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G'day!
Well I'm pleased to say that my luggage finally arrived so I am now clean and smell-free and not in the same clothes that I wore for 4 days!
I started at the hospital on wednesday, with a wee tour, a lecture on wearing sun screen and an introduction to Far North Queensland and the medical care. Unbelievably, the hospital I'm working in is the only majopr hospital covering an area the size of the UK! and it's much smaller than Ninewells! There are only a handful of other hospitals in FNQ and each of them have 2-4 doctors in them. Crazy stuff. the population though is much much smaller than the UK but still!
The clinic I'm working in is amazing! they offer a huge variety of services and have so many people each day. I think this is partly because it is free, as opposed to the $60 needed to pay to see the GP here. they are more advanced than us in a number of ways but also use some old fashioned investigations or procedures too.
So far I've done some clinics, been to a needle syringe programme training day (like the needle exchange at home for iv drug users) and been to a talk the midwives were getting on STI management in pregnancy. Everyone seems really nice and I'm being eased in nice and gently, sitting in for a couple of weeks before i take my own clinics. which is probably a very good thing because they run things pretty differently here!
Other than that I have been wandering the shops, drinking in the juice bars and lazing by the lagoon. My accent has posed a few minor problems - like the 10 minute discussion when i asked the Australian version of WRVS where A block was. As she was convinced i was saying E block she kept insisting there was no E block. Ten minutes later she finally said 'oh the university campus, that must be A block you mean then'. AAAARRRGGHHH thats what i said!!!
Trying to organise a few trips for the weekends, with some rainforest and reef action on the cards. Oh and i really wanna see the crocs at some point too. Am moving hostels today to somewhere a bit quieter (and with more than one ring working on the hob - shared by 50 people!) so i will elt you know how that goes. It's on the esplanade and still close to the hospital and it has a lovely pool and a tv room so i will be able to watch neighbours!
A few things i have begun to remember about australia:
- they think A is E
- when you order your juice they ask your name so instead of calling out 'Tall Berry Burst Smoothie with bla bla' they just shout Katie which is quite nice.
- there are so many amazing thai/japanese/indopnesian restaurants and snack bars here. More than half of each food court is noodle bars or sushi restaurants. yum yum.
- its so cheap
- they have weird sandwiches - coronation egg anyone? Ham and jam then? (at the Fosamax drug rep lunch on campus the other day!)
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