sarahmiller129

This experience has been incredible. I could write pages and pages about this trip, but I covered just about everything in the last 22 blog posts. I have learned to much and absolutely fell in love with the people and culture in Thailand. I learned... 1. The culture of Thailand absolutely revolves around hospitality. The people express it everywhere you go, and people are so kind everywhere you look. 2. The public health care system is funded by the government, which means that health care providers have limited resources, but they really do what they can despite these limits. 3. No matter how different or uncomfortable something is, it is so much more important to respect someone else's culture rather than sticking to what you know. I also learned that rice can really be eaten for ... read more

I slept in so late this morning! I woke up at 9:30am. We got ready and then ate brunch and then waited around for a little while before the van came to take us to the lake again!! This was such a good way to spend the day. Of course I would have loved to go to the beach, but this was the next best option. We laid around in the sun all afternoon and it was great. And of course, we got drinks. I got an amazing iced caramel macchiato and a little later I got a mango smoothie. It just felt like summer in January as we sat around outside talking to each other in the sun with an iced beverage in hand. Right before we left to come to the lake this morning, ... read more

At the beginning of our trip when we visited the Donkaew Community Center, we scheduled massages. Today was the day. We all got hour long massages at the same time, and it was definitely a little painful at times. Thai massage is not at all like a typical Swedish massage given in America. "It hurts so good" is definitely the motto for this style of massage. I'm not quite sure how beneficial it was...I actually felt like I needed a massage after I got a massage! We came back and I sat outside and worked on our powerpoint for our presentation the next day and then we had lunch. In the afternoon, we went to the Bangkok Chang Mai Hospital which is a private hospital. The private hospitals are so different than the public hospitals in ... read more

Waking up without an alarm today was amazing. This morning was very laid back. I had some time to sit outside and it was so beautiful. In the mornings here it's usually like 70-75 degrees, sunny and clear skies. It gets hot really quickly though. We had a cooking class this morning and we cooked so many different Thai dishes. I was in charge of making green curry chicken. We also made red curry chicken, Pad Thai, papaya salad, and tab tim grobs which is a Thai dessert made from water chestnuts in coconut milk. The Pad Thai was definitely my favorite. We sat down with all of our buddies and ate lunch and played some games at the table. After lunch, we left for the rest of the day. Some of our buddies came with ... read more

No. Morning. Ceremony. I wasn't mad about the extra 45 minutes of sleep. We drove over to the hospital for day 4 and got there around 9. I was more encouraged today because we had a shorter day ahead of us than the rest of the week. I got to my unit and shortly after we got there, I got to go observe in the NICU! I loved it so much. I spent a lot of my morning there and it was so great. I got to hold some babies, assess some babies and learn about some babies. It actually made me think I could work in a NICU for a while as a nurse. After the NICU, we walked over to one of the cardiac units that had a heart catheterization lab connected to it. ... read more