Marco and Polo Fight the 5th Week Frenzy

Marco and Polo here,

   For those of our followers that don't go to school with us, today marks the beginning of 5th Week. In other words, this is almost exactly half way through our school term.  In honor of this, we want to count down the 'Top Ten Ways You Know It's 5th Week':

    10. All of your friends at other schools are done for the summer or have already graduated

      9. You still have the false sense of security that you can do well in those classes

      8. You're on the verge of exacting revenge on at least one of your roommates

      7. You're finally starting to get sick of your ridiculous work out schedule and yet are amazed you stuck with it this long

      6. Suddenly recreational reading, TV shows you'd never normally watch and even staring blankly at nothing become much more enticing than doing your homework

      5. You find yourself rewarding time studied with time writing your blog (or other procrastination activities)

      4. You realize that academic advising is sneaking up on you and you should probably start figuring out what you need to take next term

      3. Increase of visits to Kilo for that pesky candy fix

      2. There is significant increase in the number of F-bombs dropped in a daily conversation

      1. There are frequent random outbursts of 'Holy S***, it's already 5th week!' 

   You should expect hopefully more frequent blogs (see reason 5 above).  If not, get excited cause it means Marco and Polo are actually doing school work!!!

Happy 5th Week and Stay Nerdy!
Marco and Polo

Marco and Polo Get Tanked... Sort Of

Marco and Polo here,

  It's been about a year since our last update on the Hobo House Fish Tank and quite a bit has changed. First, we've now become addicted to a TV show called 'Tanked' where they build impressive custom fish tanks for people with lots of money (aka. not Marco and Polo).  We aspire to one day have enough money to get a 'Tanked' Tank in our future (maybe) bar, The Helix.

   We experienced some tragic loses of fish life. This is included 3 Angel Fish (Lucifer, Dante and Azazel), 2 snails (Gary and John Doe), 2 albino catfish (Professor X and Xavier) and an African Dwarf frog (DiNozzo).  You could say we hit a rough patch.  In all fairness the angel fish were not our fault, the fish store guy neglected to tell us that growing angel fish need to be fed up to 4 times a day. Luckily, one of our angel fish (Dante) kindly donated his body to science. Marco dissected him in Biochem 2 lab for a protein study while Polo tried to not get sick.

  When Chief decided to break down the fish tank in the Chem Dept, she asked if we would be willing to 'adopt' two loaches into our fish tank. The loaches were lovingly named Watson and Crick by us when they were bought for the dept fish tank. In case you're not an awesome biochemistry nerd, Watson and Crick are credited with the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.

   After an acceptable period of mourning, we decided it was okay to bring new fish into the tank. While successfully procrastinating on homework, Marco and Polo took a detour to Petsmart.  We decided it was time to add some not-bottom-feeders to the tank.  After some minor debating we settled on Tiger Barbs, 4 of them to be exact. You could call it a variety pack of  tiger barbs if you wanted, we got a normal Tiger Barb (Hardy), an Albino Tiger Barb( Carroll), a Emerald Tiger Barb (Weston) and an Electric Green GloBarb (Mo).  Mo the GloBarb is short for GMO because he's a Genetically Modified Organism. GloFish get their vibrant colors from transplanted genes originating from jellyfish. Hardy, Weston and Carroll are all named after major characters in one of our new favorite shows 'The Following'.  We decided to try our luck with a snail again and had great debate on choosing between Heisenberg and Eureka. Through a partial house vote, the blue ivy snail was named Eureka.

As Always, Stay Nerdy!

Marco & Polo

Marco and Polo are the Voices of the River

Marco and Polo here,

   We know it's been a while.  School has started once again and things are crazy as usual.  Today our GEO (Greener Engineering Organization) group from school participated in the Flint River and Community clean-up.
 

   This basically entailed Marco, Polo, and Tex walking down the street to the park near the Hobo house and picking up trash along the river.  Now in any normal city this would be a task that mainly saw your basic junk food wrappers, cigarette butts, and plastic bags, but not in Flint.  We found the jack-pot of strange and sometimes disturbing finds.  We have ranked them by 'Most Interesting River Finds':

      10. Backpack full of school supplies

      9. A bag of clothes and shoes

      8. A quarter of a kiddie pool

      7. A diaper

      6. Half of a cordless drill <-- 

      5. Bottle of booze [empty :( ]

      4. Nitrile glove -->

      3. A shotgun shell

      2. Caution tape (of the crime scene variety) 

      1. Porn DVD

         

   These, of course, were found between the picking up of your normal trash and such.  Along the way Marco and Polo were accosted by trees and decided to become mud people.  We were covered in scratches and mud by the end of it. We also did some very interesting and precarious acrobatics to try and get all of the trash that the trees had caught when the river flooded.



 










   As we were leaving, Tex had to make the effort to get one last piece of trash he spotted on the bank of the river.  Turns out that even 'Jesus Sandals' don't give you the ability to walk on mud and Tex wound up knee deep.

As always stay nerdy!

Marco & Polo

Marco and Polo Reflect on Mexico

¡Hola! Marco and Polo here,

The last few days have been a little crazy.  Please forgive the delay in this final post on our Mexico adventure.  Our last day of vacation has come and gone, we spent the last morning in Phoenix at the airport gate.  Polo found the next book in one of her favorite series...  If you're a reader like us you get how hard it is to resist but she managed it just barely.  Marco found another souvenir mug for her collection.  A few hours on a spacious plane (compared to the tour buses and the creeper van) later we were back in Michigan and headed to Marco's home (complete with Welcome Home Balloons, Thanks Marco's Mom!) to celebrate the Easter holiday with her family.

Easter was great, spending it relaxing with friends and family (Tex, Marco's brother, parents, and boyfriend were there).  Happy belated Easter (or Passover, or whatever you celebrate), hope your day was a sweet as ours.

