ER float

I created a new position at the hospital last week.... ER Float.... It´s a great way to get out of not spending tuesday and thursday afternoons in prenatal clinic. Its turned into a joke actually. Yesterday both Matt and I were on "ER float" just hangin out in the er with no patients. acutally there were 5 doctors in the er just hanging out. I loved ER float so much that this afternoon after a nice lunch at a seafood restaurant, we all did the float and went swimming in the lake. It was just what i needed. tomm matt and I are going to rent a canoe for 3 hour and go fishing on the lake. hopefully we´ll have some luck and bring home some food so miguel can cook it up. he´s an awesome cook. Last night we had a party at our house. There were at least 15 people there. it was a going away party for a coworker and the food was just amazing. we had tiliapia fish, pasta, quesadillas, macademia nut pies and of course plenty of gallo beers and coronas and rum. fun stuff

the plan tonight is to order some pizza from the only pizza place in town.

The Mount Everest of Central America

On Friday, Matt and I made the journey down to Xela to attempt to topple the summit of the higest mountain in all of central america and is also considered the Mount Everest of Central america by some people, Volcano Tajamulco.

We arrived in Xela Friday night after taking 1 boat and 2 different chicken buses. Quetzaltanengo is such an amazing city, and I got a really good vibe from this place. After living in santiago for little over than 2 months now, Xela does really seem to have it´s shit together compared to this place. It just amazes me how guatemala is different from city to city. The people are different, the mentalility is different, and it´s as if youre visiting a totally new different country. After arriving at Quetzaltrekkers to check in, we headed out to the parque central for some grub. The first restaurant we saw was mcdonald´s, and alas the temptation was way too much to resist. Chomping on fries and a quarter pounder with cheese, I could feel my stomach smiling in delight as I broke my "no eating animals with four legs esp cows" rule. It just felt way too good. I may have even broken the record for fastest quarter pounder eater.

Saturday morning, we woke up wayyyyy early around 4:30 am to head out to our trekking site. There were about 15 or so of us that had signed up for this overnight mountain climbing adventure. Quetzaltrekkers is an interesting adventure hiking tour agency in that the guides are volunteers and in fact most of the proceeds gained from the hike go to a school for small children and a local hospital. What a great cause. So strapped with a huge ass backpack on my back with camping gear, the "spice kit" and various other stuff, we hopped on a pickup truck to the bus stop and took 2 sets of diff buses past san marcos to Volcano tajamulco.

We started the ascent around 1000. Needless to say, it was a pretty steep ascent and with the all the gear on our backs, it was pretty challenging. We made it just 200 meters just shy of the basecamp around 4 o clock and set up camp. This is where things got interesting as shortly after 6, it started to rain pretty hard. I was sharing at a tent with 4 others and things were pretty tight as it was, until around 8ish one of our tour guides informed us that the tent beside us had a leak and 3 others had to be squeezed in our tent. That made 8 people in our tent. I swear, what an uncomfortable night. To my right was a german girl, and to my left was an american girl from michigan. It kind of felt like a rapefest in there. Every hour or so, I feel a leg on my face, a kick to the groin, a butt on my hand... I didn´t sleep an ounce. I felt bad for matt, because he had an israeli dude who kept bumping into him. About every hour or so, someone would ask. What time is it. We all were hoping it was 4:30 am so we could get out of our fucking tents and just climb to the top. Finally morning arrived and we made it to the summit of Tajamulco and saw the sunrise emerging. In the western direction, we could see the lights of mexico out in the distant. In the East, we were treated to views of a chain of volcanoes as far as Antigua. To the south, we could barely see El Salvador. It was just an amazing view. I´ll never forget it.

After some campsite coffee we made the decent back and made it to Xela around 4 that evening. Matt and I hung out at a bar with the tour guides and some friends we made that were from New Zealand also on the hike. Supposedly it was the oldest bar in guatemala, however I doubt thats true. I also saw my first hot local guatemalan girl at the bar last night. She was too cute...

Well I´m finally back in Santiago now. I have 2 more weeks left. The plan is to see as much of guatemala as I can in the next 2 weeks. I might head off to coban and do some cave exploring next week. My parents are coming down to visit on October 5th and I think i´ll take them to tikal to see some mayan ruins. After that, the plan for me is to go to honduras to take diving classes for a week to be a certified scuba diver and from then on i´ll slowly inch my way down south into south america and finally into ecuador.

Mazatanego

My eyes are bleeding. Well no, not really. Yesterday Rudy, one of the guatemalan residents who works with me, invited me to take call with him at a public hospital located about 2 hours away in mazantango. Wow what an experience that was. Being a national hospital, they see tons of patients and I basically felt I was shuttling patients in and out of the emergency room in a jippy. I ended up seeing about 37 patients in a span of couple hours, and got tons of experience in enhancing my wound suturing skills. This hospital is just amazing and it was interesting to see how health care is delivered there in comparison to way we were taught. Often times, I felt that there was such a divide between the doctor and the patient, and just the mere fact that I took the time to listen seemed like a suprise to some of the patients. I´m not trying to bash the way guatemalan doctors by any means. To a certain extent, it´s all about the training and if i were in a guatemalan resident´s shoes being stuck with no guidance to take call in the adult ER and fend for myself, maybe I would be the same way. I definatley learned tons last night, and among the many things I saw I thought it was way cool that I saw ppl with various chronic disease presenting their condition for the very first time to any sort of primary care physician.

