home sweet home

I'm coming home tomorrow!

bittersweet

My time in Guam is quickly coming to a close. It has been a wonderful time here and it seems like my schedule is so full once I'm almost to leave! I have dinner's here, meetings there, work here and there, and some serious snorkeling to do! There's so many other good snorkel spots that I haven't been to.

The docs here are so nice! I learned that one of my preceptors is the Grandpa of my Taco Bell Buddy from college! What a small world, eh?! I've leaned tips about casting, infections, abscesses, diabetes, scarlet fever, and much more to list. I've also learned about the red-footed booby, and traveling on a remote island!

A bittersweet parting it will be. Bitter to leave such a beautiful, tropical paradise, and yet so sweet to come home and have not only friends and family, but also my Greggy-pooh nearby.

Tonight I need to exchange pictures with the nursing students that are here from Andrews. We've had some fun times! I'll have to post some pics...

rota

has it truly been a week since I've blogged?
I went to the small island of Rota from thursday night to sunday night.
I wish I had time to blog at length about it because it was nice. But in short
Beautiful
Rustic
Natural
Quiet
Peaceful
Friendly
Slow-paced
Breathtaking

swearing

I had a patient tell me that he waited 4 days to get in to see us. He would rather wait and go the the SDA clinic because here the doctors do not swear at their nurses or at all. Granted... he probably should have gotten in to see someone sooner - anyone, he had a huge ulcer on his leg. But still, that's nice.

cherry red

Went snorkeling at Dog Leg Reef Sunday. Beautiful place! It had rained a ton so the original plan of hiking was kind of sloppy. :( After a scenic drive, I was in the water at Dog Leg. It was rainy and cloudy, so I was oblivious to possible sun exposure. The reef was amazing! So many different kinds of coral! And there was a large, unidentified, long, blue, pointy-nosed fish that had teeth, and swam right past me. Whoa. So, the amount of time snorkeling? I don't really know, but I think it was around 3 hrs. After we had dried off and were headed out, Eric realized that his calves were red. I thought to myself...awww... poor guy. But soon realized my calves were also burnt, and other things on my posterior. Oh my, I was getting more tender every minute.

So now I officially have a painful, heat-emitting burn. It makes me tired. It makes me crabby. On top of that I had the worst day at work today. I should have had a good day because I was able to see a lot of patients... but I was crabby, had a headache, was uncomfortable, hypoglycemic, and just plain cranky. Bah. I didn't get out of work until 8pm. That is 12 straight hours of clinic.

crazy drunks

Lemme start with last night. Eric (my new guam adventure buddy that I met on the flight over) and I started our adventures on Gun Beach and wrapped around the cliff to another beach where we started our search for a cave the someone had said was over there somewhere. Where? That's what we were supposed to find out. We found a path through the bush and had quite given up on finding a cave when we came to a building of unknown use. We went just a little further and found a public bathroom. Hmm... Then we discovered a whole resort-type situation with picnic tables, reclining chairs, beach chairs, hammocks, and locked-up surf boards. No one was there and it was all dark. Ahh.. nice for relaxation.

We moved on and found a fenced in area with no trespassing signs. The gate was locked. A little further, same fence, next gate was wide open! In we went and came upon a beautiful cave! It had those stalagmite or stalactite structures and had hanging drops from the formations. Wow. It was so pretty and pretty hot. By the time we had explored the whole thing the back of my shirt was completely soaked. There was water down below that was so clear that you had to look twice or three times just to see if it was really water, and the rock formations in this cave were just gorgeous! Totally worth the hike.







Today's adventures consisted of a lot of getting lost. No, just temporarily off the planned route. This morning I thought I was lost on the way to a new church in Agat, but I just kept going and ended up in the right spot. Great church there, with a great potluck! I was so full!

Sabbath afternoon came, Eric agreed to go come with me and find some horses, and turns out I'm super-glad that he could come with. One of the drawbacks to being a tourist here on Guam is the limited amount of street signs combined with the lack of good directions. So here we were going down this road that was getting smaller and smaller, looking shadier and shadier. There couldn't be a horse farm out here, could there? Then we came upon this sign at the dead end of the road:



at which point we had to turn around. There were some very intoxicated people located just up a little hill playing loud music and generally making a ruckus. As we started driving back down the road one of the gentlemen cut us off by throwing a bike in the road demanding us to get out and talk to him. Whoa. He said we were just flying down the road (if you could only see this road you would know that could not be true) and we just couldn't do that. Some other guys came down to get the bike out of the road and eventually, after an apology for our outrageously fast speed, we were on our way. Whew!

We found horses, and I was able to get my fix of horse smell, horse petting, horse talk. No horse riding though :( They were done for the day. But I was still quite satisfied. Successful trip.

We then traveled up to Ritidian point where the beaches are perfect, only to find that the gate closes at 4pm. We were too late. There was another road off to the right, so we took it looking for a chance to get the beach. Every place along the beach had huge no trespassing signs and gates. There wasn't even any place to park the road was so narrow. The road once again got smaller and smaller until we ended at a dump where they explode stuff. Cool! But still no beach. We did find a lot of papaya, although they weren't too tasty and we ended up not keeping the rest of them. They were kind of small, were kind of grainy, and just didn't have good taste.


Anyway, that was the days events... I'm pooped. Tomorrow to Tarzan falls, Family beach, and perhaps some other falls, time allowing. I might even be blessed with a call from Greg tomorrow evening! Oh boy!

Funday

hiking action

We



Are the people who hiked to here



It was a beautiful



and quite interesting hike, with many friends!



Our trail was also shared with ATV's. Can you believe they drove here?


Finally we were almost there! But as you can see it's down quite a hill.


It was a small challenge to get down




But a great reward at the end!




All in all a wonderful hike! With great company, variety, and beauty!