This weekend was fun. Saturday morning I got to sleep in til about 10 am which was very nice. After breakfast Jose Juan, Rafa and I went to the “the Hitbox,” a music store where Jose Juan works. I met his boss and a guy that he works with and they seemed nice. It’s a small shop with lots of cds and DVDs. They carried all types of CDs from Li’l Wayne to Linkin Park to Shania Twain (a personal favorite of mine). It’s in a open-air mall that is very new, it just opened last December. The mall is actually very nice. It is actually something that we might see in the states. I was expecially impressed with the bathrooms. They were clean, large, and equipped with sensor meditated water faucets and towel dispensers – que bonita. The mall even had a “Italian coffee shop” where we had enormous oreo frappucinos for only $2.50 a piece. It was a nice day so we sat outside in the patio. For some reason we had a server and menus. After that we went to Insurgentes and we chatted with Tia Alicia. Then we went home to Tio Luis’ house for dinner with Tio Roberto, Luiscine, and Patti. Alicia would have come but since it was a little humid, the front door wouldn’t close all the way because the wood had expanded and so she couldn’t lock it from the outside. She was propping it shut with a broom – old school style. Manolo and Silvia came from QRO. That night we went to a few bars near the Jardin and it was a lot of fun. The drinks were surprinsly more expensive than what I thought they’d be. $4.50 US for a rum and coke at on place. We had to get a shot of tequila as is the custom in Mexico. Just as Tio Luis says, “You have not visited Mexico unless you have tequila.” At least I think thats what he said. Between bars we went to the Jardin and got hamburgesas and hot dogs from a street vender. (it’s a good thing I am now taking more pepto, remember) They were awesome. The next morning Manolo, Silvia, and I went to Dolces for breakfast, coffee, and churros. I think Man was a little “crudo.” After breakfast we walked through the artesanias and I bought a sweet “mascara de luchadores” for Luke. He should really like it. That afternoon, we had a big lunch with Tia Alicia, Pepe, Rafa, Luicine, Patti, Man, and Silvia and Tia Carmen and Tio Luis. Tio Luis made carne asada and choriso on the grill. It was awesome. I guess it was a party for Man’s birthday which was on the 6th so we had birthday cake. We watched about 5 hours of futbol until Luiscine, Patti, Man, and Silvia had to leave for QRO. Man said he’d be back to pick me up on Friday because I’m going to stay at his apartment next weekend and see the sites of QRO. Should be fun. Gerry, Sonia and Mitzy returned from Mexico city in the evening. They were there for the weekend to visity Gerry’s family and buy clothes to sell in SMA. Tonight I introduced Mitzy to photobooth on my computer. She loved it and we took a bunch of funny pictures. I then discovered iMovie which allows me to take videos on my computer. I got some funny videos of Tia Carmen dancing and singing. When I showed her the videos she was laughing a lot and pleading for me to erase them. I would not. I’m going to be sure to take lots of videos of everyone to bring back to MN.
I feel like I’m learning a lot. However, at times it occurs to me that everyone I’m talking to is using very simple sentences and talking extremely slow and most times repeating things over and over. I needed to ask about 8 times over a period of 2 days to remember the word servilleta. Poco a poco I guess. I asked Rafa today if he’d like to hang out with me and Pep each day for an hour or two to practice Spanish and English. It should be good. Tomorrow I have my first lesson with my tutor. I had good thoughts about it until Luicine, after he heard who was teaching me, said to me, “Buena suerte.”
