1. Enthusiasm:
Yay! Nicaragua - it's beautiful, it's hot (this is great! I miss Texas!), my Spanish is going to be so awesome, beaches!
2. Charlie Brown's teacher:
What language are these people speaking? I think they pronounce the first consonant, and after that, all I hear is vowels. (I thi the proou the fir coos, an afe tha, al I hea i voe = Mwah mwah mwah mwa mwah).
3. 3rd year medical student:
That was most of last week. It was like being in 3rd year of medical school for 3 reasons:
- The words that a doctor says to other doctors always sounds like another language. It was like trying to get a Spanish speaking person to teach me German. I understood about 80% of their Spanish at best. then they started saying all of the peculiarities of medicine…
- the pimping. Duke attendings just don't ask the level of biochemical detail that my attendings in medical school did. But don't worry, all my ex-attendings from medical school, my Nica attending has taken up the torch and asked me for the specific cell wall composition of staphylococcus and the factors that make it more likely to create an abscess. If only I could understand the questions…
- I was totally useless last week/annoying. Given that I couldn't understand half of what my attending/coworkers said, I was not trustable to take a history or write a note/discharge summary/order/find the lab/find radiology/answer questions from patients/call consults. I actually attempted a discharge summary (unsolicited) and my very sweet (intern) resident that I'm following around told me it was a great effort but I did it all wrong… in the nicest way possible. I tried not to hover, or look like I was slacking/uninterested. Yes. I've done this before. In medical school. blah.
4. Awesome weekend:
What to do when you feel defeated at the end of your first week? tag along with some nice german/swiss people to go on a mangrove tour/to the beach!!
These lovely humans whom also live in my hotel let me tag along on a wild life tour that culminated on a deserted beach reserve where sea turtles lay their eggs (at night - I didn't get to see any).
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| low tide |
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| some nice german friends |
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| me and some manglares (mangroves) |
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| these are mangrove trees (red mangroves). Their branches grow into the water of estuaries like roots and keep the salt content of the water stable so that the estuaries can be the hot bed of... marine reproduction… that they are. |
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| the turtle reserve. horrible view. very crowded. apparently you can rent a cabin their for $10 a night and watch the turtles at night. |
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| obligatory pic with the water. |
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| coming back to the town near the tour |
Then a few of us went and found http://www.surfingturtlelodge.com , which was gorgeous, and (bonus!) there was no death grip riptide so we got to go swimming :).
Sidebar: While out jumping in the waves, my new friends started looking at me with concern and asking if I was ok. I had a tiny bit of sand in my eye, so I blinked it away, and smiled, and said of course I was fine. It turned out that, in the process of pinching my nose to avoid a netti-pot-like nasal lavage I had stabbed my nose with my nose ring. Apparently had blood streaming down my face and chin like a bad vampire movie. I got out of the water (to avoid attracting sharks, of course) and pinched my nose like a good pediatrician until I wasn't wiping away handfuls of blood every time I let go. To be clear - it didn't hurt at all, but I guess the salt water that was also running down my face diluted it and made it look like I was hemorrhaging in front of my new (non-medical) friends' eyes. sadly, no pictures were taken of this event.
since I had abandoned the water, we transitioned to laying on the beach and drinking. this was followed by a game of volleyball that my team ended up winning by a "rock off." Apparently this is the non-american but infinitely cooler way of saying playing rock, paper, scissors. We had 3 teams, the teams each had a match against each other, and each team won one/lost one, so we rocked off to settle the score. allegedly, the winning team got free drinks and the losing team had to dance on the bar and get iced (throw back an entire smirinoff ice while on one knee), but we had to leave before these things occurred.
Surfing turtle lodge is on a peninsula that you have to take a boat to reach, and we left with the cooking staff, so it was a beautiful walk to the boat (on the beach with the full moon out and lighting in the distance (far distance) over the water).
Unfortunately, at the end of the day, I learned another white girl lesson. It sounds responsible to put on your sunscreen before you leave for the day. However, if you sit for an hour with your backpack in your lap and one leg against the bus seat in front of you, this is your prize:
5. 4th year medical student!
some how, over the weekend, the people I'm working with realized that they have to talk to me slowly and enunciate (like an elderly person whose hearing aids don't work), so I understood most of what happened today. I also learned to write notes!!!!!!!!!!!!! and I'm really excited about it. just like a 4th year medical student. I can do something useful!!! and the shine hasn't worn off from having to write 8 notes an hour like it's my job. today went better.
Now i'm hopeful for the future: step 6: resident/fluent spanish speaker??
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