First day of clinical in the ICU at Chi Mei Medical Center

Sunday was a pretty quiet day. We went to church as usual and didn't understand a word of it ... but loved it anyways. I love the members here. Afterwards everyone wanted to go to McDonald's so we did and this older kid (about my age) from the ward named Daniel decided to come with us. It was really funny because he really can't speak English .... but he tagged along anyways. He was just excited to be with American members ha ha. So he just sat in silence not understanding anything but grinned the entire time. It was adorable. And just for the record .... McDonald's was probably the least satisfying thing I've had since I've been here lol.

That night we were invited to attend a "Hot Pot" and Wii party at one of the ICU physician's house. We thought it was just going to be us and his family ... .. but there were 38 people total there NOT including us ! Ha ha It was crazy.

The picture above is of Dr. Yu and his wife and family, the ICUrespiratory therapist is up at the top. It's very impressive how close doctors and nurses are. They all become friends and hang out all the time. This NEVER happens in the US Whenever you asked this little girl to take a picture, she'd automatically pose like this. Adorable!

The night was an absolute blast. Everyone all brought their kids and brought TONS of food and all kinds of crazy stuff. We all played Wii with the children. It was a perfect Sunday activity. Then afterwards (after being completely stuffed with food) one of the other ICU doctors decided to take us all out for Cua Bing !!! We went to this delicious place that LOADS it with Mango and the sweetened condensed milk. It was delicious. Then they had us try tomoatoes with ginger sauce and I guess Tainan is the only place in the world that has it. They don 't even have it anywhere else in Taiwan. I loved it. This picture is me with their 8 year old daughter.
This Doctor (Dr. Chan) and his family were very interesting. They are actually Malaysian and they came here to practice medicine in Taiwan. They have four children (which is VERY rare here in asia) because they said that they love bringing children into the world because they are so happy. The entire family speaks perfect English even the children. They speak just as good as any American children. They are very cultured. They know more about the world than I do. They all play piano and they ' re very good. They 're Christian and very service oriented. Dr. Chen's wife has an MBA in law but she stays at home with her children because she feels that it's more important that going out into the world. They're a convert family waiting to happen .. ... ha ha They were adorable when they took us out though. They completely catered to us and got us whatever we wanted. It was so sweet of them. This picture is of their son! He was so cute! Monday (today) was my first day in the ICU for clinical! Sophia and I were assigned to the Surgical ICU and our preceptor is Yen. She greeted us with individual sets of really nice chopsticks. They're beautiful! It was so nice of her. We then followed her around the first half of the morning and learned about the patients and the unit. One patient is 21 years old and he's there because he got in a motorcycle accident. He's considered very handsome in Taiwan so all of the nurses teased him about us! Every time we'd walk over he'd just blush and start shaking because he was so nervous. It was adorable.

For lunch one of the doctor's had a huge buffet catered for us! There was TONS of food and it was delicious. We talked with him for a while and he absolutely loved us! He even invited us over to his house on Wednesday for a hot pot party. After lunch Sophia and I just hung out with Jim in his office looking at pictures .... instead of working ha ha ha It was great. I thought you might appreciate this (picture of Jim when he was in college ... he kinda looked like you dad!) ha ha.

In the afternoonwe got to learn about traditional Chinese therapy. We went with one of the Chinese medicine interns and he tried different therapies on us and taught us all about it! He first did "Ba Guan" which is "cupping" in English. For this you put a suction cup on your skin to balance out the chi in your body! I didn't have it done because I've had it done at Julie Brown's house ... so i let everyone else try. Look closely at how the skin is blobbed up!He then did acupuncture! The purpose of acupuncture is to open up the skin (through little holes from the needles) to release the chi flowing throughout your body so that it can balance out. I had it done on my neck / shoulder muscles. I honestly didn't even feel the needles going in (they're about 1.5 inches) at all. But then he wiggled it around until I did feel something and then left It there. It was such a weird feeling. It was just a slight dull ache while they were in. I didn't feel them when they were pulled out either but it really did feel good overall. I felt like the tension was released from my shoulders. It may have been psychological, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Here is a video of my first needle. It's not very exciting....but it kind of shows how long the needle was!

This is Sophia and I with the intern. He was adorable!

Tonight we went bowling with some of the physicians and the nurses. They bought us TONS of food again and tons of people showed up. Asians love parties. It was a blast. I hate bowling .... But Asians make everything fun .. .. Ha ha And i won! (for those of you who have beaten me time after time ... i AM capable of winning). Afterwards we had to catch a bus back to our apartment but as we were crossing the street we saw the bus we were supposed to take stopped at the light.... But the boarding stop was two blocks away! We booked it! We ran so fast to get there before the bus did. It was hilarious. There were 10 Americans and about 5 asians all in one group booking it for a couple of blocks! It probably looked hilarious !.....

This is the Dietician (left) and Dr. Can't Remember his Name (Right)This is the crew that went bowling!