Tuesday Jan. 16

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Tuesday

We went out into the community again today. We made three home visits to different community members that are connected to the community hospital and get care once a week. The first visit was a 63 year-old woman who was paralyzed from the waist down from a car accident 17 years earlier. She had a caregiver for the past 17 years who cared for her 24/7. The community came up with a workout pulley for her to pull up on her legs so she could exercise by herself, which I thought was super interesting. That is one thing that I really noticed about this area—everything is extremely community oriented. She even said that her neighbors come lift her every morning and night for 10 baht. The second home we visited was a 35 year-old man who was in a motorcycle accident, which is actually the most common trauma. The man wasn’t wearing a helmet, which added to his injuries. He suffered from a traumatic brain injury and is recovering from that at home. His mother is his primary caregiver and his daughter also lives with him. She looked about 12 years old and did his hygiene care. Thailand isn’t much for feelings, but she did share about how she cries, which is definitely warranted. The third visit really hit me hard. It was an 82 year-old man who was complaining of abdominal pain and could not walk anymore. He did not know what was wrong, but his family does. It turns out he has bladder cancer, but his family does not want to tell him. We cried with him as he shared with us why he didn’t know this was happening to him. He was obviously searching for answers that his family was unwilling to give him. Cancer is the worst, especially when you are battling it alone. After the home visits, we went out to lunch to get some noodles and headed back to the college. We had class that afternoon on different personality types (I’m an ENFJ). There are a lot of different personality types on this trip, which can be difficult but we’ve worked well together so far. We talked about the differences between thinkers and feelers (there are many) and perceivers and judgers. I honestly think I fall more in the middle of judgers and perceivers because I like to plan things out but I think I can be spontaneous too. We also did some teambuilding activities where we had to build a tower with spaghetti, string, tape, and marshmallow. Pretty hard, but my team won so there’s that. For dinner, we did something called pork pan with our buddies. A pan was filled with broth and we added chicken, pork, morning glory, mushrooms, and other veggies to the broth to cook over the fire. It was quite an experience. You had to use chopsticks and I suck at using them so I had a solid 3 pieces of meat. Our buddies told us that pork pan is used for special occasions and holidays so it was cool that we got to experience it. After we ate dinner, we taught them how to make S’mores. They LOVED them, but who doesn’t. After stuffing our faces, we ended the night with a rowdy game of Uno. E Zells lost so we poured 3 bottles of water on her head. The buddies had a blast and I did too. It was hilarious to watch them get nervous and then dance when they poured the water on the loser’s head (Zells). It was a pretty exhausting day with many ups and downs, so off to bed.

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