Is it weird that I’m still using purified water to brush my teeth? After all, the glass is washed with tap water, along with all the silverware and dishes I’ve been using. I try not to think about the moisture on the fruit that I’m given either. The pepto is holding up so far though…for now.
lunes, 9 de julio de 2007
6 de Julio (viernes)– day 4
The clinic is very pretty. Upon entering you see a little garden in the center with a fountain and nicely trimmed hedges. There are blooming roses around the periphery, pink and red, que bonita. I went there today at 9 and sat in the hallway which encircles the garden. I stuck my nose in my Spanish-english dictionary and medical Spanish book for about an hour when the doctor decided to come in. I hope I have that type of flexability when I’m a doctor…probably not though. We only say 2 patients from about 10:15 to 1 pm. I guess Fridays are normally slow according to Susana. However, there were about 4 drug reps that came to visit the doc. It was much like the drug rep visit we have in the states except for less food. Another difference was that each rep talked about at least 5 drugs, sometimes even 10. The drugs were not related either. I recognized most of the types of drugs. There were some to lower blood pressure and lipids. A few antibiotics including what we would call augmentin (amoxicillin and clauvanic acid) and another COX-2 inhibitor. I think it was called lumoxib or something. I got a bunch of marketing handouts which I was given as a “leccion” from one of the reps. I think I’m gonna try and translate them. The swag I got were as follows: one orange highlighter, one box of tissues (which I left with the doctor but I should have kept because the clinic doesn’t stock the bathroom with TP or paper towels), and one mouse pad. I wondered if the doc actually gives out the samples that he gets from the reps but I don’t think so. When I saw him reach his stethascope from a box behind his desk I saw that it was overflowing with small boxes of drug samples. I’m pretty sure my stethoscope is the nicest in the hospital too (props to Fairview).
I think there is a dinner being sponsored by one of the drug companies being held today that the doc was invited to. I think he tried twice to ask me to go but I couldn’t really understand. Both times I said “oh, si” and nodded but I don’t think that was the correct response. There is almost no communication between me and the doc, it’s pretty rough. Although the clinic was exactly what I was looking for, I feel like a tool being there. It’s small and slow enough that I would I might actually be of use if only I spoke Spanish. May in the coming years as my Spanish gets better I might return and actually do something like draw blood or interview patients. Susana introduces me as a volunteer to everyone but I think “quiet gringo that watches with a blank look on his face” would be more appropriate. I’m pretty sure a volunteer actually does something, I do not.
I walked to the internet place today. Tia Carmen was afraid that I would get “perder” (lost). But I didn’t. After dinner Tio Luis brought me to another place for private Spanish lesson. The professor seems nice. We couldn’t start a lesson today so we chatted for a few minutes to see what I knew. He said something like this in Spanish, “First I need to know what you know and how strong are your abilities.” I understood most of it but not all so I answered, “no entiedo todo,” which I think means I didn’t understand any of it. He gave me a blank stare like he was think, “what did I get myself into?” We read a few lines in a book and that was that. I told him that I need to work primarly on understanding spoken Spanish and actually speaking it. He said he would devise a plan and we will start on Monday. He is very nice, it should be good.
Today is Manolo’s birthday but he is in Queretaro. We called him and he is coming over tomorrow with Silvia.
Oh, I remembered something that I thought was kinda funny that I saw when we all went to the new Mega (the equivilarnt to our supertarget). Tio Luis and Tia Carmen really like their good deals. “Ah, Tres por dos! Hay una gratis!” Which means we bought three 5-gallon containers of Clorox bleach for the price of two. That’s a lot of Clorox bleach in my opinion. Hasta luego
I think there is a dinner being sponsored by one of the drug companies being held today that the doc was invited to. I think he tried twice to ask me to go but I couldn’t really understand. Both times I said “oh, si” and nodded but I don’t think that was the correct response. There is almost no communication between me and the doc, it’s pretty rough. Although the clinic was exactly what I was looking for, I feel like a tool being there. It’s small and slow enough that I would I might actually be of use if only I spoke Spanish. May in the coming years as my Spanish gets better I might return and actually do something like draw blood or interview patients. Susana introduces me as a volunteer to everyone but I think “quiet gringo that watches with a blank look on his face” would be more appropriate. I’m pretty sure a volunteer actually does something, I do not.
