Baseballl :)

Today at work was all play…and a little bit of work. I love being out in the community with patients. The Taiwanese are such a wonderful people. They’re definitely the best part about this entire trip. Most of my patients were out in the countryside. The countryside is beautiful! There are plants everywhere and it’s very tropical. There’s fruit growing everywhere and farms scattered all over growing rice, papaya, coconut, and all kinds of fruit that I’ve never seen before. The people in the countryside are also much more traditional. Their dress, way of life, beliefs, and practices are very different from those in the city. Everything that we learned about the asian culture evidenced itself today. The elderly will not look you in the eye. They feel that it is a sign of disrespect. They speak Taiwanese (the younger generation speaks Mandarin). The Taiwanese language is beautiful. It sounds very different from Mandarin. They are big on hiding their pain to save face. We scraped a decubitus ulcer on one man and he didn’t even wince. They also practice traditional Chinese medicine more commonly. I visited one patient that had terrible ulcers on his legs but he was treating them with TCM so he refused to let us do anything about them. His shaman told him it was a bad omen from going to the hospital last time he was sick and now he needs to avoid Western medicine at all costs. It’s very sad because most likely he will have to have his legs amputated if he doesn’t do anything about them.

One of the patients I visited was a younger man with a spinal chord injury d/t a moped accident. He looooved having Sophia and I at his house. He refused to let us work and made us Karaoke instead! (Karaoke is a big thing in Taiwan and it’s a big deal if you have a Karaoke machine at your house). So as my nurse as doctor did all the work Sophia and I karaoked for about an hour! Ha ha It was so fun. Then afterwards they took us to lunch at a delicious restaurant. There we ordered some food we really liked but my nurse looooves Fish Skin Soup so she ordered some and really wanted me to try it. I was so afraid because it’s full of strips of fish skin with meat on it. But I couldn’t refuse so I tried it……and I surprisingly loved it! When she saw my reaction she gave me entire thing and didn’t eat any of it ha ha Then she asked me if I liked Guava and I told her I did so we went outside and she bought me a full bag of guavas! (Like I keep mentioning they are a very giving people). Then Sho wei took us to the biggest temple in Tainan. It was HUGE! And very beautiful. It was interesting because Sho Wei wouldn’t go into the temple with us because she is on her period. The culture believes that when you are menstruating that you are unclean. She then shared some of their beliefs about pregnancy. They believe in having a balance between Yin and Yang (hot and cold). So after you give birth you can only drink and eat hot things. You drink hot water and you cannot eat ice cream or anything with ice in it because giving birth causes you to lose heat. You cannot do this for an entire month and you can’t wash your hair! Also during a full moon you have to use an umbrella outside at night to avoid getting the moon light on you? I tried to ask my nurse why but she didn’t understand lol

The rest of the patients for the day were pretty typical. Except for one little old lady was adorable. Here’s a picture

I forgot to tell you about the squatters. Here in Taiwan all of the public toilets are squatters (so it’s not an actual toilet, it’s kind of like a hole in the floor that you have to squat down to. It’s definitely an interesting experience. They also don’t provide toilet paper. You have to carry it with you everywhere. And the toilet paper here is like little tissues you pull out of a package. It’s not a roll. Aaaand you don’t flush toilet paper. They have a little basket next to the squatters that you put it in when you’re done. It’s really gross. Also the Taiwanese people loooove pale skin because their skin is so dark. So the whiter you are the more attractive you are. People will carry umbrellas all over outside to hide them from the sun. It’s also extremely hot here (in the nineties) and VERY humid but all of the people wear long sleeves and pants to keep their skin white!

After clinical we went to a baseball game!!! It was definitely one of the funnest things we’ve done so far. It’s sooooooooooooo different from American baseball. The fans beat these noise maker things the ENTIRE game no joke. There are never any pauses. Also the announcer yells out cheers through the entire game. It was so funny. The picture is of us on the jumbotron (we were on it pretty much the entire night! ha ha) The team we went to see was the winner of the Taiwan series (like the world series in America)…..but there are only four teams in Taiwan ha ha They were actually terrible compared to major league teams in the U.S. They are probably equivalent to small college teams in Utah. But it was fun anyways and I had a blast! ….oh and p.s. I’m beginning to think I’ll come back to the U.S. using broken English. My nurse hardly speaks any English so I use 2-3 word phrases throughout the entire day. I came back to our apt today using the same sentences to the other girls without even noticing! I’ve also noticed it in my typing! Ha ha