The new semester has officially begun! When it's over, I will be halfway done my program and Jeremy will be halfway done his! The med school has a giant event called "The Halfway Dinner". It's a pretty important milestone since it means that the students will be done with all the theory and discussions and PBLs and will move on to their rotations!

Today I had two classes: Clinical Management of Dysphagia and Laryngectomy and Advanced Research Methods and Statistics for Health Sciences. The Dysphagia one seems like it will be really interesting. I thought I wanted to go into acute care but now I know it's 70-80% dealing with people who have trouble with swallowing and that's not the most appealing. My first love is Rehab, where you still have to deal with that but to a lesser extent because the patients are in better condition and are ready to start with the speech/language stuff by then. Tomorrow I have Adult Neurological Disorders and I'm really excited! Last semester i just kind of got through the classes because they were part of the degree, but this semester we learn things that I'm interested in and things that I'll be doing research on a little bit this year and then a lot next year. Super awesome!

In other news, Jeremy's birthday is in two days but he celebrated Saturday night. We held a joint b-day party for Jeremy and our friend Jen at our place. First we had a select few people over for a feast. Jeremy made a roast and a delicious gravy, Jess made a roast chicken, Jen & I made the traditional meat cake for Jeremy and I made a salad that I saw in this month's Canadian Living (Thanks Kathy & Ross!) and a pretty intense Reese Peanut Butter Cup cake. I have never undertaken this sort of cake before - it needed to be a special occasion and Jen's birthday gave me a good excuse! I made two individual chocolate cakes, and as they were cooling on the rack Jeremy said "You know, my mom would slice each of those cakes in half to make it into four layers with icing between each one". I told him to be my guest and he sliced away and we ended up with a towering monster of a cake covered in peanut butter frosting and mini Reese peanut butter cups. Jen's face was totally worth it! She was quite impressed, and even managed to cut it into slices fairly well. The slices had to be slivers since the cake was so tall. I even had to share my sliver with a friend because to even eat a tiny portion of that cake is more than enough! After the dinner, more people showed up and Jeremy played a game of Otto Pig while I mingled. There was a giant bowl of punch in a bright pink container and heaps of "jelly" (Jell-O) shots. We all had a fun time and the house is still decorated with balloons and streamers and banners because Jeremy's REAL birthday hasn't actually happened yet.

Crystal has been away for almost a week on a tour of the Australian outback/Red Centre. Her tour started in Alice Springs and went up to Darwin. I'm sure she's having a wonderful time. We'll see her once more before she leaves, but only for a few hours. It was a fantastic vacation and I'm sure she'll go home with many fond memories and hopefully plans to return one day!