Goodness me!

I have a few things to address in this post.

First off, I changed the settings on my blog so that anyone may comment and you don't have to have an account to do so, so say hi! Hopefully this will also help with accessing it, because apparently I have a few family members who weren't able to read it. I'm not sure what that's about, but hopefully all is now well in that department.

Secondly, I want to update everyone on what I've been doing! This past friday our group learned how to take vital signs, ie. Pulse, Breathing Rate, and Blood pressure. At the end of our lesson we went out on the street and practiced with actual people from around where we're staying. It was pretty weird at first, since in America you'd need to fill out 10 different waivers before you could even touch a person, but we just walked along the road and when we came to little shops or houses we just went in and asked if anyone wanted us to take their blood pressure! Many people were very thankful, so that was nice and made it a lot less weird, haha.
Here are some pictures of our little outing. The first is of myself and a girl named Mira who let me try my skills out on her arm. I also took the blood pressure of her mother and her neighbor.

This next one is again of me with an 85 year old woman who was just a little spitfire! She knew English very well and said she loved to play the piano and read daily. She was pretty fun, and I was very grateful to her for being the first "elderly" person to let me take their blood pressure.
The next two are of my team mates, Emily and Jennifer, taking the blood pressure of some other local Filipinos. We had some good fun, and I learned a lot, considering I'd never taken the blood pressure of anyone before, let alone people I'd never met whose language I don't speak. It was definitely a good "out of classroom" experience. haha.




























On Saturday, we helped clean all the paint off of the floor of the new base, where we're now staying. Then we moved in, and have since been living in a very nice, small house. It's pretty cozy, except there's no air conditioning, and at night we have to close the windows because of the mosquitoes and other bugs, so it can get pretty warm. But it's fun. It builds character, right, Erik? ; )

On Monday, we learned how to make some herbal skin medications. We used leaves from an Alcupolco tree, and in the other one we used branches from some tree that we scraped the bark off of and used the under bark for the ointment that we made. Both ointments are used for the skin to heal scabies, rashes, and other skin diseases, so we're going to take all that we made to our outreach on Friday for the native people to use.
Other than that, we've just been learning about more and more diseases and I'm more and more amazed and thankful for the health of my friends and family! So I hope that you all continue to be safe and well while I'm out here.

Lastly, I'd just like to thank everyone who made it possible for me to return home a Proud American!!! Woooo Hooo!!! Hahaha. Go Obama! I'm just bummed I can't be around people who are happy about it, but the day will soon come. Alright, I don't have much more time on this computer, so with that I'm off!

Marleigh Loves!!!