Done with Boards!!

We're done, we're done! No more studying in the immediate future! Now we can just relax and enjoy our last two weeks here!

For those of you who haven't heard my griping, the 4th year opto students had to take Part II of our National Boards exam this past Wed and Thurs. It's a grueling, 11.5 hr exam that totally sucks out your brain matter. I left feeling very, very mushy in the head. There's a tiny part of me that's freaking out (still), thinking that I didn't pass the test (or specifically, the pharmacological part, called TMOD.) Ughhhh.

But since we don't get the results for another 2 months or so, I may as well relax and get into the Holiday spirit.

To celebrate the end of Boards, we headed to the Alphabet District for some food at Tanuki. I've been dying to try this izakaya place after reading all the good reviews, but when we got there, they weren't serving food! The building had a power outage so the kitchen wasn't working. Boooooo. The staff instead recommended that we wander up the street to Indish, and boy am I glad we did!

Indish is a new (7 weeks old) "family style" Indian restaurant run by a British man and his American wife. They claim to only serve dishes you'd find at a true Indian home -- no tikka masala, no naan. Everything is also made in-house, and they try to keep things light (so no heavy cream-based sauces). Along with some tall glasses of beer, we had a smorgasbord of items: chapati, lamb kheema, pan fried cabbage, pork balchao, bombay potatoes... The lentils (urad dal makhani) were my favorite. We were stuffed but ended with the ras malai cheesecake that was flowery and delicious! I'm glad we tried Indish. It'll fit in well with the Portland food scene.

Afterwards, we drove around The Pearl and Downtown looking for art galleries open since it was First Thursday. We only found one, but it was an interesting mix of clothes, wood work, paintings, and sculptures. I think I'm not artsy enough to truly enjoy the scene. Still, it was fun even if I felt a little out of place.