Hospital? More like THIS ROCKSPITAL!!!!

When I awoke this morning, witnessing a vaginal hysterectomy was not very high on the old to-do-list. Granted, it WAS on the list, just much, much lower, probably right in between being forced to watch Scooby Doo re-runs and having sand rubbed in my eyes. But try new things am I right? It wasn’t till the surgeon plopped the emancipated cervix/uterus dynamic duo in a bag 2 inches from me that I realized that this friendly trip to the doctor had just gotten cranked up to level 11. Ladies, I hurt for you, I don’t know what causes this (and you better believe I’m not Google imaging it), but avoid it at all costs.

What is the context of this operation you ask? Well I was scuba diving and discovered a sunken ship in which… lol jk, I don’t know how to scuba dive. I was doing a day shift in the hospital which means I spent 12 hours, 8 am to 8 pm, following around doctors and nurses and asking lots of questions. Fairly early on I met a friendly young intern named Natalia whom I hung out with most of the day. Honestly I wouldn’t have gotten to see any of the stuff I did if it wasn’t for her. So mad props to you Natalia, wherever you are. We started off in the Puerperio which is the section of the hospital where the newborns (less than 3 days are treated). This involved a lot of baby examining and a lot of breast feeding. I participated in one of the aforementioned activities. Natalia let me help her examine the babies (most were less than 10 hours old) by letting me listen to their heart beats and pulmonary rhythm with the stethoscope. It’s interesting how much faster their hearts beat, or maybe my brain just processes information faster than most, either way, it’s interesting. I also got to check their reflexes, feel around and play “Where’s the liver”, feel the structure of their spine/skull, and monitor genital formation.

After lunch there wasn’t much going on so I accompanied Natalia to one of her medicine classes where we learned all about pulmonary pressure and output all in Spanish. FUN! We then went to the surgery wing where I saw some dude’s gall bladder get removed and another dude’s rectum get replaced by a bag or something. Natalia was totes impressed when I identified one of the guy’s higado (liver). Afterwards came the best part of my day: I got to witness a birth. Natalia explained in Spanish to the doctor that I was totally awesome or some jive like that and he was all like “whatevs dog you’re riding this delivery train with me.” At which point I was like “word up, I’ve played enough tee ball to have a pretty decent shot at catching this baby.” The birth was absolutely incredible. It’s hard to describe how it feels to witness new life, to watch the baby come out crying, knowing that between the doctor and I, we are the first people on the planet to lay eyes on this new, beautiful human being. And then to see the relief and absolutely joy of the mother upon being shown her new (if messy) baby; a surreal experience indeed.

What a day, I have a feeling in the US I wouldn’t be allowed to do anything that I did today. Even down here I have to thank Natalia for the inside pass. I have an exam tomorrow but studying is not on my mind. I will say however, that I love the Spanish language. Every day I can feel my Spanish skills rapidly improving. Just like in How to Train Your Dragon when the kid has to gradually learn how to tame and fly the beast. That’s me, riding the Spanish dragon. The weather isn’t too cold, highs of 60 if we’re lucky, but the houses are very cold, my estimate would be that my house is always about 40-45 degrees. Who left the fridge open? MIRITE?!?!?!? Rofl

There’s a lot I haven’t written down that I need to before I forget. In the future I’ll go into more details about partying at a US embassy official’s apartment, getting ruthlessly made fun of in a Chilean comedy show, fitting 7 people into a taxi, finally finding the Holy Grail (also known as peanut butter in this country), going to Chilean soccer games, and a bunch of other things that I can’t remember right now.

Tomorrow I embark on a 20 hour bus ride to the San Pedro de Atacama desert for 3 days. It’s the second driest thing in the world, the first being my sense of humor, BOM BOM! Dicho y Hecho

Blah Blah Blah, I'm only blogging because, as I sit freezing, curled up under an electric blanket, moving my fingers to avoid frostbite currently seems like my best availabe option. Survival of the fittest baby; just me, a years worth of propel, 3 layers of clothing, and a book of 501 really fun and interesting Spanish verbs, the real question is why would I NOT blog? MIRITE?!?! LOL, anyway.... I'm chilling in the appartment. A maid came today and reorganized the location of the couches and beds. I made a Stepbrothers joke about now having more room for activites. My host mom didn't get it. Paragraph ahoy.

