A busy lil week!

Well well well! Where to start? Last I'd written we'd just done vitals and all that. Well, last week we started to go in depth with different respiratory diseases and viruses, and as well we had a dentist come go over dentistry with us, which was very interesting. We went on our first outreach on Friday in a little town about an hour away from where we're staying. I'm not sure what it was called, but it was right at the base of the mountain that splits Mindoro (the island I'm on) in to two halfs, called Oriental Mindoro and Occipital Mindoro. I'm on the Oriental side. Anyways, there are no roads that go up this mountain, and I was told that people have died in the colder season trying to climb it, although to me it doesn't seem too much higher that Saddleback. Actually, come to think of it, it seems quite a lot smaller. Also, apparently some sort of small army plane (German? American?) crashed into it many years ago, and the remains have never been recovered because the mountain isn't mapped at all.
BUT... there are many people who live on and around the mountain. They are native people who, when the Spanish came, retreated up the mountain so that they wouldn't be colonnised. They did the same thing again when the Americans came. This people group is called the Mangyans (pronounced Mung-yung), and they consist of many tribes. They may or may not be on other islands, I'm not quite sure. Anyways, these people used to believe that if they cleaned themselves they'd be more suceptible to some sort of demon thing, so they never bathed or washed anything. I guess now most tribes don't think that, as missionaries have gone into the tribes to live amongst them and teach them the benefits of a little soap and water every now and then. Many of them still don't ever wash though, and they are somewhat of a jealous people, becasue apparently when a man goes to tend his rice field, both him and his wife aren't allowed to bathe for the time they are apart, for if they do it's considered a sort of flirting, as in getting all "prettied up" when your spouse is outta town. Still, it's common for them to not bathe with or without their spouse there, so you can tell them apart very easily from the "Tagolog" people (as is the term for regular Filipinos), because they often have a smell about them, and as well their clothes are very dirty from washing them in dirty water, if at all.
So that's a little bit on the Mangyans. I'm coming to find out more and more about them as my time here carries on because a lot of people in MercyLink and those that help on our Outreaches have a big heart for them, since they live in poverty and aren't very educated.



Anyways, at our outreach on Friday, we got to meet and help diagnose some Mungyan people, as well as people from the little village we set up in. There were a lot of children there, as you can see in my picture. Most of my pictures are on my Flickr, you can find the link a few posts down. Flickr has been giving me some greif as of late and being really slow to upload my pictures, but I'm trying to get as many as I can on. You can also view some that I uploaded separately on my Myspace here: http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=509117&albumId=3163721 Although, I believe you need a Myspace account to access others' pictures.
So we went and set up our little makeshift clinic at an elementary school of a rainy friday. There were different stations in which the students rotated. There were 2 doctors tables, where we sat with them as they assesed patients, and we were able to go through each diagnosis with them and learn what they would prescribe from the little "Pharmacy" that we'd set up (you can see a picture of Angel maning it on my Flickr). We switched between those two stations, as well as the dental station. Denatl hygene isn't too big in the rural areas of the Philippines, so what the dental station mainly consisted of was pulling teeth. Which I enjoyed very much, haha! There was anesthetic that the dentist would inject, and then they'd just yank away until the thing would come out. Some of the teeth popped right out (especially if they were heavily decayed), but some took a good half hour of yankin and pulling and trying different tools. So, it was a very good learning experience. Hopefully, I'll be able to pull some myslef next time.
So we were at the clinic for about 6 hours and in that time were able to see around 120 people. Most people we were able to take care of there, such as the kids with Mumps, or people with repiratory viruses or chronic back pain, but some were reffered to the actual hospital for things such as strange bumps coming out of their necks.
Speaking of the Hospital, this week we've learned about neurology, meningitis, malaria, and measles, and tomorrow we're having a gynocologist come to teach us OB GYN stuff, AND THEN on thursday we get to go visit the local hospital and get shown around AND THEN, next week we get to actually work there! We'll have shifts from 6pm to midnight and get to (hopefully) assist in birth and delivery, as well as being able to watch surgeries and work in the Pediatric ward. CRAZY! I'm really excited for it. So we'll have class til 4 and then go work from 6-12, and then have class the next morning again at 8! Good thing next weekend is our "Mid-Course Break", for which we have Friday thru Monday off. We're planning on going to a little resort area about an hour south of here called Puerto Gallera, so that should be fun.
This past saturday we had a fun day off. The four of us students (Myslef, Jen, Emily, and Michael) went to the beach for the day. It was very beautiful and very relaxing and I got very sunburnt! Haha, not too bad, but my shoulders are definitely still a bit pink. After that, we went into town and went to a pizza chain that's popular here called "Greenwich Pizza". And, let me tell you, after having spent a week in Greenwich Village this summer, this pizza is about the furthest thing from it! But it was nice to have a bit of cheese after not having any for 2 weeks, even if the pizza it was on kinda tasted microwaved. Oh well. I'll leave you with pictures from the beach, my little pizza, and one of the only source of real cheese I have yet to find here, and with that I'll be off! I hope you're all keeping well and enjoying the bit of Fall you get out there in California! I'm sure enjoying all the thunderstorms we get here.





Marleigh loves!