Refreshers and Fire Positions

So I'm tired. This is the third weekend I have had of schooling. But that's what happens I guess. This weekend at my job I had my 24 hour EMT refresher course. We went over a lot and covered a lot. The first night was pretty rocky because my boss was distracted but we learned how to spike bags, and intubate patients. So the ALS assist class turned into an ALS class. I still don't have that endorsement. Speaking of which I'm learning my monitoring endorsement. That consists of being able to use an oximeter which measures SpO2% or hemoglobin saturation. Only problem is that it doesn't distinguish what's saturating the blood. This means Carbon monoxide could throw off the readings. We will also be proficient in blood glucose readings and 3-lead heart monitor reading. Haven't done much reading into those yet but when I do I should be able to elaborate more.

Patient run wise this past week has been kind of intense. Apparently I get all the psyche patients. I can't have my trauma shears, pocket knife, forceps or anything in with me. However my partner decided to let one guy have his metal cane with him. I thought to myself, oh good, if he wanted to he could just beat me to death with that thing. I have to do patient care because girls aren't allowed to be with guy psyche patients. I had two of them. Then I had to do a Billings/Helena rendezvous in Bozeman. That wasn't bad.  A lot of driving. Other than that there isn't much going on, I have my EMT outfit and I will post one of those pictures here soon.

School is plugging along. Quizzes and doing fire/haz-mat scenarios with matchbox cars. That is pretty fun. I miss playing with toy cars sometimes. We checked the lighting systems and electrical systems on the fire truck and added brand new oil.

So last Tuesday I submitted my application to join the Montana City Volunteer Fire Department. The president of the meetings told me that no matter how much he tried he couldn't make them say no and I am now a volunteer firefighter. Last time I joined a department I had no idea what was to be expected of me and it ended shortly. But with more training, being in better shape and what not I am more prepared for what is to come. So yeah. I am a volunteer firefighter now. They have an average amount of calls and train a lot. So with the emt job and this my resume will be a little less empty and show more experience to back up the training I've received. Speaking of training I am now a fully certified Wildland firefighter II. I mean basically I can dig on a hand crew but it's another certification!

Other than that, not much is going on fire wise. It's snowy as heck and there haven't been a lot of fires. Stay tuned for more exciting events as they unfold!

Running Around Madness

Well hello everyone, it has been a long time since I have been able to update this. I have been really busy as of late. Here's the short version. School is busy, we are on 20 days of straight class, school was falling apart, and I recently joined an ambulance service. Now here's the long:

School

School has been good so far. Hazardous Materials has been intense. We have had a lot of stuff thrown at us in a short amount of time. We've had three quizzes in about two weeks and gone through 400 pages of material in 4 weeks. Doesn't seem that fast but with some stuff that could kill you super quick like you kind of want to take your time. In Emergency Apparatus Maintenance we've been greasing u-joints and what not, We cleaned the batteries and refilled them. Once we plugged those back in we hooked up the exhaust to fan system... then... we started checking out the air tanks for moisture. It was good up until the last one leaked all over me. But that is okay.


So with the retirement of our department head there has been a lack of leadership in our program. Instructors tell us to show up for classes then don't show up themselves. It's ridiculous. Instructors tell us to wear uniforms but wear jeans because they are in charge. Yeah, they are, but in a paramilitary structure such as the fire profession is, leading by example is key. Today though one of the instructors hit each of the points we were contesting, each of the problems we had if you will, and made a point to fix each one. It was good. That is about it on the school area of my life. 


Job

So I recently got a job with Eagle Ambulance out of Montana City. Ask around Helena and you'll realize that Eagle isn't well liked. Why, because the last person that was in charge ran it into the ground and burned a lot of bridges. The new lady who is in charge is trying to get us back up to being a respected ambulance service. So far on my first real day of work I had a trauma call. Lady with a possible hip fracture. I got there after being told to take a deep breath and busted out some vitals. I held c-spine and helped backboard her. We got her to the hospital. She was talkative and as cheesy as it is to say, She probably won't remember me but I will probably think about her from time to time my whole life.

We also have had a few hospital transfers. For instance we had two between here and Missoula yesterday. We also got to standby at a hockey game. It was nice to watch the game for free. The Bozeman Icedogs played the Helena Big Horns... I was torn as I am from Bozeman. But the Big Horns won 7-3.

So yeah the EMT job is pretty good. It doesn't pay well, but having a job where I feel like I accomplish something and I help people is worth it. Once I get my endorsements I will be paid more.

