hi everyone! so i am back in thamel - which is the tourist section of kathmandu, and all of the volunteers come back to meet for the weekend. i've been in bouda (i think that's how you spell it) since tuesday afternoon, and living with my host family! tikki lama is the single woman we live with, and i have no idea how old she is, but if i had to guess i would say 60s or 70s. her cousin maya lives with her too, and maya thankfully speaks a little bit of english (aji, which means sister and tikki's nickname, knows no english). so that has been an adventure - melissa and i have been trying to learn nepali from my little phrase book - best 5 dollars i ever spent! if we didn't have that there would be a lot of silence. instead they laugh at our attempts to speak their language, and they are learning some english as well. so far i've learned about 10 nepali words, some phrases and numbers 1-10 :) it's kind of fun actually - i can even pick some up when we're at work (ok not much, mostly like "yes" and "no"). work has been interesting - i feel kind of useless because we're mostly just job shadowing and discussing what's going on with each patient with the doctors. however, this is a new placement and so not many of the doctors knew we were going to be there... so we have to kind of just make our own way! i've seen some interesting things - large facial tumors that you would never see in the west, COPD (which is like chronic asthma and emphysema), a lot of gastroenteritis, and this poor little girl with absesses all over her head. she looked like she had these huge zits everywhere (poor thing was about 2 or 3) because her head wasn't washed enough. so we watched the doctor poke the biggest one on her forehead and squish a TON of pus and blood out... sorry for those who don't like this... and i started to get really hot. really hot turned into really queasy so i decided to go sit down... i started blacking out and almost missed the chair i was trying to sit on... :( i nicely had about 15 witnesses all staring at me as i was trying to recover on a bench in the waiting room! a nurse came out and told me to start taking blood pressure, and it was nice to have the distraction! anyways, i'm a little freaked out about this whole becoming a doctor thing if i can't handle blood :( when i got home that night, it all really hit me - the differences, the noise, the pollution, the smell, tikki chanting her buddhist prayers, the nausea in my stomach, and really the whole experience in the ER... and well, i got a little emotional. i'm thinking about seeing this placement out for a week, and if things don't really get better, i might ask for a different placement. i really do feel quite useless, especially since this is supposed to be volunteer WORK... i just don't know what to do. advice, anyone?
on a happier note, i'm hopefully bungee jumping tomorrow! yeah! which reminds me, i need to go confirm that with the travel agent. i'll write more again!
miss you all :)
Friday, June 27, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
hi everyone!
so i'm stuck in thamel, still. it's the tourist section of kathmandu.
i'm learning patience!
there is still a taxi strike here, and i don't know if it will end unless gas prices come down, because really, that's what is what's causing all of this.
melissa and i are the only volunteers left here, except for one other girl we just met who is stuck here because of the strike as well, although she's been to here placement already. we're starting to feel a little spoiled while we're here at the hotel - projects abroad is paying for our placement here, and so we just go down to the hotel when we want to eat and can order some western(ish) food if we want - which is really nice in the morning. i'm not sure how my stomach will handle dahl batt every morning - rice with curried vegetables, if i ever get out there that is! if not, melissa and i will go shopping again. everything is pretty cheap here, and she tells me i need to work on my bartering skills!
we're also hoping to go on a safari, if the strike ever ends anytime soon. it's a few hours away and we can ride elephants, bathe the elephants, go hiking in the jungle and learn some cultural things in the national park closeby. if the monsoon doesn't hit too badly, we'd really like to go white water rafting too! haha but i think the longer we wait, the less chance we'll be able to go on these because it's hard to travel in the monsoon, not to mention that the rivers will be crazy! i read that they raise 10x in monsoon season. so that will be a fun thing to jump towards on my bungee jump - which is a 160 m fall! yeahhhhhh i am excited!
so what else can i tell you? i think so many thoughts in a day that it's hard to remember them all. i really like being here - the culture is SO different from what i'm used to - i'm pretty sure the culture shock will really hit me when i get home. i know that this is really giving me the travel bug, and i know i won't be disappointed if i don't get into med school right away. i really want to see more of this great earth!
well, i'm going to go check if we can leave soon. hope you're all doing well - i'm starting to miss you guys! wish you were here.... :D
so i'm stuck in thamel, still. it's the tourist section of kathmandu.
i'm learning patience!
there is still a taxi strike here, and i don't know if it will end unless gas prices come down, because really, that's what is what's causing all of this.
