Sunday #2- May 15th, 2011

We thought we were being proactive today by deciding to just take a taxi to church…no. Still we had trouble. We got out to the street with at least 15 minutes before church (the church is 5 minutes away by taxi) but we could not get anyone to stop for us!! Plus there were an abnormally low number of taxis this morning. Sadly, we were late to church again but we didn’t miss that sacrament! The ward members had translator devices ready for us so we could understand what the messages were about! We were so grateful to have the help from the elders and the ward members! We ended up staying for Sunday school also since they prepared to have someone there to translate! It was great.

The rest of the day has just been resting and preparing for the rest of the week. We have some homework to do and some sleeping to catch up on so that is what we have mostly been doing today. We’ll see what this next week has to offer. We are getting pretty ready to go home and we still have 2 more weeks left! Hopefully we will find new things to discover this week. 

Hualien- Thursday-Saturday, May 12th-14th

On Thursday morning we went to Hualien, a city close to the mountains on the east side of the island. It took us 6 hours to get there. One hour on a little train then 5 more hours on an express train. When we finally got there, we checked into our hostel, a little place that was $16 US Dollars per night for each person (pretty great) that was pretty much just a huge room with bunk beds. We all got to sleep in the same room so that was nice. We had free WiFi and clean showers and toilets so I wasn’t complaining. In fact, this is what we found over the toilets when we got there:

That night we went shopping in the shopping district which is pretty much a huge street market with clothes, food, souvenirs, etc. Alyssa and I ended up getting a TON of stuff actually. I spent more that night than I had the entire trip thus far. We also went to the Stone Market that was really close to the shopping district and I got a beautiful Jade bracelet! I am so happy about it!

After shopping, half the girls wanted to go to McDonalds for dinner but some of us didn’t so we found a cute little sushi bar with a conveyer belt of food! It was so good and so cheap!! J

The following day, we went up to Toroko Gorge where we had taxi drivers that took us everywhere we needed to go! They were so great! I’m not sure what everything is called that we went to but it was really fun! And absolutely beautiful!!

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We went back to the stone market that night to watch the aboriginal dances that some locals were putting on. It was really cool to see all the different styles they had!

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We still had one more day in Hualien on Saturday but there wasn’t much to do since we had seen the main attractions already. We took some walks and decided to go to a movie in the afternoon. It was pretty much just a very relaxing day (which I needed by then because we had been going non-stop for two weeks!) Our train left that night at 6pm and we didn’t get back to our dorm until 12:30! We were so tired!!

Second Week of Clinicals- Monday-Wednesday, May 9th-11th

Today, we had clinicals again and honestly it may have been my worst day in Taiwan so far. Clinicals start at 8am and since I was up late (despite my long Sunday nap), I was really tired. Not to mention, Taiwan is SO hot right now that I can barely muster up enough energy to last the whole day.  To start out the day, I was already nausea and sweating when we walked into the community office that morning. We had plans to do 3 home visits that morning then 3 more visits that afternoon with the Dr. Lee.  One of the patients that morning screamed the entire time we were there…which was a while since my nurse couldn’t get her NG tube in because she was screaming. Plus, all the houses that morning were not air conditioned so I had a headache all morning. It was just a rough day. To add to it, my nurse Ginger finds it HILARIOUS when I don’t like Taiwanese food so she bought me a bunch of weird stuff for lunch and just laughed the whole time when I acted like it was super good. I couldn’t even eat it all because I was already sick before we even went to lunch.

One of our patients sons

 The place that made my lunch...

A "very special" gift you'd give to families that had someone die recently. (So says my nurse, Ginger)

When I thought we were finally done for the morning, she decided to take me to Chihkan Tower, a historic site in Tainan. It was actually very cool but I was so hot and tired that I couldn’t appreciate it nearly as much as I could have. I guess the place was a Dutch Fort way back in the day and is one of Tainan’s most famous historic sites.

All about the place...but its in Chinese

These lion guys are EVERYWHERE! In front of all the temples.

In the afternoon, we planned to go with Dr. Lee. After just our first visit we were already running really late and I knew we wouldn’t be home by 4:30 or 5 as planned. But, to top it all off, Dr. Lee wanted to take me to see the beach. It was blistering hot that day and the beach was definitely not what I wanted to do that day. But we still went. I took a few pictures and said I was ready.

Ginger, my nurse, is to cute but she HATES the sun! She carries around her umbrella everywhere we go. She doesn't want to get dark...I convinced her to take a non-umbrella picture with me

After our last two visits, we went to eat…meaning we didn’t get home till after six. Needless to say, I DEFINITELY was not in a very good mood that night. I was so tired and I just wanted to sleep. When I got back to the dorm room, all my roommates were asleep so I crawled in my bed and fell asleep for a while too.

Tuesday turned out to be a lot better. We had a lot fewer patients and we even got home a little early! I got home at 4:00 that day instead of 6! Plus the nurses got us some really yummy fruit. I’m not sure what it is in English though…kind of like an apricot…but not really.

And, that night, our community nurses took us to KTV (karaoke) which was SUPER fun! The KTV place has individual rooms for each party so we have our own screen and controllers to pick our songs! Plus, there is an all-you-can-eat buffet for the entire 3 hours we were there! We sang all types of old school songs like N’sync, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, etc.

Jeni, Jocelyn, and Rachel

Sarah, Alyssa, and Amber

Judy

I-Chun

I-Chun and Chin Pan

All asians can squat. Americans are awful at it.

Wednesday, our last day of clinical, we did a lot of stuff with all 4 of us students. We started the day doing visits but then we went to lunch all together with our nurses and had fried rice. The soup they got us had little fishys in it so we did not want to eat it. Oh, and one of the sweet families we visited game me some really pretty, wonderful smelling flowers!

We went to some pretty wealthy houses that day too.

Ginger took us to a HUMUGOUS temple that afternoon also. I’m pretty sure it was a Taoist temple

When we finally got back to the office that afternoon, the nurses had cake for us to eat. We also took a lot of pictures with the nurses since we weren’t going to be coming back anymore.