As always, I start with what I ate for breakfast. This morning was egg-drop noodle soup, doughnuts (Thai version of course, well actually they are Chinese) and rice with chicken and stir-fried greens. As last week finished our public hospital rotation, this week is our community rotation. Today we started off by going to Donkeaw Community Health Center. This place was a non-profit organization that helped the community population of mainly elderly, poverty-stricken, or bed ridden people. The facility is well known for their home visits that help the people by offering Thai massages, herbal remedies or range of motion activities. As we toured the center, we were able to see herbal remedies and the many rooms that offered the massages. One neat thing that we also saw was how to make the herbal heating ... read more

This morning, we were surprised with fried frog for breakfast alongside fried chicken and sticky rice. Of course, I picked the piece of frog with the head and arm on it. As I could definitely make out what part of the frog I had on my plate, I couldn’t dare to eat it. Instead I tried a piece of Katie’s frog, the leg. Ya know, I really couldn’t tell you what it tasted like as I chewed it and swallowed it rather quickly because the thought of eating frog just grossed me out! After breakfast, we went on a road trip to an apparently well-known market in Chiang Mai. This market was really quite the sight. There was raw meat displayed on the tables all over the place. There was also noodles of all sorts as ... read more

This morning’s breakfast was a light one. Thank goodness because my stomach needed a break from the frequent trips to the bathroom lately. We ate rice and pork soup with doughnuts and a little mini hotdog bite. After the morning ceremony, we were off to the hospital once again. The day started off very slow on the unit as the nurses didn’t have anything for us to do. After trying to budge our way in there I eventually was able to feed a few patients through their NG tube and help with a bed bath. One really interesting thing that I saw was an EKG done on a patient. This machine had nearly the same concepts as the 12-lead EKG machine found in America. However, in addition to the leads, there were 4 cuffs that ... read more

This morning’s breakfast was chicken and rice soup with papaya and a fried pastry that tasted just like a doughnut! The glaze to the doughnut was sweetened condensed milk. After breakfast, we headed over to our first morning ceremony. I thought this ceremony was interesting as it was formally done where the majority of it was in Thai and the students would say many phrases and turn in multiple directions. As I wasn’t sure what was going on, I kept marching to the beat of their drum during the ceremony. I noticed that they honored Buddha and after that they had a time of silence for Christianity. I thought that was a nice gesture especially in a predominately Buddhist culture. After the ceremony, the Thai students had a presentation of each of our names and their ... read more

I woke up at the crack of dawn with minimal sleep and headed downstairs for some breakfast. As it seemed the food wasn’t quite ready, my apartment headed into the gym. I of course, the only one out of all of us wore flip-flops while they all had on their running sneakers. Turns out- that didn’t matter too much as only 2 of the 8 machines worked. I decided to pedal on a broken stationary bike. We then headed to breakfast and took off our shoes. This was the first time we had to take off our shoes outside our apartment, and I felt a little uncomfortable for sure. I constantly was aware of what I was stepping on. Breakfast was beef on skewers and purple sticky rice, both wrapped in banana leafs. This meal was ... read more