Conclusion


So yeah. That is about it in a nutshell. Having a full time job and going to school full time doesn't afford me much in terms of free time. At least not for another weekend or two. After that I will be able to recharge my batteries. But until then I promise to get more on this posting deal. Stay tuned!

Not Forgotten!

I haven't forgotten about this blog, I'm on day 8 of 20 of straight class here. I will write up one of these days my experiences for the last few weeks in the fire fighting and my new EMT job. Go Saints!

The First Week Back... School Thus Far... New Job Prospects

So it has been a week since I arrived stateside. I had a hard time the first few days I was back adjusting back to a normal sleep schedule. When I first got back I slept for three hours, was awake for four then passed out for another four hours. This happened for most of the week. One day I took three naps. But enough about my sleeping. When I got back it was warm. Relatively, that is. It was 40 degrees. It was nice because it let me get used to being cold again after weeks of 60+ degrees. Now it's snowing and we have a Winter Storm Warning through Sunday. 

School started off with a bang. Okay not really. It started on Tuesday at 7:00am with Emergency Apparatus Maintenance. Basically I get to be a diesel mechanic for six weeks. It's kind of cool though, because we get to go through the whole fire truck and fix it. After that we had Electronic Communications. We spent the first two classes learning the International Phonetic Alphabet. To learn it we got to do a word find. Yes, I am in college and yes, I did a word find. I finished my school day with Basic Microsoft Office. I learned about what a computer is which is good too because I was on the fence about it. Wednesday we had PT and Hazmat. I found out I will be certified in the operations level of hazmat. Preventative stuff for the most part. I'll write more on each as I get further into the classes because so far we've just touched on syllabi. 

So Thursday I applied for an EMT-B job in Montana City which is 5 minutes south of Helena. The company is Eagle Ambulance. They do contract stuff with the V.A. Medical Center in Fort Harrison and St. Peter's Hospital. They also do a lot of transport stuff with nursing homes too. They also do 911 calls for parts of Helena. So yeah just a background. I filled out my application and talked to one of the main guys in charge. I got a phone call today saying that I start Monday. It will be sweet. I get to practice my Basic skills and will learn my endorsements that will put me to the equivalent of an EMT-I-85. I'll be able to start IVs and so on. I start that job on Monday. 

Other than that it has been a busy week of trying to get back to normal. I find myself missing Japan more than I thought I would. But thats par for the course. Stay tuned for my first day as a paid EMT! 

An Okinawa Recap... Coming Home.

The Recap


There are times in everyone's life when they are presented with chances to do something out of their comfort zone. Something that can impact them in ways that even they themselves might not fully grasp for sometime. I believe that this trip to Japan was one of those times in my life. When I first got there I was overwhelmed by the concrete jungle with an actual jungle backdrop. The amount of people in one area was daunting. Everything seemed backwards to what I was used to, to what I expected. I spoke no Japanese so when stuff was said to me I just smiled and nodded. By the end I had a few phrases down. I tell you though, that either way going to Japan would have been an experience, but thanks to Maddie and her family it became something entirely more meaningful. Here is what I discovered in the 25 short days I was in Okinawa:

~ I love curry.
~ I still can't get over the colors of the Ocean.
~ I look at our vending machines and just sigh. Hey America, hot beverages and soups can be in vending machines!
~ Animals are 3x the size of American Animals. Fruit bats are the size of small dogs.
~ Shorts in January is nice.
~ You don't need to get to where you need to be as fast as you humanly can. It will still be there at a later time.
~ Being on a ferris wheel during a rainy, windy day causes you to re-evaluate that being a good idea.
~ For American bases you have to have a pass for everything.
~ Taking off your shoes in public places feels nice.
~ Plus many more things that I will continue to eventually talk about as I remember it down the road.

Okinawa was an amazing place. I spent the days I was there without my cell phone. Of course I checked my email, but if I didn't want to, I didn't have to. There was American tv, but we didn't have to watch. I guess it could be said that the same thing could happen here, but it's different. My favorite thing was getting ready in the mornings, jumping in the van, and rolling out to our next adventure. Driving everywhere was also an adventure. We got lost or went down different ways, Tensions were high, but it was mostly directed at the fact that there were no signs, or no signs in english. Usually ending up in all of us getting a good laugh out of it.

