First 24 hours in London!!

I could do something like hour by hour but that would get boring for everyone pretty quick I think, so I'll just sum up :)

WE ARE HERE!!! SAFE!!!

We landed yesterday and were able to go get our tube passes, pick up some groceries and get settled in our flats in Bloomsbury , which is in London :) For dinner we decided to eat out at Shakespeares Head Pub. It was actually pretty good.

Today we got up and out around 9 and went to ride the tube around, we were able to master 2 different tube lines, walk around Piccadilly circus, Trafalgar square, the national gallery, and the Victoria and Albert museum. Along with other various shops and errands.

The story for today is the hunt for the fan.

Melissa and I were on the hunt for an oscillating fan for our flat. Not only did we have no idea where to look we just didn't know where we were going. We asked someone at a phone store we were at and they sent us to a nearby store, Argos. After trying to master how the store actually worked ( you had to look through a catalog, type in the number , see if it was in stock, write it down and buy it at the front desk) They had NO fans in stock at the store close to us so we had to get the address for the store in Kinsington, which was a ways away from our flat. So we had to plan how to take 3 different tube lines to get to the other store in a fancy part of town so we could buy our fan. The ride home with the fan, switching lines twice was also quite interesting but always an adventure.



Trafalager square



Argos store sign – our life saver




Me with the new part of Melissa and I’s family



Kensington where we got our fan, Peter.



A stop on the tube on the way to get the fan




Florence Nightingale- the reason I will have a good job when I graduate…



The red telephone booth, I had to



Our flat entrance



Katrina and I before dinner our first night!



The Pub we had dinner at our first night in town



This is for Dr.Weeks and Dr. Hawley, everyone else is more than welcome to read it but it might be less interesting to you 

Today we had the opportunity to get out and explore on our own. A group of us decided to go and explore the Victoria and Albert museum. After a while of map searching and riding the tube we were able to find the “subway” or underground road that lead us to many different museums, quite a few of which we would like to go back to this weekend . We spent a few hours in the museum but one of the first exhibits that we looked at was the Fashion exhibit. This exhibit traced fashion back from the 1700’s to the fashions’ of today. One of the things that stuck out most to me ironically was the corsets. I know it seems like a long shot but the first thing I said to the girls I was with when one of them said it would be cool if we still wore them was how bad they were for you, how they weakened your back muscles and abdominal muscles and squished your insides to the point that nothing was in the right place! Maybe that comes from having spent too much time studying nursing and reading books set in that era, probably a bad combination.
This experience at the museum made me think about how small things like corsets somewhere back in histories of countries like England for example can have such huge effects on things such as Life expectancy and Infant mortality. Things like these that somewhere down the road we as countries have changed; we have been able in change, to affect the lives of our citizens. This in and of itself is a historical development in the life of England. Whether the corsets were done away with because of fashion reasons or for health reasons, in the end it benefited the health of the women and the babies that they subsequently carried. I know at the time it was the most fashionable thing to do and truly you kind of had to wear them. But it seemed to me that someone could have stood up and said “ No this is terribly uncomfortable and I don’t want to wear it”, but then again women weren’t really that well respected were they.
It was very weird to me at first that my response to this fashion statement was one of concern for the women that had worn these garments. But in the end I know that I was really just acting with what I knew. My emotions were well in check and not uncalled for because for all we know corsets could have caused early deaths for many women back in the 1700’s. While this particular piece of information won’t really affect my practice as a nurse, the fact that women want to look like that again will. The desire to have the thin waist is one that most women have in common, though some will do more to get it. As a nurse we will all come in contact with women who struggle with their body types, some of whom will go to drastic measures to achieve what they desire. These actions are things that I will have to understand and realize that they are not just cries for help, that they are real conditions and that these people need real help and support.
As nurses I know that we tend to label people, “drug seekers”, “hypochondriacs”, and “attention seekers”, and I feel that we have gotten away from the deep caring that Florence Nightingale changed the profession with. We have begun to stray from the things that make us who we have been called to be as nurses. We are supposed to be caring people who want to do things for our patients and love on our patients and yet some nurses leave the room and immediately talk bad about them behind their backs. What kind of caring is that?

I guess the main thing that I brought out of the museum and the corset is that 1) fashion can physically hurt you, 2) our thoughts about fashion can make us hurt ourselves, and 3) something as small as truly caring for your patient can make all the difference in the world when it comes to your job as a nurse.