Playing with organs!

I held a man's heart in my hands today... literally. We finished with anatomy lab a little early, so I put some gloves on to go over some structures (nerves) we had been looking at. As interesting (or not so much) as nerves are, I was almost instantly side tracked by all the cool looking organs in the thoracic and abdominal cavity! In my physiology class we are learning about the circulatory and respiratory systems, so I immediately went to the heart and lungs to help me further understand what I am learning (since everyone else in the class has already passed anatomy I thought I should catch up a little). Since the organs had already been dissected out, they were very easy to remove from the body. It was incredible to see the structures that I have, up to now, only been able to see labeled on a diagram. The aorta is MASSIVE, way bigger than I imagined. The volume of blood that can be pumped through at once is mind boggling! I know a lot of this is pretty creepy to some people, and to be honest I wasn't sure how I was going to react to it either, but I am finding it fascinating and am loving learning about the structures and functions of the body.

Also, last weekend I spent the day up in Big Bear teaching my friend's daughter how to ski. She is 5 years old and it was her first weekend on skis. I wanted to share a video from one of the green runs we took her on. We took her up to the top of the mountains and as you can see from the video, she's a natural!