Museums were awesome. The castles were amazing. The history that happened in those very spots made me feel small, and not significant. I mean you hear people say that, but hundreds of years worth of battles, love, loss, death, despair, prosperity happened in those very spots about 250 years before the United States was even an idea. The Memorial site for the Battle of Okinawa was the same way in that knowing what happened on that island during World War II leaves you feeling somewhat humbled.

The food was interesting, a lot of it being in the pretty good to awesome category. I tried sushi for the time. Not the cooked California roll, fake crab stuff that restaurants do here stateside but fresh Yellowtail Tuna. Curry is awesome. I have found a sauce that makes rice more amazing. The sesame seed salad dressing I brought back is very tasty. They have crepe shops where you can get crepes with some sort of sweets in it.

I went to my very first real aquarium. That blew my mind. I wrote about it before and in case you missed it you can view that here.

So as I reflect about the whole trip, I've found that I miss Okinawa. I miss seeing Maddie everyday and I miss hanging out with her family. But I gotta plug along, she'll be back soon enough. It was an amazing escape, and it was a once in a lifetime opportunity making a greater impact thanks to the people I spent my time there with. I will remember everything I did, and I will think about being in Okinawa often. It was an amazing experience and something I wouldn't change. No matter how much I try, I don't think I could explain how awesome the trip was. I loved every moment of it. I think about it a lot, and I miss it. Now for the trip back.

The Trip Back...


So the trip back was not too eventful. I had to go through security with my bags just to get to the ticket counter. They set up my planes so I had an aisle seat. I like those because I can stretch out one of my legs. Plus with the long flight back I like being able to get up and walk around without crawling over people. I got into Taiwan and loaded up on the internet. I talked to Maddie and she told me right after I left they were hit with a decent sized earthquake. But she will probably write about that. I sat around for 3 hours waiting for my flight. I got on the plane and decided to try and sleep. That didn't work out well because I kept getting woken up to eat, or the jerk flight attendant kept bumping into me as I was sleeping. The flight wasn't as long as I thought. It was supposed to be around 11 hours but it only took nine hours. We flew up and around Alaska on the way there. On the way back we flew straight across the Pacific. Luckily I didn't know that until after we got close to California. The food was alright but it's definitely not something to write home about.

I got into San Francisco an hour earlier than I was planning. Which was good because Immigration and Customs took forever. Actually waiting for my bags took forever, going through Customs, not so much. Afterwords I met up with a buddy of mine who drove up from San Jose. We went and got food at a North Beach Pizzeria then watched Avatar. That was a brilliantly done movie and I recommend anyone to see it. Then we drove to a Travel Lodge and I passed out. I woke up 3ish hours later to get onto a plane home. I got some good coffee from the gate I flew out of. After that it was pretty straight forward. I flew home. I came home, unpacked and relaxed. I managed to stay awake until 10:30p.

My sleep schedule is sort of screwed up. As you can tell I'm writing this at 4am. Well I woke up the following morning at 3am then made it to 10:30am and passed out again. I'm exhausted.

So yeah, that's about it in a nut shell. It's back to reality. This break went by so quickly it seems as if I was dreaming and I had to wake up. I got to spend 3 fabulous weeks with someone I really care about, and the 1600 pictures tells me it wasn't a dream. I wouldn't change it, not a single moment. So there it is. Okinawa, Japan, a place full of history, a place full of amazement and a place that will be forever in my memory. It's been an interesting ride.

The American Village

So yesterday (Tuesday the 12th) Maddie and I ventured down to the American Village. As I have stated before I don't really know how American it actually is but it was fine. We started our "American" adventure with a trip to A&W. It looked nice from the outside with drive up areas where you could park and order. Then an A&W worker would bring food to you. As neither Maddie nor I can really drive anywhere meaning we have to walk everywhere, we opted to go inside. They had a bunch of burgers and such. They also had different types of food. They had a teriyaki burger and a sweet and sour pork sandwich. I got the Super Mozza Burger that was being advertised. Maddie got the Melty Rich burger that had tartar sauce on it. Good thing she got the double too, because the burgers were TINY. As we were leaving I tried to ring the bell for good service but I failed at that. Yeah, I failed at ringing a bell. Don't ask me how, because I have no idea.

