of the internship experience. Speaking of church, their two-year anniversary is tomorrow (coinciding with my mom's birthday; Happy Birthday Mom!) (Oh yeah, also coinciding with the 10-year anniversary of 9-11-01), so that should make for an interesting service. But now I'm really straying from the topic of this whole thing, which is health. So, in closing, for the record, by most people's standards, I appear to be in general good health!