melissa and i are the only volunteers left here, except for one other girl we just met who is stuck here because of the strike as well, although she's been to here placement already. we're starting to feel a little spoiled while we're here at the hotel - projects abroad is paying for our placement here, and so we just go down to the hotel when we want to eat and can order some western(ish) food if we want - which is really nice in the morning. i'm not sure how my stomach will handle dahl batt every morning - rice with curried vegetables, if i ever get out there that is! if not, melissa and i will go shopping again. everything is pretty cheap here, and she tells me i need to work on my bartering skills!
we're also hoping to go on a safari, if the strike ever ends anytime soon. it's a few hours away and we can ride elephants, bathe the elephants, go hiking in the jungle and learn some cultural things in the national park closeby. if the monsoon doesn't hit too badly, we'd really like to go white water rafting too! haha but i think the longer we wait, the less chance we'll be able to go on these because it's hard to travel in the monsoon, not to mention that the rivers will be crazy! i read that they raise 10x in monsoon season. so that will be a fun thing to jump towards on my bungee jump - which is a 160 m fall! yeahhhhhh i am excited!
so what else can i tell you? i think so many thoughts in a day that it's hard to remember them all. i really like being here - the culture is SO different from what i'm used to - i'm pretty sure the culture shock will really hit me when i get home. i know that this is really giving me the travel bug, and i know i won't be disappointed if i don't get into med school right away. i really want to see more of this great earth!
well, i'm going to go check if we can leave soon. hope you're all doing well - i'm starting to miss you guys! wish you were here.... :D
HI EVERYONE!
well, i am finally here.
after about 33 hours, i finally landed! it wouldn't have been so bad, i think, if i would have been able to spend some of the 9 hours i had in england outside of the airport... :( what ended up happening was that i had a ticket to london and then a ticket to nepal, so i had to pick up my bags and recheck them... and i couldn't recheck them for a really, really long time. sooooo i read... i wrote in my journal... i watched people... i watched people some more... i started wandering, pulled a brady/elise escapade and had to go through security again... yeah. on the plane trips i couldn't sleep and watched a lot of movies! woot... well anyways, i landed here and was picked up by some men from the hotel excelsior - the hotel where all the volunteers stay at before their placement, and on the weekends as well. the drive was crazy - apparantly there was a strike that ended that day - all the buses and taxis because they're raising prices and the price of fuel is really high too. so there we were, bumping over pot holes, swerving around the masses of people and motorbikes in the middle of the road... i think if i were driving, i would hit 5 people in the first ten minutes! they honk the horn and it doesn't even phase anyone. the weather here isn't too bad - it's quite sticky but since it's monsoon season the sun isn't very bright. i've only had a little taste of the monsoon, and it wasn't that bad, just rained for about 10 minutes. the sights are something else - all the buildings are as close as can be, and don't look like they are of very high quality. it's pretty dirty i would say - a lot of dust everywhere and garbage on the side of the streets, which are either paved or stone. so when i got to the hotel, melissa was there and so i had supper with her and rachel, from the uk. the food is going to take some getting used to! lots of curry... not my favorite... i wasn't feeling so hot afterwards! hopefully i just get used to it soon, otherwise it's going to be a long month! we went out to a pub afterward to hang out with some volunteers, but i was pretty tired and had a very good sleep in my hotel room :)
so that was yesterday... today i went to durbur square, which is a LOT of temples and religious stuff. i didn't catch everything our tour guide told us - but we did see the living goddess and got harassed by many men trying to sell us little trinkets. we were looking at one temple and realized that all the carvings were very erotic - i forget the name for it, but apparantly at one time the population of nepal was very low and not every man had a wife, so the king made this temple to popularize enjoying all the facts of life :) it's interesting also, that nepal is kind of where buddhism and hinduism collide, and it was very interesting to watch how these people worship, and why they do the things they do. the tour guide really stressed how people here are very willing to spend their money to honor their gods, and i thought about how tight fisted i can be sometimes when it comes to giving offerings back home. i think there's something to the devotion they show.
so on our walk back we did some shopping - i tried to barter and it did NOT work :S however, it will be hard to stop shopping - there are so many beautiful things here! also - exciting - i booked a trip to go bungee jumping on saturday with my new friend rachel! i'm very excited to do this :D i'll let you all know how it goes. i just found out that i can finally go through my orientation here.
please keep praying - and let me know how i can lift you up in prayer as well.
well, i am finally here.