I walked to the internet place today. Tia Carmen was afraid that I would get “perder” (lost). But I didn’t. After dinner Tio Luis brought me to another place for private Spanish lesson. The professor seems nice. We couldn’t start a lesson today so we chatted for a few minutes to see what I knew. He said something like this in Spanish, “First I need to know what you know and how strong are your abilities.” I understood most of it but not all so I answered, “no entiedo todo,” which I think means I didn’t understand any of it. He gave me a blank stare like he was think, “what did I get myself into?” We read a few lines in a book and that was that. I told him that I need to work primarly on understanding spoken Spanish and actually speaking it. He said he would devise a plan and we will start on Monday. He is very nice, it should be good.
Today is Manolo’s birthday but he is in Queretaro. We called him and he is coming over tomorrow with Silvia.
Oh, I remembered something that I thought was kinda funny that I saw when we all went to the new Mega (the equivilarnt to our supertarget). Tio Luis and Tia Carmen really like their good deals. “Ah, Tres por dos! Hay una gratis!” Which means we bought three 5-gallon containers of Clorox bleach for the price of two. That’s a lot of Clorox bleach in my opinion. Hasta luego
5 de Julio (jueves)– Day 3
I spent the morning with the woman who works in the laboratory. It’s a very crude facility, the lab. It has a small room with a typewriter, sink, two centrifuge machines, an incubator (that is never used), and a blood chemistry analyzer that looks to be circa 1975. Yolanda, the lab tech, is a nice woman. She is very patient with me. She does a funny think when I ask her to speak slower. She starts very slow and simple but then gradually speeds up until she is ripping right through her words. I’ve notice a few things about hearing natives speak. I knew it was going to be difficult to distinguish between words but I didn’t know it would be so difficult to distinguish between vowels and consinents within words. For example, ruida (noise) is pronounced like “reedtha,” one syllable. I pronouce it, “roo-ee-dtha.” It seems like all the words are like that. Also, really easy words that I have been saying since 7th grade are hard to comprehend in the midst of words the others in a sentence. If I do understand them right away, I stop and dwell on that one word and miss the rest. If someone tells me a senetence with “comida” in it, I’m left guessing if they are asking me if I liked the food, what kind of food I like, when I want to eat, or something like that. I think people get really frustrated when they ask me “simple” questions, even 5-6 words long, that happen to have zero familiar words and I’m left with my jaw open. Its frustrating.
Back to the lab. It’s very crude. Each patient enters, hands Yolanda a receipt of payment for the tests and she draws veinous blood from the cubital fossa (that’s the inside of the elbow for the non-anatomists). She starts by tying a ruberband above the elbow and then wipes off the puncture site with a cotton ball of water….from the tap. The needle is a 21 gauge, which I feel is a bit big. She then places a new cotton ball over the site and askes the patient to flex his/her arm for like ten minutes. No bandaid. No gloves. She runs all the tests later. They can test for typhoid, brucella, proteous, pregnancy, glucose, uric acid, blood type, hematocrit, syphilis, and a few others. Urine can also be collected, either by a proper urine “cup” or any common household container such as the 2 gerber baby food containers we received. A testing strip containing about ten colored sqares is dipped into the urine samples and then the color change in each square is compared with standards. This qualitative test is used to assess specific gravity (I have know idea how that works), pH, WBCs, billirubin, nitrates, proteins, ketones, hemoglobin, and a few others. Urine samples are then centrifuged and the supernatant is discarded. (wow, that sounded too much like a organic chemistry notebook). The sediment is viewed under light microscropy and the cells are counted by observation. The endothelial cells, bacteria, and WBCs are counted without any stain and completely qualitatively. Two blood smears were performed, stained with hemosolyn only for somreason, then the cells were counted. Other tests were perfomed but either I don’t remember them or they are not that important. It was pretty interesting to see how much you could do with only a few primitive machines and reagents. Also, for some reason, if two people want to get married, the woman needs to have blood drawn and tested for syphilis and blood type. Neither Yolanda nor I could give a rational explanation for this odd combination.
