It feels good to be back in Canada but I can’t wait to get home! First stop: Tim Hortons.
Also there were random carolers in the Philly airport.
Month: December 2014
Donut Worry! Exams are Done!
After the last exam of 2014, a group of us headed to Federal Donuts for free donuts!!! They were offering a special promotion for students in Philadelphia! (If you don’t remember my earlier post about Federal Donuts, it’s a restaurant that serves us fried chicken and donuts!) Their current flavours are Vanilla Spice, Strawberry Lavender and Cinnamon Brown Sugar.
Christine, Yvonne, Thomas, Andrew and Matt
Remember: things taste better when they’re free! Or maybe it’s supposed to be: things taste better when exams are over….
Dahlak Restaurant
For our lovely class president Sehe’s birthday a ton of us went to Dahlak restaurant to try some Ethiopian food! It definitely is a bit more South and West than where we typically go, so it was cool to check out that area.
We clearly had no idea what we were doing at the restaurant (the owner thought we were crazy because some of us were sitting on the tables but to be perfectly honest, everything was the same height!) but we had a ton of fun!
We broke up into small little groups and shared these giant platters of food! There were different types of meat and vegetables all served up on top of a flatbread (which wikipedia tells me is called injera). We also used the flatbread to scoop the food up. (Kyle assured me that his hands were perfectly clean…) Eating Ethiopian food is definitely a bonding experience … we even shared a glass of water at our table! (Just kidding, they don’t actually expect that, they just forgot to give the rest of us water.)
This is what our food looked like:
This is Sehe and her mini cake. The back of Nathan’s head stole all of the flash. My apologies.
Exam Countdown: 1 more tillI I come home!
Penn’s Nano Building
On our first attempt to go to Shake Shack with Amanda, Mark wanted to check out the nano building, which is on the opposite side of campus from the dental school. Weirdly enough, our PennIDs gave us access to the building. The outside looks really cool, with all these different levels.
As you go up the stairs in the building, there are little landings where you can sit and study. It’s also super quiet and super orange.
After exploring the whole building, we decided to leave because there were no open spots. But then, Mark had the brilliant idea of going to see the basement (Amanda and I were grumbling the whole time). But when we got there, there was this little conference room. Apparently they had just finished some kind of admissions meeting and they had all this leftover food, so they gave it all to us because they were going to throw it out!
So instead of going to Shake Shack, we embraced our inner poor dental students and ate the food. He even left us coffee! But seriously the food was really good.
It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas!
On Thursday, the Dental school had it’s holiday party. I don’t have a lot of good pictures because there were so many people, but the food was delicious!
There was a panini bar, different Mexican dips, a ton of different Mediterranean foods, and dessert! They also circulated
Holiday Countdown: only 2 more exams!
Holiday Parties
I love this time of year because it means holiday parties and holiday parties mean lots of food!
This time it was thai food at the LGBT party at the carriage house. Everything tasted amazing especially the tofu noodles!
Dental students like to move in packs.
Maya took a picture of all of us with our food =)
And Mark also made me a Christmas tree? after =)
Lunch with the Dean
Once every few months, the Dean invites the dental students to have lunch with him.
Reasons why to go to lunch:
1) Free food
2) The dean answers every question you have for him
Our dean is a pretty cool guy. He’s originally from Scotland, lived in Kentucky, speaks a ton of different languages, and genuinely tries to get to know his students.
He also hates having his picture taken.
Oops.
(Technically he hates looking at pictures of himself.)
Dinner with the President
The president of the university invited all penn students to an annual holiday party at her home in university city. There was already a line by the time we got there, but it moved pretty quickly.
This is what her house looks like from outside… in the dark… and not in good quality…
Originally I thought that it was supposed to be in her home, but the party was actually outside in a tent. We still had to walk through the house to get there, and the inside looked pretty sweet!
The tent was heated and decorated and they even had fake snow falling inside!
Mark, Amanda, Yvonne and I pretty much all had the same goal: get as much food as possible as quickly as possible and that’s exactly what we did.
There were turkey and cranberry sauce sliders, mini falafel wraps, bowls of chili and mashed root vegetables.
Dessert included peppermint macarons, peanut butter and jam chocolate cups, flavored marshmallows, all kinds of cookies and an assortment of squares.
Unfortunately, a student group also decided to take this opportunity to stage a protest, or what they referred to it as a “peaceful sit in”. All I can say is that I felt ashamed that they decided to do this in the president’s own home at the holiday party that she was having. I also thought that they were excessively rude to her, shouting at her while she was trying to make the speech that they had ordered from her. I found it to be quite selfish because it also meant that many students did not get a chance to enjoy the party because these protestors decided to just sit in the middle of it and not move. After this extremely awkward situation, we went back to studying because that’s apparently all that we do with our lives !
The Perks of Being a Graduate Student
The Grad Center on campus recently held a de-stress event for graduate students to relax. You could decorate your own cupcake (or as many cupcakes as you wanted) and more importantly, you could sign up for a free massage!
Ivan definitely took advantage of the entire event 🙂
In West Philadelphia 