after about 33 hours, i finally landed! it wouldn't have been so bad, i think, if i would have been able to spend some of the 9 hours i had in england outside of the airport... :( what ended up happening was that i had a ticket to london and then a ticket to nepal, so i had to pick up my bags and recheck them... and i couldn't recheck them for a really, really long time. sooooo i read... i wrote in my journal... i watched people... i watched people some more... i started wandering, pulled a brady/elise escapade and had to go through security again... yeah. on the plane trips i couldn't sleep and watched a lot of movies! woot... well anyways, i landed here and was picked up by some men from the hotel excelsior - the hotel where all the volunteers stay at before their placement, and on the weekends as well. the drive was crazy - apparantly there was a strike that ended that day - all the buses and taxis because they're raising prices and the price of fuel is really high too. so there we were, bumping over pot holes, swerving around the masses of people and motorbikes in the middle of the road... i think if i were driving, i would hit 5 people in the first ten minutes! they honk the horn and it doesn't even phase anyone. the weather here isn't too bad - it's quite sticky but since it's monsoon season the sun isn't very bright. i've only had a little taste of the monsoon, and it wasn't that bad, just rained for about 10 minutes. the sights are something else - all the buildings are as close as can be, and don't look like they are of very high quality. it's pretty dirty i would say - a lot of dust everywhere and garbage on the side of the streets, which are either paved or stone. so when i got to the hotel, melissa was there and so i had supper with her and rachel, from the uk. the food is going to take some getting used to! lots of curry... not my favorite... i wasn't feeling so hot afterwards! hopefully i just get used to it soon, otherwise it's going to be a long month! we went out to a pub afterward to hang out with some volunteers, but i was pretty tired and had a very good sleep in my hotel room :)
so that was yesterday... today i went to durbur square, which is a LOT of temples and religious stuff. i didn't catch everything our tour guide told us - but we did see the living goddess and got harassed by many men trying to sell us little trinkets. we were looking at one temple and realized that all the carvings were very erotic - i forget the name for it, but apparantly at one time the population of nepal was very low and not every man had a wife, so the king made this temple to popularize enjoying all the facts of life :) it's interesting also, that nepal is kind of where buddhism and hinduism collide, and it was very interesting to watch how these people worship, and why they do the things they do. the tour guide really stressed how people here are very willing to spend their money to honor their gods, and i thought about how tight fisted i can be sometimes when it comes to giving offerings back home. i think there's something to the devotion they show.
so on our walk back we did some shopping - i tried to barter and it did NOT work :S however, it will be hard to stop shopping - there are so many beautiful things here! also - exciting - i booked a trip to go bungee jumping on saturday with my new friend rachel! i'm very excited to do this :D i'll let you all know how it goes. i just found out that i can finally go through my orientation here.
please keep praying - and let me know how i can lift you up in prayer as well.
Friday, June 13, 2008
today is a big day.
it's one week before the big trip... and i'm going to take the MCAT today!
i'm very excited to get this milestone over and done with so i can get on with planning for nepal. i haven't even thought about it too much because all i've been doing is STUDYING.
for the first time ever, i stopped studying two hours before the test just to pray, relax and calm down before i start the biggest test of my life... and it's working. i've asked a lot of people to pray for me at this time as well... and i appreciate it so much. i think it has to do with a common theme in my life right now - trust.
i'm trusting that God has this all in His hands.
i'm trusting that He'll give me clarity, and the memories of everything i've been studying.
i'm trusting that He will bring good out of this, whether I like my final score or not.
i'm trusting that no matter what happens in the next few weeks, He has my life in His hands - the hands that have guided me and protected me thus far through my adventures here, there and everywhere.
so why worry?
it's one week before the big trip... and i'm going to take the MCAT today!
i'm very excited to get this milestone over and done with so i can get on with planning for nepal. i haven't even thought about it too much because all i've been doing is STUDYING.
for the first time ever, i stopped studying two hours before the test just to pray, relax and calm down before i start the biggest test of my life... and it's working. i've asked a lot of people to pray for me at this time as well... and i appreciate it so much. i think it has to do with a common theme in my life right now - trust.
i'm trusting that God has this all in His hands.
i'm trusting that He'll give me clarity, and the memories of everything i've been studying.
i'm trusting that He will bring good out of this, whether I like my final score or not.
i'm trusting that no matter what happens in the next few weeks, He has my life in His hands - the hands that have guided me and protected me thus far through my adventures here, there and everywhere.
so why worry?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)