APhA-ASP MRM in New Brunswick, NJ

Hey guys, its been awhile since I have made a last post and I forgot to make a post when I traveled to New Brunswick this year with some of my fellow pharmacy classmates to a Mid-year Regional Meeting. The trip was really fun and was hosted near Rutgers University's campus. My school, Duquesne University, is part of Region 2 which consists of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virgina, and West Virgina. The meeting was held Nov. 6th-8th, so I rode up with a couple of friends to New Jersey after class and arrived at the hotel it was being held at around 6pm. It was about a 4 hours drive.

Once we arrived we checked in and quickly got changed to attend the welcoming meeting that night in the hotel ballroom. Afterward we went out on the town to see what was around and grab some food. Throughout the days we attended meetings for ASP, so I won't bore you with the details of what went on during those. However, I was pleasantly surprised at what there was to do in New Brunswick. There was a nice little area of restaurants and bars, which we hung out at after our meetings during the day.

One night we took a trip to NYC by train, which wasn't too long and fairly inexpensive for a round-trip ticket. Once we got there the first thing we saw was Madison Square Garden and then made our way down to Times Square. By that time people were getting hungry so we ventured out to find a place to eat. We ate at a pizza place in the city, but for the life of me I can not remember the name of the restaurant. All I can remember was they wore shirts that said "No Slices" and a bunch of people bought them as souvenirs. After dinner we walked the streets a bit, but people were getting tired and wanted to catch the train and head back to New Brunswick for the night. Along the way I had to make a stop at White Castle since I had never seen one or eaten at one.

The next day was the last of our meetings and we headed back that afternoon to Pittsburgh. Below are some pictures taken in New York City. I didn't take any pictures while we were out in New Brunswick, sorry.

Madison Square Garden


Hard Rock in Times Square


In Times Square


The group at dinner


White Castle stop


In NYC

At the meetings

Travel Break

So I may not post much in these couple of months due to the fact I have no plans of traveling and need to make some money before the semester starts. If I take any day trips or any other outings somewhere I will make a post. Besides these little posts here and there I don't have any real travel plans, but I hear there's another pharmacy trip! There are rumors of a China/Japan pharmacy trip during the summer semester again, so that's always an option. Well that's all for now. But to reminisce here is a group picture of our Italy group on our last day in Riva del Garda and one of my favorite goofy pictures.

Group on last day.

Nicole, Jess, and I chowing down on our first kebabs in Perugia.

Last day of the Trip

Our day started out by my group leaving at 8am to head down to Riva del Garda to catch a boat to a small town called Malcesine. When we got down to Riva, Dr. Iannarelli was waiting for us to purchase our tickets for the boat trip to our town. So we boarded a boat right away and figured we were heading to Malcesine, but stopping in Limone first. We get to the port at Limone and mostly everyone de-boards and we are still sitting on the boat and a crewman comes over to us and says Limone and we look at him and so no Malcesine and he walks away. He comes back a few minutes later and asks for our tickets and then says No Limone get off boat. So we are thinking our whole project is screwed up now because we aren't going to the right city. What Dr. Iannarelli failed to mention to us was that she was switching the towns each group was going to, which would have been nice to know before we got on the boat. So we ended up walking around Limone shopping and later stopped for some lunch. We headed back on the boat at 1:15 to get back to Riva to work on our final presentation at a hotel there.

So we get to the hotel and see the other group already back working on their project and they left an hour later than us and are back way before us which didn't make much sense. So we sat and worked on our presentation for about 2 hours or may less before we said thats good enough and we would present what we had. While we waited until 6:30 to give our presentations we all had our last gelato before we left Italy. So when it came time to present Dr. Iannarelli brought with her alumni from the University, local Italians and Jerry and his wife who we had interviewed days before to judge our presentations. To make a long story short my group won unexpectedly and we each got a bee puppet, the bee is the school's mascot. We figured we had no chance to win considering we didn't seem to care as much as the other group and the other group worked on their presentation prolly for twice the time we had done.

After the presentations we all had dinner together at the hotel there and eventually went back to the hotel to hang out by the lake for the last time on our trip. We all pretty much stayed up all night hanging out/packing before we had to leave the next morning at 430am.

Getting to the airport was a hassle and we almost missed our flight back to the States. We had to bring another girl to the Verona airport on the way to the Milan airport, which if you look at a map is not on the way, but according to Dr. Iannarelli we would be there in plenty of time. However, we got there probably an hour before our flight left and well we were pretty much checking in when our flight was boarding. But we all made it on the flight and made it home safely.