To finish off our 'Mexico Chronicles' we will be leaving you with a few tidbits from Mexico, some Q&A with Doc, and some memories.  So here goes:

Fun Facts:
   -You can't flush the toilet paper in Mexico, you have to put it in the trash can. Yeah it's a little gross at first, but you get over it pretty quickly.
   -Mexican Coca-Cola is MUCH better than American Coca-Cola. Must be all the real chugar they use.
   -There is lime in EVERYTHING.  Polo was most displeased with this fact.
   -Cats and Dogs roam the streets at will; they aren't pets in Mexico (usually).
   -The hotels (or at least the one we were at) have a slot for your room key to go into in order for the lights to turn on.  (Talk about energy conscious)
  
Doc's 5 Question Post-Trip Survey:
   1.) What was your favorite meal you ate on the trip? 

• Marco: Carnitas at the Empalme Rotary Club; they were incredible! For anyone who doesn't know, carnitas roughly translates to 'little meats' and it's basically the most delicious shredded pork you'll ever eat in your life. The carnitas at the Rotary Club were exceptional and my only regret is eating three (overstuffed) carne asada tacos before discovering the carnitas. 
• Polo: Chicken Fajitas from Tequilas, they are the best I've ever had.  Although the tortillas just about anywhere were incredible.

   2.) What was your favorite place we went to eat?

• Marco:Tequilas. Hands down, no doubt about it. We ate there at least three times while on the trip and each time I fell more in love with it.  They were a real down to earth restaurant right next to the hotel that wasn't a tourist trap. Everything on the menu was simple and delicious food, especially the Chicken Fajitas and Pico de Gallo.
• Polo: Definitely Tequilas.  It did not feel like a touristy place and was never too jam packed.  Not only did they have some of the best food we had the entire trip they had the best atmosphere.

   3.) What was your most memorable moment?

• Marco: Part of me wants to say Stiletto getting shit on by a pigeon just because that moment was hysterical.  On a more serious note however, I'm going to say sitting at the bow of the boat with Polo post-dolphin watching.  We got to watch the sunset over the water and the cliffs that make up the coast of San Carlos. It was truly remarkable.
• Polo: When we were dolphin watching on the Sunset Margarita Cruise.  Not just this but at one point I was able to sit in the bow of the boat where the anchor wench sat.  It was amazing.  I love the water and the feeling of almost flying over the sea is indescribable.  Seeing the dolphins swimming and playing up close was incredible.

   4.) Who was your memorable patient?

• Marco:  I'm torn between two patients here. The first was one of the first scripts I filled, it was a woman in her 40's and it was a pretty normal script.  The glasses I found her worked great and she said she liked them. I said goodbye to her and turned around to put her patient sheet away. When I turned around, the woman was standing right behind me and then she just hugged me and said 'Thank you! Just Thank you!'.  I was so taken aback, all I could do was stumble through saying 'you're welcome' before the woman was gone again. The second was a 10 year old boy I helped on the 3rd day of clinic.  I took his sheet and went to go look for glasses and the little boy just followed me, I tried to tell him that he could stay sitting but he would just sit down and the next minute he would be right next to me again. Eventually, I gave up and let him watch me look through glasses. Finally, I found a pair of glasses close to his script and we went back to his seat.  He put the glasses on and looked around.  The look on his face is hard to describe, it was pretty obvious that he was seeing clearly for the first time in a while. He just looked so amazed by what was around him; I couldn't believe it. That look of wonder I saw on his face is not one I will soon forget.
• Polo: I had this one older man, who on top of speaking no English, had an accent of Spanish I had never heard before. I found him his glasses, they were the closest I could find and they were pretty far in left field.  I had him try them on praying that they would work for him, cause it was all I had for both distance and near, and trying not to think about how far from his script they actually were.  So he tries them on and I knew enough Spanish to figure out that he could see the reading card  (near vision).  Next came the hard part, the distance.  I had him look at the Snellen chart (the letter chart with the big E on it) to see if he could read.  He looks for a minute and then starts talking a mile a minute.  I called a translator over, thinking the guy had a serious issue with the distance, the part of the script that was the furthest off.  She listens for a moment then tells me that the the man was trying to express how grateful he was.  I was shocked, here was a man who was wearing a pair of glasses that by all rationale should not have helped him see really clearly in the distance and he was thanking me.  He was SO happy for the improvement in his vision, it was one of the best feelings knowing that I had helped make him that happy.  It also made me realize that there are so many things in life that I take for granted, and I am so lucky that I learned that lesson.

    5.) What did you improve on most throughout clinic?

• Marco: I've gotta go with my Spanish abilities here. Although I did learn a great deal about optics and lens prescriptions, I think my Spanish made the greatest leaps and bounds. As you probably have already read, the first day was rough going trying to speak and understand spanish but by the last day of clinic, I feel I had a pretty decent grasp on it. I could ask the questions I needed to and for the most part, I could understand what they said back to me. Unless of course they started speaking really fast, in which case, all bets were off on my understanding them. 
• Polo:  I think that my Spanish skills improved the most, as you know I went from a handful of choice words and a lot of charades and needing a translator for every other patient, to full sentences, and understanding 63% of their replies without a translator.  It's true people, exposure makes you learn fast!
• Doc thinks that both of our greatest improvements were in optics.  I suppose he is right, there was a seriously steep learning curve in clinic and we had to learn enough to be able to play with the scripts the student docs gave us.

We hope you have enjoyed reading about our Mexico Chronicles!  If you have any questions please feel free to leave them in the comments and we will try our best to answer them, maybe if there are enough the Mexico Chronicles will make a temporary comeback.

So for one last time...

¡Quédate un empollón!

Marco y Polo