Make Shift Home

We have officially survived our first week in Pendleton Oregon and have finally unpacked our bags for the next 12 weeks.  Our apartment came furnished and is much bigger and nicer than we were expected. It is actually a 2 bedroom although only furnished for one. Our 2nd bedroom is a nice storage area for our boxes and bags.  It was very strange unpacking our cars and seeing what made the cut for the trip. Prior to beginning this trip we packed away the bulk of our life into a storage unit. After the storage unit was full it became a real life game of tetras to see what would fit into our cars and when it came down to the wire some things ended up in the trash.

Our apartment is an old renovated building in the heart of downtown.  The building was originally built in 1919.



 It even has an old elevator with the gate door. This along with our dolly made it very easy to unload our cars! It is somewhat creepy though because while you are waiting for the elevator you can see the ropes moving the elevator up or down through the glass door.

The other cool thing about our building is we have a key code to open the outer door when makes me feel like Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City!

The nursing home which we are working at is in the next town over which is about 30 minutes away.  On our first day of work we were pretty nervous especially me since I my prior experience has been working with pediatrics but I kept telling myself that we would really be spending most of the day in orientation.

When we arrived we were given about 20 minutes of orientation and a schedule of a full day of patient care. On Wednesday we were given a "talk" about the importance of seeing patients for their full therapy time for billing purposes.  I spent multiple sessions that day in patent's room's who were reporting complaints of a stomach bug.  Guess what I got to experience that night?  I had not thrown up in 7 years! I was really missing all my sick time I had built up at my last job in which I used none!  The next day was a full day of sleeping for me and trying to regain bodily fluids.  I did make it back on Friday and had 7 hours and 20 minutes of patient care scheduled for an 8 hour day. My last two patients had the stomach bug so I left them alone and so ended the 1st work week. 

Our first weekend we took it easy to recover and get more settled.  We did our usual weekend chores such as grocery shopping and cleaning but tried to explore the town a little more as well. We are still trying to figure out the ends and outs such as where to eat, what times/days are places closed, and so on.  I don't think we have seen the sun all week so hoping that will come out this week.