adjustments

I think I hadn't realized  how much I had grown accustomed to things in India in my short time there.  I found myself the first few days (and still now) constantly wanting to comment on how things here are different than there.  Life here is just less crazy in many ways, partly because there are fewer people - traffic is less hectic and life-risking, people are not crowding walkways and towns, etc.  It's interesting...

I find the juxtaposition of two foreign countries coming up in other ways, too.  I was trying to ask a patient whether she had a headache after a LP (lumbar puncture - spinal tap in common parlance) and ended up combining my newly acquired Tonga word for pain with the Tamil word for head instead of my recently heard Tonga word for head, resulting in a confused patient who then asked me in English what I wanted to know.  Oops. 

Those adjustments aside, life here has been good so far.  The schedule is approximately 7:30 a.m.-5 or 6 p.m. daily with ward rounds in the mornings Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday and OT (operating theatre - operating room in the States) in the morning on Tuesday and Friday.  We see patients in the outpatient department (OPD) in the afternoon every day.  Lunch break is some time between 1 p.m.-3 p.m.  Mike and I are sharing call with another fourth-year med student, Adrienne, from the States on a q4 basis, which means we go in for evening rounds (8 p.m.-10 p.m. or so) and are available for any OR emergency cases at night every four nights.  Our two other fellow ex-pat students, Sarah and Beth, left today for the States.  So the remaining three of us are settling in for the next few weeks.