Getting back to the basics

So now that I'm done with training I'm in NTP (Nurse Transition Program) at Keesler. Basically it's like a residency program for 11 weeks for nurses with less than one year of experience. We went on a tour of the hospital the other day and the ICU is only six beds and at the time there was only one patient. I will only rotate through the ICU for a couple of days but it will definitely not be anything like what I was doing in Atlanta. Also, on the floors here the tech/nurse ratio is about 1:2. How amazing is that? There will actually be someone there to help me when I need it who is completely trained and qualified to be working! The techs here are comparable to LPNs, from what I'm told, so it will be very different from what I'm used to.

This is my whole NTP group- I'm on the far right. They all went to COT with me so I had met most of them before but they weren't in my flight so I didn't see them often. Now we're spending the next 11 weeks together! We'll be on different schedules once we start working on the floor but we'll still meet up pretty often. Also, we weren't sure why these pinwheels were here but we really liked them. (The guy taking the picture didn't know how to zoom- I apologize for the tiny picture on his behalf).

Our classroom was freezing so we took our lunch break outside. (I'm not in this picture, so no need to look for me).

Our first time out in Biloxi. This bar was in the lobby of a casino (of course!). It wasn't actually reserved for us, we just had to ask and they let us sit here.

I'm so excited to be out past 11! We always had to be back early when we went out at COT.

This is right before our first ever combat dining-in. These are held for various big events, though not very often. This particular one was for the departure of a general that will be moving to another base. Basically it's a dinner which opens with a water balloon fight- this one was all medical personnel. It was the only time we will probably ever be allowed to throw things at a general. We took about 200 water balloons and three super-soaker water guns. I don't have any pictures during or after because I didn't want to get my camera ruined, but I'm sure some will pop up eventually. I was pegged pretty good at point blank range by some enlisted folks- one smacked me right in the face, one hard in the back, and one that had to have been recently frozen based on how much it hurt, right in the thigh. I was soaking wet and hit more than a few dozen times but those three were the painful ones. The whole night was a lot of fun!

I move into my new house next week so I'll be putting up lots of pictures when I start to settle in. I'll have a fire pit in the backyard too! I can already taste the s'mores...