Woop Womp hope we all made it across that paragraph gap in one piece! Tonight we had a dish that my mom said is typical Chilean cuisine, I always hate when she says that because I do not like typical Chilean cuisine. Since I'm starting this blog 2.5 weeks late, I'm just gonna do a quick synopsis of my favorite things I've done so far here. Villa Grimaldi toruture camp was cool, Valpariaso, Vina del Mar were interesting, enjoyable, would visit again. Beat a university women's P.E. team at handball. That's right I attend a University, La Universidad Catolica. I don't remember if I mentioned that in my other post or not, too late now, I'm not looking back. Went to a bar with some dude that works at the US embasy. I climbed Cerro San Cristobal, Cerro Santa Lucia, and Cerro Pochoco. Cerro Pochoco was hands down my favorite thing I've done here. It took us 2 hours to climb to the top but it's worth every second of the climb. The summit offers a sprawling, 360 view of Santiago on one side and the Andes on the other. Highly highly highly recommended. On the way back down you can pretty much just slide because of all the loose rock. Speaking of rocks, we climbed all over the mountain, essentially making our own trail for the majority of the hike. I aim to conquer more cerros in the future.

SHWOOP PARAGRAPH GO! I have my spell check set to Spanish so I honestly have no idea what I'm spelling correctly and I have no intentions of re reading this post so deal. I have decided that being in a city for this long is torturous. I love Santiago, but keeping me pent up between streets and buildings when there are such beuatiful and treacherous mountains to be explored is cruel indeed. My heart belongs to the wilderness and I'm trying at every opportunity to bust out into some other woodland escape. Class is great, I love being immersed in Spanish, and I love learning about medicine/health. I'm pretty excited for when we actually begin doing observations in hospitals and clinics, that's when it gets real doggie dogz. Speaking of which, There are thousands of stray dogs that roam the streets, and they are awesome. If you take the time to be nice to them (many just ignore them) they'll follow you all across the city while recruiting their furry bretheren until, after a while, you have ammased an army of perros. My only gripe is that when class ends at 3:30 and it get's dark at 6, there is no time to explore the country side, especially since it takes at minimum of an hour and a half to get beyond the confines of the city. I want so badly to scale every mountain in sight. The cold also hampers my access to adventure in that I don't think any overnight trips would be wise/enjoyable. Bummer, especcialy since I feel like so many of the mountains would take more than one day to truly appreciate and conocer. I'm pumped about going to the desert, San Pedro, but again I fear that I will have but precious little time to explore. My true time to explore will come after the program at which point I would love to go back north to the deserts, to Peru, to Argentina, or to Torres del Paine, what looks to be the most beautiful palce on earth and a backpacker's nirvanna. While the allure of the rawbeauty Torres del Paine (Google Image it, I promise it is gorgeous) is almost enough to provoke me to book a flight right this moment, I have to remember a couple of things. Primarily that Torres del Paine is literally located at the end of the world, just a hop skip and a boat to Antartica. This means that Torres del Paine would be COLD. REALLY COLD. While I can picture all sorts of terrible winter accidents happening, I sitll really want to go. If not now then later in life, but I will get there.

Que sera, sera though. I have to remind myslef that travel is only a secondary goal, with spanish and medical experience being the focus. When I'm in a place dominated by such natural beauty, however, that's a hard focus to maintain.

Wuz gud thugs?

This blog is for anyone who is interested in some South American adventure, but is mostly just so that I can remember stuff.

I'm starting this blog 2 weeks into my trip, so I have a lot of catching up to do.

I'm in the city of Santiago, Chile. I'm not sure Chileans really understand cold, because I was told it would be freezing down here. It's not. It's fall and it's very nice. Santiago is an interesting city. It is located within a bowl. The Andes surround the city which is cool because thyey provide a majestic, snow capped background. When you can see them that is. The bad thing about being surrounded by mountains is that the 7 million inhabitants of the city with their 7 million cars spit out a lot of pollution which then has nowhere to go. This leads to a perpetual smog layer which I'm told is worse in the winter (It's winter in Chile right now, Chilean winter lasts from June to August, the opposite of us). Anyway, it has only rained once, but that was enough to clear up the smog for a while. The city is very beautiful with a good mix of modern and old architecture. Because it is fall the city is particularly impressive due to all the orange and red leaves of the deciduous trees. I should probably utilize paragraphs as I write. Here I go!

I'm doing a public health/medical internship down here. I have 2 classes. This blog is boring to write. I think my problem is that I don't like looking back, I want to keep busting forwards. Anyway I need to write everything down so that I don't forget. The first day I had a 9 hour over night flight from Atlanta to Santiago. Fun!!! Got to my host house which is a small apartment with me, my host mom, her daughter, and a poodle. That day I just rested. I helped walk the dog and we passed my the mayor of Providencia (my neighboorhoods) office/mansion. Turned out that it was the only day of the year that it was open so I walked inside and looked around. It was swanky. The next day I went to the IES center where I have one of my classes and I got to know the other 42 students on the trip. I don't like typing. First blog post done