Ugh

So, my post for Wednesday got accidently deleted :(

To sum: we had our first "field" day. It was kind of boring. We met the Secretary of Health, which was interesting, but the long days are making it hard to focus. We have the most amazing translator named Cress, who is from Wales, and likes steampunk now that I've introduced her to it! I spent most of my evening at the beach, drinking a bit of wine and playing in the ocean after dark.

Today was much more interesting. The problem with yesterday was that we were just SITTING for so long...I was going stir-crazy. Today we were walking all over the place! We spent all of the morning at a blood bank and donation center in Bahia. The director was very interested in us, and wanted to know what we were studying. Colling decided to donate blood, and we all got `Give Blood´t-shirts. We walked through the entire process of donating blood in Brazil, from where the volunteers come in to where it´s processed and shipped out to various hospitals.

We had lunch at this amazing restaurant. We´ve been typically eating at `comida a kilo´style restaurants, which means food by the pound. This one was the same, but they had a variety of weird meats and half off prices if you paid in cash. I had some very good chicken, and tried beef tongue-the taste was fine, but the texture was very disturbing.

After lunch, we headed over to one of the hospitals. They talked about bed distribution, and how they organize emergency cases. Their set up has 3 types of ambulances: a basic ambulance for non life threatening cases (someone falls, etc), a more advanced ambulance for true emergency cases, and a 'mobile health unit', which is essentially an emergency room on wheels. The last one is used for cases where getting back to the hospital in a timely manner may be an issue, such as when someone get injured while rappelling and they have to cut them down first before they can transport them. We got to watch the process of someone calling in a 192 call. The operator gets as much basic info as possible before handing the call to the standby doctor, who walks them through as much as he/she can. Meanwhile, the location is sent to the radio team, who sends a message to the nearest ambulance. All of this is done via computers.

We also got to watch some emergency life support training, but I had to step out and take a breather....they were pretending like it was a drowning victim, and it was just a little too much for me. My triggers have gotten a bit worse on the trip, but everyone is very nice, and we all morbidly joke that if we want to get out of class early I can have a breakdown for the sake of the team.

Once we got back, it was back to the beach. I can't fully express just how much I love the ocean at night here. I mean, it's quite lovely during the day too, but at night there's nobody on the beach and it's even calmer than usual, and it's just a great way to relax.

I hung out with Johannus and Spike again....we always seem to get into fun political arguments whenever we're out in the courtyard.

We're going on a Salvador pub crawl tomorrow night. I'm looking forward to it. For $50 (real, not dollars), you get 5 drinks, a pizza, and a cab ride to 4 very different parts of the city.

I keep meaning to talk about some of the customs of the city, but it never seems to happen. Another post, I promise!

Love,

Brit