Hello peeps! Well here I am at the end of another interesting week in the South Pacific! Have had an incredibly busy week in the hospital. There have been just two of us working in outpatients/A&E as I said my fond farewells to wantocks Emma & Jackie on Tuesday. [Sniff]. There was a visiting general surgeon from Honiara who is only here for a week and is carrying out lots of fancy ops that they can't normally do here. So we found that all of the Drs in Gizo were helping him out leaving Will and I to our own devices...! But it's been a great week for coping under pressure and testing my frustrations with 3rd world medicine! Have dealt with so many Gynaecology cases i've lost count. Also now feel fairly competent at TB reviews and looking after people with Rheumatic Fever believe it or not! Almost lost my cool mid-week however when I had to use the oldest ECG machine in the world on a lady, which took about 30 mins to untangle not before discovering that there was no paper to do it with anyway. Threw a bit of a strop and almost threw it across the room! Hopefully I can be forgiven for this momentary lapse of 'cool' when I tell you that I had a 'Malaria scare' midweek. Well, I call it a malaria scare - others might say I had gastroenteritis! But felt awful and did my usual struggle into the hospital rather than staying at home and sleeping. Did come home that afternoon and sleep all afternoon before going to bed and having another 10 hours - God, I must have been ill!! So my 'tropical disease' has prevented me having too mad a time here this week, so things have been pretty chilled. Yasmin, Caroline and Sam - Honiara survivors, arrived on Thursday evening, so we have almost a full house again at Phoebes. Our plans to visit Seraggi Beach (supposedly the most beautiful in the world) this weekend were thwarted by thunderstorms. But today was better weather and I did my first dive! Yey me! Facing my fears. Throwing off my princess-shackles! And I absolutely loved it! The instructor only had to hold my hand for a bit (!) and once I had deciphered there were no sharks...i was off! Definately have the diving bug. Have decided to do my PADI course next weekend. Can't really afford it, but while i'm in the best place for diving in the world...! So excited... Anyway, best be off. Need to buy a fish for dinner. Am learning how to fillet one tonight. Ugh.... Hope everyone is well. Thanks for the emails etc....keep them coming please! Big splashes xxx Lise x