Français

I love the French language. As far as I know, I always have. The earliest I can remember is 4th grade, when I had a huge crush on this Canadian boy because he could speak French <3 I liked him because he spoke French, so I liked it before that. Anyways. I was SUPER excited to take French in 7th grade, I had been looking forward to that since at least 4th. I took French 1, it was AWESOME. I took French 2 in 8th grade- bad teacher, but loved the language. French 3 in 9th grade, AWESOME! I was a part of French club all 3 years as well. My friends and I would speak French in the hallways and watch movies in French on weekends. I was really lucky (well, no, not luck, my mom was AWESOME) to get to go to France the summer after 9th grade for 3 weeks. I saw Paris, toured around the country, and was an exchange student for a week. Towards the end of my trip, I started to reach fluency. What I mean by that is- I stopped translating in my head. Someone would ask a question in French and I would respond in French without my brain converting to and from English. If you have never reached that point, it is really uncomfortable and cool at the same time. 

After that trip, I moved. I changed schools and I could no longer take French. For the first 6 months or so I found the people I met in France online and we would chat on the weekends (really the only time the time zones lined up correctly). As friendships do, they died off, and I started forgetting French. When I got to college I was looking forward to taking French again, but it did not really fit in my schedule. I actually did try to take a class Junior year and failed out of it horribly. My best friend from college is FROM FRANCE, but he would not speak in French to me -.- There were a few times I would overhear his conversations to his mom. I could tell you the gist of the conversation without actually being able to pinpoint any words I knew. Odd phenomenon, that is. Sometimes he would bring French movies into work (while we were cleaning or sorting legos) which had the same effect. 

This year, Zachary came to live with me and take college classes up here. I wanted to take something together, but he did not want to take Philosophy with me. I jokingly suggested French, and he thought that would be neat O.O So we signed up for beginning French. Well, I ended up dropping both classes, so no French for me. I still was interested in learning again, so I looked up Rosetta Stone and did the demo thing. I do not really fancy spending hundreds of dollars on software that I might not like. George looked up options for me, and found memrise. 

First off, a bit about memrise. They took the neuroscience understanding of how memories are formed and stored, and made a program that executes the best way of teaching using that information. You learn words in your short term memory (planting seeds), then 4 hours later, just when you start to loose them, you review and put them into long term memory (harvest). Depending on how you did at the harvest (answered fast or slow, took 2 tries or 1) it calculates the optimal interval to review (water). They made learning a GAME, and made it feel really easy. You might think it is less effective because it is so easy (and FREE!), but you would be very wrong. 

I have been on the site for 2 days. At first I was just learning French words in a beginner course, just like George. After a while I started remembering bits about verb conjugation (spawned by the phrases with verbs in them) and I was driven to look it up. I got out a notebook and actually wrote out how to conjugate regular verbs. I found a course on memrise for irregular verbs and went over the common ones. I started REMEMBERING French, rather than just learning. The biggest struggle for me after I quit taking classes was grammar, I did not remember anything about it. Yesterday in the car, George asked Zach a question, and I translated it to French without thinking too much about it. Then I looked up the verb to check it. I remembered the structure, which is what impressed me. I woke up today and even before harvesting my plants from last night, started thinking in French. Not like before, not yet. But I do have this flood of words I remember that have all been locked away for 7 years. In 2 days! I did not even complete that much on there. I have the same progress as George does in the beginner lesson, plus a bit of verbs. I just hit the magic UNLOCK button in my brain.

If you try the site, which I HIGHLY recommend, watch out for that "brain sleepy" feeling, and do something else for a while. You can overload yourself if you do too much. They have ALL SORTS of languages, and non-languages. Want to learn all 600-and-whatever pokemon by sight? What about Capital cities? Types of trees by sight? The periodic table? Polyatomic ions? Organic Chemistry?

I freaking love neuroscience.
Rachael

ER visit

I was in the ER Tuesday and Wednesday, and now that I am feeling better, I wanted to explain to anyone who is curious.

What brought me to the ER Tuesday was being dizzy for 2 days (aside from my normal amount of daily dizziness) AND my heart rate getting up to 140 while laying down and being still. The heart rate was making me feel pressure in my chest and I was hyperventilating, which caused my face and hands to go all tingly and numb. It was also terrifying, which made it worse >.< At the ER I was hooked up to tons of monitors and my resting heart rate stayed at about 110-120 after anti-anxiety meds. It was determined that my TSH was almost 0 (which means hyperthyroid, too much meds, it is a bit confusing). Why do I take thyroid medicine? My RE (fertility dr) noticed my thyroid hormone was a bit low when he did a complete workup in August, which is a cause for infertility, so he put me on meds to fix it. The dose was so low one doctor said, "looking at the bottle does about the same thing". I had my levels re-checked and they looked good in Sept and again in early Jan. Then my thyroid went crazy? I have been taken off my thyroid meds for now and we wait out the 3 weeks while they slowly leave my system. Then we can determine if I am truly hyperthyroid or if it was the meds. I was given a beta-blocker to lower my heart rate, and it did. The heart problem was fixed(ish), but I was still really dizzy. I was given the choice to be admitted to the hospital or go home to see if I get better and I choose home.

I kept taking the beta blockers as instructed on Wednesday, but I was slowly deteriorating all day. My heart was fine, but I was SO DIZZY. I went back to the ER Wednesday night, as I was told to do if I got any worse. While sitting hooked up to monitors while doctors tried to figure out what was wrong, I started getting much better as my beta blockers wore off and my resting heart rate went from ~65 to ~85. I started getting more wiggly and demanding to get my IV out so I could go home. Much more me =)

I am being kept on beta blockers, but I have tiny pills that I take "as needed" to keep my resting heart rate around 85. How the doctor put it was, "there is a reason you have tachycardia, it keeps you from passing out". When they prevented my tachycardia, I was dizzy.

SO, my thyroid is to blame for this whole thing. I was not really on enough medicine to do what happened, so something is more wrong with it than anyone thought. Surprisingly, my RE has not canceled my cycle this month. IUI tomorrow!

25 inches of SNOW!

Winter Storm Nemo has come, and we have ~25" of snow outside. Zachary and I played a bit in it, and I have been taking lots of pics and video.

 

02-08-13

02-09-13