We then walked over to the actual American Village area where they had the ferris wheel. We had been planning to go on that since before I got to Okinawa. So we ventured onto it. We bought tickets for 500 yen a piece or about 5 dollars American. Now let me set up the scene for you guys at home,. Yesterday, it was overcast. Dark overcast. There was wind that pelted you with water droplets. When I say wind I mean gusty. As you will see from the pictures it was windy enough to create nasty surf conditions. But anyway, from the bottom of the ferris wheel the weather didn't seem so bad. From inside a box half the size of a ski resort gondola it seemed scary as hell. The wind shook us a little bit and while we were fine the wind shaking us about kind of made us nervous. The view was pretty amazing, the China Sea with it's teal blues and greens of color was covered in vicious whitecaps that invited injury to anyone stupid enough to venture out into the water. I don't know how high up were were, but the ferris wheel stands on top of a 3 story mall at its base. So including that we were up pretty high.

After we got back down and vowed never to do that again we went and shopped a little bit. Being my last few days in Okinawa I wanted a keychain or some other touristy item to secure the memories made on this trip. What can I say, I'm a sucker for being a tourist. Anyway, we were walking along and saw these Doctorfish as it was advertised. Fish that when you stick your feet in the water will eat the dead skin and what not off your feet. Maddie and I were reluctant to try it at first but we figured, where else in the world are we going to do it and why not. At first it tickled. The fish were bitting and sucking on our feet and it eventually started to feel like a massage. Maddie didn't like the big fish on her and would shoo them away with the flick of her feet. Some of the fish pinched a little. Afterwards our feet felt soft and tingly. It was an interesting experience.

We then walked along these areas of different shops. They did have more American brands so I guess that's why the call it the American Village. Maddie found a candy store where I got these packets that when you add water they look like beer. They weren't beer. One tasted like pineapple. Afterwards we went to Yogurt Land. Basically it was the Golden Corral of frozen yogurts. You go in, pick your flavor. Put it in either the large bowl or the extra large bowl and add toppings. They had a variety of yogurt flavors. I got tiramisu and Maddie got a mix of double cookies and coconut. Then came the toppings. I added caramel, oreos, cheesecake and Maddie added cheesecake, oreos, nuts and caramel. I spilled mine accidentally. Nobody saw though so I was in the clear.

After buying an Okinawan t-shirt, computer mouse pads you could put photos and such into and doing the photo picture booth thing, we went home and got ready to do the Water Aerobics. Tonight we are going to do sushi and try another different restaurant out. Can't wait. Stay tuned for when I get back to the states to wind down my very first international trip. A trip of a lifetime, a trip to Okinawa!

The Peace Prayer Park and Storming More Castles

Saturday and Sunday we spent a lot of time hitting up some historical sites. Saturday we went to the Peace Prayer Park. It is the memorial site for those who died in the Battle of Okinawa. 240,000 was the last count. They had a fountain that had a torch in the middle of it that represented Okinawa. They also have marble stones with the names of everyone who died there.Then they had a bunch of monuments. That night we went to Thai in the Sky, I know, I know, we've eaten at a lot of restaurants in the sky. They've both had killer views though. The Indonesian Beef Curry, was a level three spice factor. It was angry. It tasted so good but it was so hot. Maddie decided that she was going to have green curry. It had a rating of seven peppers. Blistering can't describe how angry it was. After we ate, we went home and relaxed a bit.

Sunday we hit up two different castle ruins. Unlike the last castle that was restored and all fancy looking, these were more stones and ruins. They were neat. The first castle, Katsuren Castle, was used up until 1458 when it was destroyed because Amawari, the aji (castle lord) decided he was going to attack the main castle and usurp the throne. This however did not work and lead to the destruction of Katsuren. It was neat to see. They  mostly had just stairs and walls but knowing the history and knowing that it happened right under my feet was kind of daunting. The top of the castle had a good 360 degree view which afforded good views all the way around.

The second castle we went to was the castle that Amawari successfully captured in his campaign to take over Okinawa. This one had more archways and ruins to it meaning that it was more intact. We walked through and it had some amazing views.One of the walls had a gecko in it that Maddie had her head about an inch away from. I wasn't there at that point but she said she screamed.  This castle had a view of the "haunted hotel/resort" behind it. Apparently japanese workers started randomly dying when making this hotel and being a very superstitious lot they stopped working on it. A mainland Japan company decided to take over and finish it, but they started randomly dying to, so it never was finished. It looked abandoned and erie so we left it alone. That was about it for that day. It had been an exhausting weekend so we took it easy for that evening.

Other than that Maddie and I have been just hanging out and spending time with each other before I leave back to the States. Apparently traveling in the states is going to be a lot more fun thanks to random terrorists and government lack of efficiency. No this is not me showing my political standpoint, just stating what happened. Maddie and I hit up the American Village yesterday and I will write on that here in a little bit. So stay tuned.