Intranational traveling

About 4.5 weeks ago I left Chicago for Chinle, AZ. Here is a summary of those 4.5 weeks.

Places

The drive was nothing special. I stayed for one night in Oklahoma City and another night in Albuquerque where I went for a short and miserable run in the Foothills based on the advice of the legendary Jesse McDaniel. The drive through New Mexico and Arizona was significantly better than any drive I’ve made through the endless array of farms and flat land that is Illinois.

Chinle is a small town about an hour into Arizona from the border with New Mexico. The last 30-45 minutes of driving could accurately be described as the middle of nowhere. Also, I hope the movie Tremors was not based on actual events because Arizona definitely looks like graboid territory. Chinle consists of a hospital, a high school with a sports complex that from the outside looks nicer than the entire athletic complex at WashU, ~4 gas stations, 4 fast food joints, 3 churches (catholic, mormon, jehovah’s witness), a hospital, an aquatics center, an arts and crafts store, a grocery store, ACE hardware, bank, about half a dozen restaurants, and a dozen other run-down buildings providing various other services.

People

I work in the PT gym with my Clinical Instructor (CI) Sally, a 2010 graduate from UW’s PT program. The clinic consists of about 4 other PTs, 2 PT administrators, an OT, 2 speech therapists, a PTA, and 3 office workers. Except for the 3 office employees and the PTA, none of the others listed are Navajo. Basically anyone who works here either served a student rotation here or began as a contract worker and decided to stay. I believe the 2 PT admins have been here 11 and 14 years, one PT has been here about 5 years, and the other PTs less than 2 years each. Employee turnover throughout the hospital is pretty high, considering that this is labeled an "isolated hardship" position. Apparently that is the label given to a job that is a certain distance from a city of a sufficient size. In order to live and work in Chinle you have to be fairly open-minded, culturally sensitive, and low maintenance, so everyone gets along pretty well.

My roommate when I moved in, Mike, is a medical resident here for a 4 week rotation. He hails from Michigan. I’ve had a few chats with my next-door neighbor, Pete. Pete is an author of American military fiction who has to get his books cleared by the government before publishing so he doesn’t reveal anything too confidential I guess. He is here because his wife works at the hospital, however of the 3 or 4 times I’ve spoken to Pete in front of our houses, nobody else has ever been around at the time, so it is entirely possible that Pete doesn’t actually exist.

Housing

Student housing is provided about a 10 minute drive from the hospital. It includes 2 bedrooms, a kitchen (with 5 pans and about a dozen baking sheets and mixing bowls, but no pots, can openers, or reasonably sharp knives), a common area that has a TV but no cable, and a bathroom. Internet is not available in the apartment, so days at home so far have pretty much involved watching the TV shows I happened to bring with me or happened to already have loaded on my computer, and exploring the various computer games my laptop came built with (I’ve swept quite a few mines in the past few weeks). I also study or read when I’m sufficiently motivated, but for the most part I lay around thinking of all the things I should be doing.

That’s enough for now. Over the next few weeks I’ll add entries on places I have or have not visited, what it’s like in the PT clinic, and whatever else I feel it will be extremely important for me to remember when I reread this blog in the future to make it seem worthwhile to have written it at all.