I’ve upped my dose of daily pepto after tio luis has been giving me strange fruits that he has “washed.” I don’t like waiting for the ‘rrhea to hit but it will hit hard I’m guessing. Probably next week, or later if I’m lucky.
I went to the libaray tonight. On Tuesdays and Thursdays there is a scheduled time for Mexicans and Americans to congregate and practice Spanish and English. It was difficult even for me but good. I sent an email to the instituto habla hispana asking about the possibility to get a private tutor. I hope to hear from them tomorrow. Tio luis is gonna look into another private lesson tomorrow too. I guess it’s cheaper $8-10/ hour, while the instituto habla hispana charges $12/ hr. Not much of a difference but whatever. Forcing myself to actively listen to everytihing is very tiring so I’m going to dormir now.
Back to the lab. It’s very crude. Each patient enters, hands Yolanda a receipt of payment for the tests and she draws veinous blood from the cubital fossa (that’s the inside of the elbow for the non-anatomists). She starts by tying a ruberband above the elbow and then wipes off the puncture site with a cotton ball of water….from the tap. The needle is a 21 gauge, which I feel is a bit big. She then places a new cotton ball over the site and askes the patient to flex his/her arm for like ten minutes. No bandaid. No gloves. She runs all the tests later. They can test for typhoid, brucella, proteous, pregnancy, glucose, uric acid, blood type, hematocrit, syphilis, and a few others. Urine can also be collected, either by a proper urine “cup” or any common household container such as the 2 gerber baby food containers we received. A testing strip containing about ten colored sqares is dipped into the urine samples and then the color change in each square is compared with standards. This qualitative test is used to assess specific gravity (I have know idea how that works), pH, WBCs, billirubin, nitrates, proteins, ketones, hemoglobin, and a few others. Urine samples are then centrifuged and the supernatant is discarded. (wow, that sounded too much like a organic chemistry notebook). The sediment is viewed under light microscropy and the cells are counted by observation. The endothelial cells, bacteria, and WBCs are counted without any stain and completely qualitatively. Two blood smears were performed, stained with hemosolyn only for somreason, then the cells were counted. Other tests were perfomed but either I don’t remember them or they are not that important. It was pretty interesting to see how much you could do with only a few primitive machines and reagents. Also, for some reason, if two people want to get married, the woman needs to have blood drawn and tested for syphilis and blood type. Neither Yolanda nor I could give a rational explanation for this odd combination.
I’ve upped my dose of daily pepto after tio luis has been giving me strange fruits that he has “washed.” I don’t like waiting for the ‘rrhea to hit but it will hit hard I’m guessing. Probably next week, or later if I’m lucky.
I went to the libaray tonight. On Tuesdays and Thursdays there is a scheduled time for Mexicans and Americans to congregate and practice Spanish and English. It was difficult even for me but good. I sent an email to the instituto habla hispana asking about the possibility to get a private tutor. I hope to hear from them tomorrow. Tio luis is gonna look into another private lesson tomorrow too. I guess it’s cheaper $8-10/ hour, while the instituto habla hispana charges $12/ hr. Not much of a difference but whatever. Forcing myself to actively listen to everytihing is very tiring so I’m going to dormir now.