Below are some pictures of Limone.

A view from a piazza in Limone


Buildings in Limone

View of the coast of Limone

A beautiful day in Tenno, but couldn't enjoy it

Our second to last day on the trip, 6/14, started off by walking to a local church to attend mass. We walked through the streets of the small town to get to the little church perched on the side of the mountain. We arrived earlier due to the fact that we were told the wrong time for mass, but we got to hang around and meet some of the locals who lived there. We met one old man who was immediately drawn to our group and all the young girls for him to talk to even though he spoke no English. During mass one of the girls in our group was asked to read the gospel in English for us to understand.

Later after mass we got bused to a location and were told to walk up this hill to a building, but none of knew where we were going, but unfortunately we found the building that was part of Bernelli University. While we were there we got a 2 hour introductory lecture of the whole program that was offered at Bernelli and what exactly our assignments would entail. We broke after the lecture for some pizza and later interviewed an Alumni for one of our assignments as part of our final presentation. After this interview we were taken on a quick tour of the town of Tenno where we saw some great views and an art gallery in a small building.

The tour didn't last too long before we were heading back to the building for more work to do. We sat in our groups and worked on our paper on our pharmacy visit and also got prepared for the next exercise which was to interview locals who couldn't speak English that well, but wanted to try their English skills. I don't believe this went exactly as how the professor had planned, but it was interesting but also a little awkward at times. After basically sitting inside all day and missing out on the beautiful day to see the area we were in we finally got a break from work.

We were suppose to go on a planned tour of some castle by JonCarlo, but none of us really wanted to go and neither did JonCarlo. So instead we just pretended this is what we were doing and just went down to Riva del Garda for dinner and some shopping. We walked around for a bit before heading back up to our bed and bar to hang out and go to the lake.
Our walk to the church

The small church we went to mass in

The streets up to Bernelli University

A view from our quick tour during the day

A Piazza in Riva del Garda

Night picture of Riva del Garda

Starting our visit in Lake Garda region

On 6/13 is when we no longer had our normal bus/tour guide anymore and now we were under the control of Bernelli University. We got picked up by the University at our hotel in Verona to start our trek to Lake Garda. However the bus they brought had just enough seats for all of us, and may I say absolutely no leg room, and the luggage had to be crammed into a small trunk. Well the luggage was overflowing into the seating area and overall the ride there was not very comfortable. But what lacked in comfort was made up in by the amazing views of mountains and tiny towns nestled in the valleys. The bus dropped us off in a town called Arco where immediately we were split up into two groups and told to do work. Half of us went to hear a lecture about what we were going to be doing in the 3 days and form a plan for the team where the other half went to a local pharmacy to interview the pharmacist and take a look around.

My group, which consisted of Angela, Jessica, Nicole and Ashley, went to the pharmacy first called Farmacia Bettinazini to do our interview. While we were there the pharmacist gave all the girls a compounded cosmetic that he had made and gave the Dean and I an elixir called Elixir di China which from what I could understand from the whole thing has a lot of alcohol in it and is made from ladybugs. After our pharmacy encounter we had time to grab some lunch before our next part of the day. We walked around town looking for an Osteria, or a place that serves local cuisine, but we stopped at a kebab resturant instead. After lunch we shopped around for a bit before having to head back to the bus.

The bus took us out to Riva del Garda and a beach near the city there. They dropped us off and told us to enjoy the beach, however none of us knew we were going to the beach, nor could we get our stuff to go swimming. So this made us all pretty mad and we even considered trying to convince the Dean that on our last 3 days of the trip we wanted to enjoy them and not be doing all the schoolwork that this Professor had planned for us. But we decided to push on and just make the best of it, or basically not really care about the work. So after our short beach break we then had to do the lecture thing and the other team went to a pharmacy. My team stayed at the beach and came up with a team name and so forth and decided to lay out our papers organization so we didn't have to do it later.

