WEEKEND OFF

Hi everyone. Hope everything is going well at home. Everything here is good, if you ignore the effect a virtually all rice diet has on your lower digestive tract!
Not much has happened the last few days. A typhoon just missed our base, but we got lots of rain. It's been raining the majority of the last few days so the church and bible studies that we do on Sunday and Tuesday were cancelled. We walk to the lecture hall in knee high deep puddles. It's still over 30 degrees though sot he water is welcome.Some place the in town don't have drains so he water builds up in the streets, sometimes shoulder deep. When it rains all the kids come out and swim and bath in the puddles.
We've been doing a couple of extra hours of class the last few days to make up for the weekend off we are getting. Yay, urine analysis!
I'm going to be heading to one of the nearby islands Thursday night to relax with some of the girls. We're hoping to go snorkling and banana boating.
I'd post pictures but there is dead bug in the USB port, so maybe next time.

I hope you can see all these pictures, some of the ones in the previous post got cut off.


We did and overnight outreach the last couple of days in a village a few hours away from where we are staying. We saw some crazy things but we were able to help a lot of people with serious problems. I got to inject anesthetic into dental patients for the first time. Felt pretty bad for the first guy I did, but we asked first to make sure he was okay with the fact that I had never given anybody a needle. There was one poor old women who had severe decay in one of her front teeth. So bad that the infection ate through the root of the tooth, through the jaw bone and out of her chin. When we pulled the tooth she bled out the bottom of her chin. We saw a man who had a serious skin infection on his legs that had been there since he was 1 year old. He is now 37. We gave some antibiotics and anti-inflammatories so hopefull it will clear up. We also saw a man who was 71 years old that was in the begining stages of a heart attack. He was so thin because he worked 10 hours days carrying bricks and doing construction and he never stopped to eat. I'm 21 and can't imagine working like that in this heat, let alone 71 years old. We also diagnosed quite a few children with various forms of TB. It's so sad because they will probably die soon because we don't have all the proper treatments and they cannot afford to go to the hospital. Unfortunately we also see alot of people taking advantage of the free medicine we give. We saw a little girl who looked perfectly well and when we asked her what was the matter she couldn't remember so she had to go back and asked her mother. So her mother came over and told us what the girls problem was and exactley what medicine she wanted. She got very upset and stormed out when we wouldn't give it to her because what she wanted was an adult medication for this girl who was 10, and the symptoms she said the daughter had didn't add up. We also saw an elderly women who was so depressed she wouldn't even look or speak to us. Her husband had brought her in to see if we could make her happy and well again. We don't have anything to help mental illnesses, but we gave her some multivitamins and ibuprofen just so they wouldn't walk away empty handed after coming so far. We also saw a girl who was ate who had severe abdominal pain. After talking to her mother we found out that she was on a diet and wouldn't any other than a little bit of rice. She was bigger than all the other girls because she was half American, but she was no where near being overweight. SHe was only 8 years old.

We see alot of patients with very serious problems, blood pressures of 200/140, cysts, cancer, heart disease, etc,. It's really hard because we don't have necessary diagnostic tools and as a one time clinic we cannot not give the long term care some require. We give them all the necessary medication we can but that's usually only about two weeks worth, most need more than that and repeat check ups to monitor their condition. But we do the best we can and most people are very gratefull for it.

It was a very long and tiring weekend both physically and emotionally. Didn't get much sleep because we slept on concrete floors and all the emotionaly stress makes it hard to sleep at night but they are going to give us a weekend off here pretty soon. When we got home last night we went to the restaurant opening of one of the former Marine reach staff and had a delicious meal. Much better than the fish heads we were served in the village(although I am thankful for the meal they cooked us). Then we went and relaxed by doing some videoke. I highly recommend it, it was a blast. This is Annemarie and I singing "Stop! In the name of love".

PICTURES, FOR REAL THIS TIME

View from hotel in Korea



Here are some pictures of our outreach. The little boy in yellow had 2 severely infected ulcers on his leg, but was so strong when we were patching him up. The last picture is the bridge we crossed to get one of the communities to hold a bible study. It was right by the ocean, so beautiful.





I have a bunch more pics but they take super long to load. Maybe next time.

FINALLY SOME PICTURES

So I finally found a computer in town with an accessible USB port so here are a few pictures. I only have a few so far because you have to be careful of taking pictures of tribal groups and land. I hope you can see them alright, I can't tell because the computer monitor here is not very good.
Here is the view from my hotel in Seoul when I had to overnight between flights. I'll have to take pictures of the toilet on the way home so you can see what a classy place it is.
We'll I've been sitting here for 25 minutes and the pictures aren't loading so I'll try again when I have more time.

For those of you who know of the unfortunate things that always seem to find me, you'll enjoy this... I've already developed three differen rashes. None of them are serious.

A PALE PARADE

I have some time left before my hour runs out at the internet cafe so I thought I would share some less important experiences.

It seems white people are quite the novelty. In the stores the big products are soaps and lotions with extra whitening ability. This struck me as odd since at home I seem to be on the recieving end of many jokes about the pasty whiteness of my skin. The ideal at home seems to be the tanned look and here it is just the opposite. At the airport coming in a couple of Filapino kids looked at me and laughed, when I turned around they ran away. It turned into almost a game as I would try and turn around and catch them before they had a chance to stop and laugh. Whenever I walk anywhere off the base people stare, men, women and children. Walking to town this morning men were honking their horns, waving, yelling and even slowing down and driving alongside of us. I don't at all feel threatened, but I feel like I am on display in a parade for the pasty white people.
The other day we rode back to the base on this motorized trike with a basket on the side. Two girls got into the basket and I jumped on the back of the bike. As we got on and started to drive away, a bunch of men were clapping and cheering for the driver. We are pretty sure they were cheering for him because he picked up three white chicks.