E is for "Huge fair"

Alright, I'm trying this blogging thing, mainly because I'm 1200 miles away from my circle of friends, and this will give me a way to share stories without having to call everyone.

So, life in Connecticut has been...well...tough. School is overwhelming. I'm taking 21 credit hours, plus doing 12 hours of clinical internship a week, and I'm supposed to find adequate time in there to study (so my professors say), but so far I feel like I'm barely keeping up. It was probably a bad idea to get internet and cable TV at my apartment. I spend more time than I should looking at wedding stuff online and watching the Discovery Health channel.

I met the cutest little girl the other day at my clinic. I do my internship at the Connecticut Children's Medical Center, at the orthotics clinic, so we see lots of kids with congenital leg deformities or neuromuscular disorders. Anyhow, last week, I had a little 2-year-old girl with some leg and ankle deformities that we were trying to correct with leg braces. She was adorable, with big blue eyes and two curly brown pigtails on top of her head. Her dad was with her, and he looked about my age. I told her my name was Janae, and the first thing she said was "Hi Janae, this is my friend Daddy." It was so cute! When the other practitioner came in the room, she again introduced her friend Daddy. Later, as she was leaving with her new braces, she turned around to me and said "Thank you for my wonderful braces!" How cute is that!?!

Okay, new story. Yesterday, I went to the New England fair (they call it the Big E) with a friend I met at church. It's one of the largest fairs in the country. The 6 New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusettes, Connecticut, and Rhode Island) all participate, so the fair is like the size of 6 state fairs. There's a big building for each state, and inside are vendors and booths representing that particular state. Vermont is known for their maple syrup, so in the Vermont building there was a huge maple store, where you could by anything from maple lollipops and maple cotton candy to maple candles and incense. I bought some maple kettle corn. In the Maine building, there was lots of seafood vendors (I don't do seafood). I guess Maine is also known for their blueberries, because there was a blueberry store where I tried some blueberry fudge and blueberry jelly (both were awesome). I bought some apple cider doughnuts in the Massachusettes building (known for their apples, I guess), and some amazing cheese in the New Hampshire building.

The state buildings are only one part of the fair, there is also a huge area of rides and games, a circus, a petting zoo, a ton of restaurants, a concert hall (where we watched this band of gray-haired men who I think had a one-hit-wonder back in the 50's), an arena where we watched a horse show, and several huge barns where they do cow and sheep shows. We also watched a pumpkin weigh-off, where the biggest pumpkins I've ever seen were weighed on this giant scale. The winning pumpkin was over 800 pounds! All I kept thinking was "I wonder how many pumpkin pies I could make with that thing."

Needless to say, the fair is like the size of a Disney theme park. I guess I should feel like more of a New Englander now that I've experienced the Big E. One thing I noticed at the fair was how NOT white-trash it was. The Ozark Empire fair in Springfield is like a white-trash party complete with 'Big Dog' t-shirts and mullets, but this fair seemed to attract more middle-class 'I can afford to spend $15 to enter the fair' families. It was a nice surprise. :)

Anyhow, that's enough typing for now. I've got studying to do.