Arcadia

In my Community and Public health nursing course, we have to drive an hour to Arcadia once a week for our clinical rotations. Very inconvenient, but very interesting. On the way home today I saw many places that I didn't even know Florida had. For example, the Calusa Nature Center & Planetarium, or something called the Shell Factory & Nature Park. There were a few other places like that along my 65 mile drive (including ECHO), and it made me happy to see that there are things to do besides go to the mall and the movies (which I can't stand). I just moved here in August. When I have down time, I am SO bored...so on my drive home I realized I can go to these places whenever I want probably for very cheap. I'm sure I will also be visiting Lover's Key and Corkscrew Sanctuary in the future as well, and not just for my colloquium field trips.

Today at clinical I also got to explore Arcadia to see what the town was like and how the residents lived. The town's employment is 95% farming, and everyone lives off of local food. This is something I have never really seen because I am from Fort Lauderdale, and there really isn't any farms or local farmer's markets. This makes me mad that I buy my produce from Publix, who probably imports it from some other state or country. I would rather go to a farmer's market--its more healthy, better for the environment & I would be supporting local farmers!