After doing all of this we finally were on our way to our bed and breakfast, or should I say bed and bar up in Tenno. We boarded the bus and we had to go up 26 hairpin turns to get to the top of the mountain where we were staying. Once we arrived we all claimed our rooms and immediately went swimming at the lake behind another hotel up there. While we were at the lake some of us swam out to a little island in the middle of the lake. After swimming it was time for dinner, which we ate at a hotel across the street. At dinner we met the Professor's son JonCarlo. After dinner we hung out on our patio outside our bed and breakfast and later went down to the lake for some star gazing.

a picture I took while on the bus

A small town on Lake Garda

A street in Arco

View from the beach in Riva del Garda

The lake that we swam at in the evening

Our little bed and bar

A Day in Verona

Our first and only full day in Verona on 6/12 started by visiting the local hospital for another tour. When we arrived at the hospital we got a presentation from one of the pharmacists that worked there and then we got a quick tour of the hospital. During the tour we saw some labs, pharmacy rooms and the outpatient pharmacy. After our short stay at the hospital we got bused to the town center where we met up with Dr. Iannerelli a professor at Bernelli University where we would be our last 3 days of the trip. She talked to us about where exactly we would be staying and what we would be doing while we stayed in the mountains. At first is all sounded very overwhelming and we were not fond of the idea considering it was our last 3 days of the trip and we would be doing all this school work and not truely enjoying the gorgeous area we would be staying. However more on this to come. After our short meeting we had some free time and we went out in Verona for some lunch near the Anfiteatro Arena.

After lunch some of us went into the Arena while others wanted to go shopping instead. The arena was surprisingly well intact and is acutally still used to this day for concerts and plays. After our visit to the Arena we went and stopped at Juliet's House and the famous balcony. The walls around the area were completely covered in graffti from people leaving love notes. So much so that they started putting a white cover over the graffti and people were writing all over the new cover. We took the opportunity to leave our groups mark on the fresh new white cover. While we were there we each took our turn posing with the Juliet statue that stands in the courtyard next to the balcony.

We spent the remainder of our afternoon looking around the streets and market area. We walked along the river at one point and stopped in one church for a quick break from walking. By this time it was time to head back for dinner in the garden of our hotel. After dinner we headed back to the town center to hang out by the small park near the Arena. We sat and drank wine and Alyssa and Nicole decided to join the protest group that was there to prevent a road to be built through the park. We didn't stay out very late this particular night because we had plans to watch the Penguins game.

In order to watch the game that night we had purchased an internet card for 2 hours and planned on getting up at 3:30 am to catch the last period of the game to get a chance to see if the Penguins would win the Stanley Cup. Surprisingly 7 out of 8 students came to Josh and my room to watch the game along with one of the professors. So in total there were 10 people in our room at 3:30 in the morning to watch the Pens. Well to make a long story short the Pens won and we made a ton of noise and got 2 noise complaints, but we didn't care because we were checking out of the hotel the next morning or should I say 2 and a half hours by the time the game got over.
Streets of Verona


Anfiteatro Arena

Piazza in Verona

Juliet's Balcony and the Juliet statue in the background
A view off of the Adige River

Inside Cattedrale di Verona

Another view off of the Adige River

Our short day in Venice

We started out our day on 6/11 by being bused from Florence to Venice, which was quite a long drive from what I remember. After we got to a dock on the mainland/industrial part of Venice we all got on a boat to take us to the town center. The boat let us off a few blocks from Piazza San Marco, so we had to walk along the sea for a little while before we got to the main square. Along the way our guide, Isabella, pointed out a tower in the background that was leaning and she called it the leaning tower of Venice. Once we arrived in the square we had some time to get some money and grab a quick lunch before our tour of the palace and church in Piazza San Marco.

We met back at the entrance of the palace in Piazza San Marco around 2 pm for the tour inside and the church attached to the palace. I had been to Venice previously when I went in high school, however we never attached went inside this palace or church so it was a first for me. The palace was interesting to see the court rooms, golden hallways and to learn about the Venetian Empire. After this tour we had a couple hours to roam around Venice and shop before we had to head back on the water taxi. Our first stop was a glass company in the center of Venice which we got a short demonstration of glass blowing and later got to see all the products you can buy. Along the way we went to the Rialto for a quick photo-op over the Grand Canal. As soon as we got there we pretty much had to turn around and head back to Piazza San Marco to catch our boat back to the dock where our bus left us earlier.

When we arrived at the dock we were expecting to hop right on our bus and head to Verona, however our driver had left and was late in returning to pick us up so we had to stand there for about 15 minutes before he came back. Once he arrived we drove to Verona and got dropped off at our hotel to check in. We had dinner at the hotel and for once we stayed in that night and caught up on some sleep.

Where we got dropped off on the boat

Gondolas in a small canal


The courtyard inside the Palace in Piazza San Marco

Our glass making demonstration

Just a small amount of the glass products you could purchase


View of the Grand Canal from the Rialto