My first day...4 de Julio (miercoles)– Day 2
4 de Julio (miercoles)– Day 2
At around 9 am Tio Luis and I went to the clinic, la casa, to introduce me to the director and the doctor. I was wearing shorts. I don’t think the doctor liked that. He sent me home to change and wanted me to return to start today instead of tomorrow. Then Tio told him and the other midwives that although I might take a while to respond in Spanish, that I can understand a lot if it’s spoken to me. Oh crap. The truth is I can barely understand anything from a native speaker. I can pick out only common nouns from speech such as cabeza and cerbeza. I think only one of those words is going to be any help in a medical clinic. So I suffered through about 3 hours of watching Dr. Rodriguez see a few patients. Much of the clinic is actually a materinity ward. When the doc went to see a neonate he noticed it wasn’t breathing well, became a little frantic and told me something in the Spanish which I interpreted as “go get a midwife quick.” I went in the hall and realized if I found a midwife I wouldn’t know what to say to her. He ran out of the room with the baby and went down the all to another room and told me to turn on the oxygen. Again, I couldn’t understand a word he said so he had to do it himself. He listened to the babies left lower lobe and had me listen to it. It was very congested. After a few minutes of suction and oxygen it was all clear. That was pretty cool. After that a few more patient then Girardo came to pick me up, more like rescue me. We went home for about an hour then he brought me to an internet café. After I finished with the computer I sat with him in his tiny shop of electronics and computer goods. We taught each other words like stream (arroyo) and wheel (llanta). I think that was about it. Oh yeah escaleta is stairs. Tio luis brought me to the library and we found out that there are free classes I guess tomorrow. After that it was back to home for dinner and sequence. Then to Mega for grocery shopping. It’s hard to get other people to buy food for you. I don’t like it. Especially if they are likely going to prepare it for you. I found out that 5 year old Mitsy knows the English alphabet better than I know the Spanish alphabet. That’s sad. I’m finding I cannot understand virtually anything with certainty. In Spanish class I could sometimes grab a very vague idea of was being said by the people on the cassette recording. But here it’s completely different. Most times I cannot tell if they are asking me a question or telling me something that I should know for later. A lot of people who have been on similar trips abroad say that there is one day where everything “clicks” and that the language becomes much easier to manage. I kinda doubt that that will happen to me. So tomorrow I’m going to the clinic at 8 in the morning and will supposedly be drawing blood and giving injections. Oh yeah, I have not done either before except for the occasional arterial stick. Should be fun…
At around 9 am Tio Luis and I went to the clinic, la casa, to introduce me to the director and the doctor. I was wearing shorts. I don’t think the doctor liked that. He sent me home to change and wanted me to return to start today instead of tomorrow. Then Tio told him and the other midwives that although I might take a while to respond in Spanish, that I can understand a lot if it’s spoken to me. Oh crap. The truth is I can barely understand anything from a native speaker. I can pick out only common nouns from speech such as cabeza and cerbeza. I think only one of those words is going to be any help in a medical clinic. So I suffered through about 3 hours of watching Dr. Rodriguez see a few patients. Much of the clinic is actually a materinity ward. When the doc went to see a neonate he noticed it wasn’t breathing well, became a little frantic and told me something in the Spanish which I interpreted as “go get a midwife quick.” I went in the hall and realized if I found a midwife I wouldn’t know what to say to her. He ran out of the room with the baby and went down the all to another room and told me to turn on the oxygen. Again, I couldn’t understand a word he said so he had to do it himself. He listened to the babies left lower lobe and had me listen to it. It was very congested. After a few minutes of suction and oxygen it was all clear. That was pretty cool. After that a few more patient then Girardo came to pick me up, more like rescue me. We went home for about an hour then he brought me to an internet café. After I finished with the computer I sat with him in his tiny shop of electronics and computer goods. We taught each other words like stream (arroyo) and wheel (llanta). I think that was about it. Oh yeah escaleta is stairs. Tio luis brought me to the library and we found out that there are free classes I guess tomorrow. After that it was back to home for dinner and sequence. Then to Mega for grocery shopping. It’s hard to get other people to buy food for you. I don’t like it. Especially if they are likely going to prepare it for you. I found out that 5 year old Mitsy knows the English alphabet better than I know the Spanish alphabet. That’s sad. I’m finding I cannot understand virtually anything with certainty. In Spanish class I could sometimes grab a very vague idea of was being said by the people on the cassette recording. But here it’s completely different. Most times I cannot tell if they are asking me a question or telling me something that I should know for later. A lot of people who have been on similar trips abroad say that there is one day where everything “clicks” and that the language becomes much easier to manage. I kinda doubt that that will happen to me. So tomorrow I’m going to the clinic at 8 in the morning and will supposedly be drawing blood and giving injections. Oh yeah, I have not done either before except for the occasional arterial stick. Should be fun…
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