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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Paralympics in the Spinal Cord Unit! (August 28)

If you've watched any of the Paralympics, then you know how inspiring it is to watch all those people do such incredible things beyond the limits of their disabilities. Today at the Spinal Cord Unit of the hospital, we had a Paralympics for the spinal cord injury patients. There were 8 different teams or "countries," and they did various things from basketball to pool to shooting (Real guns! Right under our research mezzanine!!) to boat racing. I made sure no faces are in any of the pictures. It was a fun day!

Shooting: The patients shot guns at balloons on the other side of the rehab gym. This is looking down from our research mezzanine.

Boat racing: So that all patients could participate, a remote-controlled boat was controlled by putting on a hat and moving your head. Right was right, left was left, leaning your head forward was go forward, and leaning your head back was reverse. They had to do a figure eight around obstacles set up in the pool!

Basketball and pool were also events!

After work, we had a girls night at Xscape! Xscape is a CRAZY place. It literally has everything. Snow ski slopes, IMAX theater, bowling, mini golf, lasertag, arcades, restaurants, shopping, fandrop, aerial obstacle course...you name it, they have it. Seriously. It was so fun! We spent our time in the arcade doing the 10 pence slots - the cheap way to do it. :) We ate at a delicious New York style Italian place too and it was sooo good! Here are some pictures.

Monday, August 27, 2012

RAIN. (August 27)

Today's forecast: 100% rain. ALL. Day.

Luckily I was prepared, so I was able to enjoy it!! I threw on my wellies and raincoat, grabbed my umbrella, and splashed my way to work!

View from my lab

Then as I was getting home, there were SO MANY swans in the river to greet me!!! :)

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Looking for Nessie in Loch Ness! (August 26)

350 miles. 12 hours. ONE Loch Ness Monster!

Today, I took the longest possible day trip around Scotland. I'm usually not a huge fan of bus tours, but I was determined to get to Loch Ness this summer! It was quite the long day, but at the end of the day all I have to say is that Scotland is an AMAZING, BEAUTIFUL place. We made lots of stops throughout the day, but rather than listing them all out I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

Loch Lomond

The purple in this picture are plants called Heather. They only bloom in August and September, so I came at the perfect time. Sometimes there were green hills FILLED with huge purple fields of these flowers. They were gorgeous!!

Volcano

Glen Coe

Glen Coe is where part of HARRY POTTER was filmed!! Hagrid's place and all that were built here, and Hogwarts was superimposed. Fiona actually got to visit the set when they were filming it!