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Well this coudl be quite a long entry seen as its my first after 3 days of being here! yesterday i wrote a brilliant blog which was really long, but it bloody dissapeared when i clicked next. Thats seems to be the way with this internet cafe and boy is it annoying!!!!!!!! i think i have now pretty much given up on uploading photos too because that takes so long!!
So here i am in sri lanka! i made it! wasnt sure if i would at the airport, it suddenly hit me what i was doing and i suddenly thought what the hell am i doing? i cant do this!!! so aftter a few tears i pulled myself together and got on the plane. Flight was ok, Emirates are a great airline to fly with. Dubai airport where i changed was insane, it was like the trafford centre. when i landed in sri lanka and looked out the window it was just so beautiful. there are lush green trees and palm tress everywhere.. i was so pleased when i got here that all my fears dissapered!
Had a pretty scary taxi ride from airport to the hotel in colombo as sri lanka roads and drivers are INSANE! the drivers constantly have thier thumbs on the horn and beep at pretty much everyone, in between swerving between tuk tuks, bikes and buses. it seems anything goes here.
Once at the hotel got a couple of hours sleep and then got up for a wander round colombo. This is when i discovered what its like to be white in Sri Lanka... you get stared at an awful lot!!!! In the evening i got taken out for a meal with one of the projects abroad staff which was great and put me at ease about going down to Galle the next day to meet my family and see the hospital.
The next morning i got picked up at 7am and we set off on the journey down to Galle, stopping on the way for a Sri Lankan breakfast - Curry! When we arrived at Galle they drove me round to show me where things such as the bus station, train station etc where and then took me to the hospital. i was so nervous going in as it wasnt anything like a western hospital... there were people everywhere, and they were all staring at me because i am white. it was very intimidating. we went to see the head nurse, which is who i report to and she arranged for me to have my induction that afternoon. So i went off to meet my family and the other volunteers. The other volunteers are great and im getting on with them really well. there are 3 staying the house and i am sharing a room with Jill who is from England and in her last year of studying to be a doctor at Edingbrough. She is also working at the hospital so its good having someone toask questions! the family seem really nice and tend to keep themselves to themselves so we dont see them that much.
So after my first home cooked meal of curry and rice i headed off to the hospital for my orientation. this was a nurse showing me round the hospital and where all the different departments are. the hospital is so different from western hospitals, most of the wards and coridoors are open to the outside, so the walls only got part the way up which seems very strange but i guess its due to the heat. and there seems to be stray cats and dogs wandering around and no1 blinks any eyelid! Jill told that on her first day she saw a cat giving birth outside the neo-natal unit! aparentley the irony was lost on the sri lankan staff. the nurse who gave me a tour was really nice and took my contact details so she could email me about english nursing and so her daughter could write to me as a penpal to improve her english which i thought was nice. When we went to the paediatrics ward this little boy came up to me to touch my skin.. just cos its white! it's so bizzare. but there are no white people in this area at all. then he got a bit braver and hung from my arm and started swinging around! it was so sweet! untill he wouldnt let go!
after my orientation i had a pretty chilled out afternoon and me and Jill where going to go to the Fort in Galle but Bram - one of the other volunteers- rang us saying he was ill and needed Jills diagnoses so by the time we had done this it was too late as here it is not cutsom to go out after dark. Bram unfortunatley had a bacteria infection but after antibiotics is a lot better now. So last night was just chilled with an early night ready for my big day at the hospital.
I got up at 7 and had brekkie which was lucily pretty western as i dont think my nerves could have stomached a sri lankan brekkie! when i got to the hospital i went to mini-theatre which is where they do small operations which dont require going under full anaesthetic. i saw a mole being removed, a sore being cleaned and dressed, some warts being removed, a really big gross cyst being removed and a toe-nail being pulled off! next the nurses gave me tea and home made treats which was really nice. the tea here is amazing! goes without saying really. the nurses are really friendly and one with good english took the time to explain all the different instruments to me. It can be difficult because sometimes you can tell they are talking about you when they all suddenly turn and look at you mid conversation but it's not their nature to be malacious. they are just really intrigued, especially about my unform as thiers are like nurses uniforms from the 50's. its so funny here, when you get chatting to some one you always go through the same routine of questions, one of them being are you married. and the girls always giggle when i say no! after our tea i got my chance to help out in the theatre but then blew it after contaminating the gloves twice!!!! d'oh!!! i didnt realise that there is a cetain way of putting them on, and then you arent allowe to touch andything once they are on. now i know! but by my second attempt it was too late and i didnt get the chance. But tomorrow i am going to make sure i do it right and get to mop some blood or cut some stitches or whatever they require!
mini-theatre was closed in the afternoon so i got the afternoon off. so i decided to go Unawatuna, a nearby really really nice beach. managed to get scammed by some guy saying he was a victim of the tsunami and had no house and i couldnt not give him money just incase... but i need to toughen up!!1 its so hard here because people start chatting to you and sometimes they are being genuinly friendly and other times they are out to scam you!!! and its very hard to tell which they are doing!!!!!! anyway i think thats enough from me, sorry about the lack of photos but it just aint happening on these computers!!! off for some rice and curry now yummy! x
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