The chicken bus to mazantango sucked by the way... the music was even more undelightful.. but i digress.. i mean it could be worse. i could be sitting in a bus with 20 pregnant ladies. Now that would be my hell!

So what´s happening this weekend. Matt and I are headed off to quetezaltanago (XELA) to hike volcano tajamulco which is supposed to be the highest point in all of central america. I´t´s going to be a 2 day/1 night ordeal( camping etc= and we"re utilizing the services of a reputable backpacking tour company... so i´m definately stoked. Other than that, I have 2 more months left in the wonderful country of guatemala. What´s next? You´ll just have to wait and see. I think my next venture might incoroporate diving for a period of time.

rest?

Well, I finally found max a new home. The other two people weren´t too fond of the idea of having a dog around the house, so I was able to find an awesome animal rescue organization in Panachel. So hopefully, Max will be in good hands. Well, today will be a pretty laid back day. I need to catch up on my rest and relaxation. I´ve been doing way too much for the last couple of weeks or so and havne´t really just chilled out for the weekend. The plan for today will be to go swimming in the lake. I also need to book a hotel room for my parents who are coming for a visit October 5th. I think they`´ll love this place. Today is independce day here in guatemala, another excuse to celebrate

yawn

I really need to finish this damn personal statement. Granted I had so much freakin time to work on it. Life is good in Lake Atitlan. I think I'm having way too much fun indeed. I'm also learning tons in the hospital and we've seen a lot of really cool things. I was on call last night, which means I get the day off to relax and enjoy. Maybe I should work on my essay perhaps. Or maybe I could spend some time playing with our newly adopted puppy Mashimon aka max for short. We found him on the streets of Panachel and just taking one look at him was too hard to resist for us to carry him back on the boat to Santiago. He's grown a lot in just one week. Initially he was crying like a little baby, granted that he probably is a little baby... perhaps 4 weeks old maybe. The other 2 ladies who live on the property aren't too fond of Max so I decided to let him hang out in my cabin which is ok except he's in a habit of waking up at 4 am every darn day. He's getting much better though, and who knows I may end up taking Max with me through my backpacking adventures and then to the streets of south carolina. Mongo the other dog is like 15 years old and is kinda skeptical of him but we'll see what happens.

Well, today I am spending the day at the hotel posada probably the best hotel in this city. They have the most amazing food and all their coffee is freshly picked from their coffee plantation. awesome! My stomach feels great after i ate that veggie burger.. in fact so damn good. it even tasted like a real animal.. mmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Oh well, I can't thing of any more to write. My leg is kind of itching as I got pretty badly sunburned like 2 weeks ago and everything is peeling off. Damnit..

Vomit, and Cross dressing.

The ambulance to solola in panachel was a pretty fucked up ride. I peaced out at 5 pm thinking I had successfully made it though one entire day without having to look at a gooy vagina and deliver a baby but I was wrong. Later that evening, I received a phone call asking if I could take a 3 hour ride with the bombaros aka ambulance as there was a lady who was having contractions with decelerations on the fetal heart monitor strip. Just haven eaten one tiny piece of banana bread, I took a deep breath in and borrowed 2 pills of meclizine to prevent motion sickness as I heard the roads between santiago and solola were pretty curvy and nasty.

Fastforward 2 hours. I'm sitting in the ambulance telling the lady to relax, holding her hand, monitoring her contractions and vitals hoping she would make it to solola for the C-section... we don't do C sections at our hospital b/c we don't have a obgyn person...All of a sudden I realized I had to vomit and that too big time. And poof, it all came out in my vomit bag. The roads were nasty and theres nothing more worse than feeling nauseus like crazy and having to tend to a patient. Long story short we made it to solola withough having to deliver the baby but i puked some more on the way back......


In more delightful news. Today we decided to head out to Santa Cruz for the weekend. Theres a nice barbeque and a cross dressing party. So i get to dress up like a female today. How exciting. This morning was pretty darn fun as we headed off to the Casa mundo for some swimming in the crystal clear blue lake and a nice lunch of quesadillas and guac. The cabin we are staying at is pretty cool and cozy however there are no walls. Tomm is election day here in gautemala. technically there is a restriction of drinking alcohol nationwide as ppl tend to get rowdy in politics. Lucikly the hotel we are staying at bribed some police peeps and the plan is to drink like crazy and eat some good food

Million dollar mansion, a picnic, and a dog named Mongo

A nice afternoon on the lake, sunbathing on the deck of a million dollar mansion, swimming in the aqua blue water of lake atitlan and a great outdoor cooked lunch of tilapia, tortillas, rice with picante salsa and freshly squeezed lemonade picked from the trees on property. Top this off with a slice of mango pie. Priceless.

On another note, we now have a house cat. well sort off. I think it may belong to someone else, but every night it wanders off into the milpas (the name where our property is located and where my cabin is). It must be like like a couple months old and it's the cutest thing.. granted I spoil it quite a bit by feeding it corn bread, cinnamon rolls etc.Hopefully it will get along with Mongo, the guard dog of our house who literally looks like a white polar bear.'t He's like the cutest bear.. and I can"t quite understand how possibly he could be a guard dog. Every time I go back home, he's laying with laziness in his eyes. He's so loveable and last night I woke up to find him sleeping outside of my cabin door. We tried to feed him peanut butter out of humor last night just thinking that we could get some comic releif seeing him trying to swallow sticky peanuty delights on a tortilla... but the didn't take the bait. What else... Oh well.. The plan today is to work on residency application stuff aka my personal statement. I have to find some way to incoroporate my adventures in guatemala to make it sound interesting and a life changing experience.