my life is definitely a telenovela.

buenas!
ok. so this is totally going to be a train of thought post (not like the others are not... but still) so try to stick with me. wouw (as they spell it here). the last two days have been absolute craziness in a very non-crazy way. if that makes any sense. life in ibarra is great. i really love it here. the town that i live in is small and quaint and people are so nice and ibarra is just the right size of city for me... less pollution, nicer people, calmer... and all of these things might seem insignifcant, but after living in quito for a month, it´s difficult to explain how important they are!

i don´t really know how to even go about updating on my life. so i´m gong back to the numerical technique. :) (i´m glad my friends have noted this strange tactic... but hey, you´d want your doctor to be slightly OCD, no?)

1. hospital life: i am working in san vincente de paúl hospital in ibarra. it is one of two hospitals in town, and trust me, this is the poor hospital. i have not quite figured out how health care works here, but from what i can tell, most of the care is free... as long as it isn´t something like plastic surgery. i am stationed in the ER (emergencia... impossible to say in español!), which is definitely different from the ER that i imagined. there are very few 'oh my god someone is dying!' cases... and there is a lot of consultation going on... so yeah. it´s definitely weird. but i basically bounce around from room to room and try to find the most gruesome cases with the doctors that i like the best. most of the doctors and nurses are super nice and help me when i need something to be charaded out... there is only one woman who i am not fond of as of now, and she wears the same outfit everyday, so let´s be serious... who should be making fun of whom? i am working on befriending other doctors by walking around and looking lost... which has worked thus far. i met a medical student who is going to teach me to suture after i watch the videos on new england journal online or something... he works the nightshift, so i might pull an all nighter and hope to see some cool things... i met the head of the hospital today and made a sufficient ass of myself when i asked what xyz word meant... it was his last name. awesome. but it´s funny because so many people want to speak some english to you and i like teaching them... and vice versa. i have gotten really good at asking what a word is by explaining it with other words... and i am talking completely in spanish pretty much all day long... so yeah. improvement! hmm... what else with the hospital? cool cases? i can´t think... but i wrote perscriptions yesterday... and... there are a lot of malnourished children and the pediatricians seem to completely rely on the growth/weight curves to determine this. they do a lot of perscribing for vitamins... oh! there was this boy who had come in a week ago with a bad chest cold and phelgm in his lungs (but it wasn´t pneumonia)... i saw the x rays... and his mom looked like she was no more than 17... but he wasn´t getting better because they couldn´t afford the $15 medication. so molly and i ran to get our wallets and caught them on the way out to give them the money to buy the drugs... i mean. 15 dollars. it is frustrating because i know you cannot do this with everyone... and it´s like, where do you draw the line? but at some point i think you just have to say, one person is one person and THAT is enough. so yeah. that was the story for yesterday.
2. hospital life today: molly and i stayed at san vincente until about 10 and then we caught a taxi over to the over hospital in town... which oh my goodness is like 15 bajillion times nicer than san vincente... but i don´t know why or how. hmm. more preguntas for people. we went there because we met a doctor at an orphanage (another story!) place and he said to come visit him and one of the pediatricians at our hospital has a husband who is an anesthesiologist at the other... and we wanted in on some surgeries! we met up with 3 other students that i knew from school in quito and sweet talked our way into the operating room where a woman who had her tubes cut had gotten remarried and wanted them resewn together... but anyways. we suited up (in the biggest scrubs known to man) and went in. surgery here is ridiculous. they only give you an epidural if the surgery is below your L1 in your spinal cord (think somewhere mid chest area)... in other words: YOU ARE AWAKE WHILE THEY ARE DOING SURGERY ON YOU. YOU CAN HEAR EVERYTHING. EVEN CAUDERIZING IRONS AND SAWS. sick. but yeah. we watched that, which was cool... it was super hot in the operating room and i felt like i was going to pass out, so i left for a minute but went back in and everything was ok. (the smell of cauderizing isn´t so sweet...) and that´s about it.
3. i ate at an ecuadorian buffet for lunch. enough said.
4. more today at the hospital: i went upstairs to talk to the doctor secretary this morning because nothing exciting was going on in the ER and we talked for about an hour and i think she is one of my new favorite people here. i met a bunch of younger doctors and we just sat around and talked... kind of grey´s anatomy style. haha. they call me sarita because they think that i look like i am 15. sweet. and she found out my birthday is in two weeks and put it on her calendar... fiesta! ha. but yeah. basically she is my favorite and i am teaching her english slang.
5. home life: my señora, cristina, is phenomenal. she seriously is so great. i can´t even explain, but i want to take her home with me. she has three boys who are all in their mid to late 20s and they live in quito. yesterday i met her novio (boyfriend) and we chatted for awhile and decided to go running... all three of us left the house and went to her sister´s across the street (fannita) and she decided to meet us there with her novio. (ps. these women are both in their 50s... just for a mental picture.) after 10 million errands, we made it to the park in ibarra in the mountains and starting walking, then the novio and i went running and talked and it was great. and so beautiful. after the jogging (and i do mean jogging) stint, cristina and i walked along and talked about family and friends and it was maybe the first real conversation i have had in spansh and it was great. i mean... sure i can speak, but it´s hard to explain and be understood... so yeah. i am making progress, for sure. on the way back home, we ran fifteen bajillion more errands (a new toilet! thank god... mine does NOT work...) and while she was inside, the novio and i talked about a lot of things and traded words back and forth and i asked him how long fannita had been with her novio... because lauren (the girl who stayed with her last summer) said that she had a boyfriend that her kids did not know about... and he said that was still true and that they had been together for TEN YEARS OR MORE. and then i asked about cristina and he said they had been together for three years and HER KIDS DON´T KNOW! i could not stop laughing... he was like, shh... it´s a secret. what?!?!?! so crazy. mi vida ecuatoriana es loca. but yeah. we got home, had dinner (juice and bread... really?!?!) and played cards. so yeah. good day. and i think this weekend we are having a joint birthday party with cristina´s son because he turns 24 or 25 3 days before me... so that is fun too. family festivities. (cristina and fannita have 5 OTHER siblings who ALL live in either ibarra or san antonio.. ay...)
6. i think that is abou it for now... back to the casa... to work on medical school things.. BAHHHHH. the LAST thing i want to be doing right now. so frustrating!
7. i hope los estados son buenos... and yeah... te espero mucho...
sarah