leaving today for our family trip (minus one) back to vietnam.  oreos are packed, as is the dramamine and meclizine.  no more episodes of projectile vomiting, hopefully.  will need my strength to bargain down prices at the tailor and at the roadside stands for ryan’s daily bowl of pho.
i should have access to email while i’m out there.  email me! [ you want to uth it? ]

first day on peds was less painful than expected– yay for me. people are nice, the list is light, and they feed me mashed potatoes. the hours aren’t as bad as i thought, either.

today:

- baby with hernia, s/p resection of ischemic bowl.

- baby with pyelo

- more babies with pyelo

this morning we went to clinic to finally see some adult medicine. each patient took over an hour, and i was struggling to understand what they were saying. i was able to stay and see:

- chronic gastritis

- allergies/GERD

- atopic dermatitis

i started to feel ill again, so i went home. i had some veggie soup for lunch… which only made things worse. i´m sticking to mostly liquids now and sneaking in a little bread here and there. hopefully i´ll be better for this weekend– we´re taking the kids (and our abuela!) out for domino´s and a movie.

at 530am, i finally stopped hitting the snooze bar on my phone, got up, showered, and headed to parque centrale to see the many alfombra (multi colored carpets made from sawdust) and the processions. after photographing the church and alfombres, we met up with a few classmates and stepped into McDonalds to escape from the early morning chill with some hot chocolates.

after the first procession, we stopped by a chocolate shop/cafe and then to a flower shop on the way home. we bought bouquets for our abuela, who immediately arranged them in vases and stuck them on the top of the fridge.

connie, another DO student, joined us for a late breakfast at the globosinas choco-latte cafe. we chatted about a million things and forgot about studying.

lunch back at the house was cilantro and bean soup, egg-fried green beansand more tortillas.

after lunch, we played english/spanish word games with the kids for bubble yum and chocolate covered altoids.

we went back to parque central in the evening to attend a procession that was to include the kids from our host family. we parked ourselves back in the same choco-latte cafe and ordered drinks. tram spent her time journalling, and i tried to write an entry all in spanish… but i had not yet learned the past-tense, so it sounded ridiculous. afterwards, i broke out my verb flash cards for some much needed practice.

the crowd outside in parque centrale slowly grew until the parque and all the streets leading into it was filled with people standing shoulder to shoulder.  street vendors waded through the masses, seling domino´s pizza by the slice, sodas, fresh fruit, water, ice cream, light up toys, candy floss, guatemalan sweets, and all sorts of other goodies.  huge, brightly lit floats carried by hundreds of youths bounced by our cafe, creating a night spectacle that was reminicent of the rose parade, las vegas, and the disney electrical parade all rolled into one.  i kept waiting for a giant catepillar to roll by.

while we sat at the cafe, a young guatemalan girl watched us and slyly took photos of us with her camera phone.  i say ¨hola¨, she smiles and shys away. ¨como te llamas?¨nothing.  she runs off, and comes back with a paper and pen.  when we scribble in our journals, i see her watching us out of the corner of my eye.  when i look up at her, she looks down at her paper and pretends to write on her scrap of paper. we eventually get a picture with her, and when the parade ends, we run off into the night, barely avoiding the rain storm that is coming.

this morning´s breakfast was sad, stale nesquick chocolate cereal and bananas, sin leche, as usual.  we met tammy, a nurse from new zealand, at the escuela before heading out to xela´s first mall, mont blanc.  mont blanc is a multi store mini-mall with an attached Paiz supermarket.  we wandered all the little stores looking at zapatos, hiking gear, and random other things.  i bought a cheap watch (as may be the tradition with all my travels from now on!) and tram bought gigantic sunglasses to shield her from the masses of dust clouds the trucks make as the speed down the street.  i however, have my trusty target brand jack bauer sunglasses to keep me safe.  thank god for giganto shades!

we fell in love with paiz, our connection to the civilized world.  dove soap, hanes socks, and all the convieniences we could ask for.  maybelline, anyone? a new blanket?  fuji apples? me gusta!

i stopped at helados pops to try their famed ice cream.  Q10 (1.30) bought be an obcenely chocolatey brownie sundae covered in hot fudge and whipped cream.  next time, i´ll try the mora ice cream.  looks tasty in all it´s purple goodness.  we were on our way to the next shopping center, but we thought we were going the wrong way (not so!), so we headed back home to study and eat instead.

while we were studying in our room i heard a  =slap, slap= coming from the kitchen.  i went out to see what was going on — mi abuela was making tortillas!  she let us help, and soon i was patting out my own (retarded looking) corn tortillas.

lunch was the misshapen tortillas, asparagus soup, and a traditional guatemalan chicken and pork dish in a red sauce served with white rice.  yum.

we went back to school at 2, but around 4 it began to rain.  by 530, the rain had still not let up, so we donned trash bags with a hole cut in the top for our heads and ran out into the night.  we dodged cars and waded though ankle-deep rivers in the street all the way home.  our shoes were soaked through, so we left them for dead with mi abuela and basked in the glow of a hot shower.

dinner was mashed frijoles, tortillas, and an egg patty filled with rice.

tram and i went to get our shots today.  i needed my HepA and tetanus shots, plus a 4 pill regimen for typhoid fever.  ugh.  i was queasy for half the day anticipating the shots, but they turned out to be quick and easy.  look at me! i’m a big wuss!  oh well.  i’m ready for the third world now.

50 days until graduation!

roid week/match week (zot! zot! zot!) done, radiology done, packing for guatemala… in progress. i have to do some last minute errands (vaccinations, pinkberry), but other than that, i’m free for a short while. so… if anyone’s bored, let’s go out!