The weather this past weekend has been absolutely beautiful!
I’m going to be sad when it gets cold 😦

Apparently some magazine or another thinks that Penn is one of the biggest party schools in America…..

http://www.businessinsider.com/penn-strange-choice-for-top-party-school-2014-9

I know, what were they thinking? We all think they got mixed up …. or … actually there’s really no other explanation.

Anyways, maybe they got slightly confused because we randomly have a beach volleyball court on Locust street.

It’s cool… We’ll take it.

I Don’t Think We’re in Philly Anymore

After our exam one day, Mark, Sejal, Mancia and I were walking back to the house when we decided to stop by the Restaurant School on Walnut Street. Every time I’ve walked past, I’ve wanted to try it (and I think they weren’t open when mom stopped by). Anyways, we stopped by the bakery because I heard it was pretty decent, and then we learned about their whole restaurant. Apparently you can go there for lunch or dinner (you need a reservation for dinner), and you can have different course meals. They have an International room and an Italian room. The International is a 21$ set course and I think it changes based on what the students are learning. The Italian room is 15$ per person and is also a course meal (but without dessert), and comes with unlimited pasta!

The best part is that the inside of the restaurant is definitely unlike anything I ever expected:

I think this is the courtyard where lunch is served, and it honestly feels like we stepped into another city:

They even have a storefront for their own bakery!

I’m excited to give it a try, and I hope it tastes good!

Also I do realize that I have an addiction to using movie quotes for my titles.

Simodont!

This afternoon, I had a relaxing experience playing with the school’s new simodont technology. It is honestly the coolest thing that I have ever done. Imagine the video game trauma center, but for dentistry. Each computer has an attached simulator so you can hold the ‘instruments’ and watch the 3D screen to see what you’re doing. Today we practiced different prep shapes: hot dogs, donuts, crosses and cubes. The display on the right screen shows your stats and your goal is to remove a certain amount of the ‘caries’ without damaging the sides or the bottom of the ‘tooth’. The display has different bars depicting the percentage of what you took out, and what you removed by accident. Once you think that you’re done, you can submit it and it shows if you’ve passed or not. (You can redo it if you didn’t pass.)

The simulation feels pretty real. As you’re drilling, you can feel the pressure of what it’s like to drill an actual tooth. And you can also feel when your prep is smooth, or when you have a bumpy surface. If you drill too deep, and you hit the nerve, you can also feel the change in resistance of the simulation.

Apparently, having a dentsim (which is what we did last week with the pink blocks) is quite rare in the states, but having the simodont is completely unique to Penn. While they’re all the rage in Europe, we’re the only school in North America to have class for it! Just a little perk of being a Penntist!

*For the record, my professor offered to take this picture for me!

Facelift!

Philly is getting ready for Cecilia, is Cecilia ready for Philly?

iAlreadyHaveOneOfThose

Apparently some big phone company released a new phone or something.  I think some people were a little excited to get one.

Studying … My New Favorite Hobby

I know I haven’t posted here in a while, but I have a valid excuse! This is what my exam schedule looks like for the year… and it doesn’t even include all of them =(

I literally go back and forth between the school and my place every day. Sometimes I visit the library for variety. This is what the Van Pelt Library study booths look like:

It kinda feels like a restaurant! They also have some neat rocking chairs that you can sit in but I haven’t been brave enough (or stressed out enough) to give those a go.

Q: How depressing is dental school right now?
A: Very.

But at least I have pictures of the world’s cutest dog, Boo, to make me feel slightly better!

How many more of these are there?

Today we had our first dental school exam in embryology. It was definitely harder than I expected and now I’m terrified for biochemistry next week!

But the D2s got us a celebratory cake which was super nice of them!

Penn Always Takes it To Another Level

Today I was walking past the Fine Arts Hall, and I noticed that the gates had these funny blobs on them. At first I thought that they were birds, but then I noticed that the blobs were hands!

The hands were sculpted to express different techniques of art.

I thought it cool, because it was like art within art. This is one of the things that make walking through campus so much fun!

Federal Donuts

You’ve probably tried Chicken and Waffles, but have you ever tried Chicken and Donuts? That’s right, donuts.
The concept seems strange, but having loved chicken and waffles, I was confident that this was an even more American trend… fried chicken and donuts. So the way it works is that you can order half a chicken or a whole chicken (they come with a series of different rubs and spices) which comes with a regular cake donut, and you can also order the specialty donuts individually.

We didn’t know that the chicken comes with the donut, so…. we order two half orders of chicken AND a chocolate peanut butter donut.

I don’t normally like the texture of cake donuts. I feel like they’re too much for a mouthful since they tend to be on the dry side, but this chocolate peanut butter cake donut was having an identity crisis. It tasted like a cake donut, but it was less dense; I felt like I wasn’t wading through a glob of dough.

The chicken itself was very moist, but I was slightly disappointed that it felt like they had just dumped a ton of seasoning on top.

I had the buttermilk ranch.

Dad had the curry.

Overall, it was really good. But my favorite donut place is still Beiler’s at Reading Terminal Place.