Britney’s, I mean Cortney’s blog
I would first like to tell you that I last left you with the dun dun dun…I am going bungee jumping…will I return. Obviously I did. It was the tallest bridge in the world and I did it. It was amazing. I have a DVD and everyone will watch it. You will have no excuses not to. I almost died. I felt my poor lifeless body slipping away and then snatch a rescue man came down and got me and pulled me up by my little cord all while I was taking in the breathe taking views of the mountains and rivers and oceans below me. It was pretty traumatic and you will all experience it.
After that we were exposed to some dreadful olive loaf and butter sandwiches. Maybe they were dreadful because I just almost died and wanted lobster…or maybe it was just because they were gross..who knows. We also ganked some oranges and hid them in our bags until Martha told us that the elephants that we would later be hanging out with get a little excited about oranges….those came out of the bags immediately.
So now I have a little diddy about my time at Monkey Land. It goes a little something like this…
Ring tailed lemurs have 26 stripes unless they fight
Always 13 rings of black and 13 of white
To clean eachother they like to lick
Unlike other monkeys who like to pick
Squirrel monkeys are little but definitely the most mean
Atlas walked on his hands so his arms were lean
The tour guide was also very intellectual
So me being Cortney, I found him quite sexual
So this whole day of monkey land came to an end
With a whole new adventure around the bend…..
(PS…I would like to tell everyone that a monkey grabbed Janel’s leg and she screamed like a girl and lemurs like to meditate for real in the sun.)
ENTER…BIRDS OF EDEN…Now I will take you on a visit to the place where we were dive bombed by birds and almost eaten alive (rachel definitely got her foot bitten by an african parrot). However, on the upside I met Toucan Sam so the day was good.
As the day ended we went and had a brai at the lodge we were staying at. It is like a big cookout, however since it was 3 degrees we did it inside. Zack the dog liked to eat our leftovers. I would like to paint a quick picture of my night just to show you I can “rough it” in case anyone had their doubts….#1 there were arachnoids in my bed #2 I have a cold and sore throat #3 I just ate an Atkin’s dieters dream #4 Dr Moon took us stargazing until I finally could see the southern cross #5 Jessica and I definitely tried to call cows by mooing at them #6 I wore the same clothes two whole days in a row!!! I am the picture of a true woodsman now.
OK so trying to write faster the next day we went zip-lining. That was pretty awesome too. I got to see a bunch of cool sites below us. Our tour guide named us all different names. Mine was Shakira. Of Course…
OK so this week we went on our first day of hospital tours. I got to be on a pre/post type surgical floor. I can honestly say they do take longer discharging patients there. They also reconcile all meds so that they don’t charge the patient for all of the meds they didn’t use while in the hospital. I am very use to us just grabbing the meds from the draw and sending them to pharmacy. I also don’t know if I already said this…however everyday between 10 and 10:30 there is a tea-break. If you are dying…and it’s tea break…too bad for you. Seriously. It’s like the world stops. It’s very confusing to me, but it’s not my culture so there’s one difference I won’t get.
OK then we have the clinics…Margaret and I got to be with the women’s and kids on Tuesday. The little kids are so cute. We did a lot of immunizations and one really big difference in theirs compared to ours is they give Vitamin A shots and Deworming shots as part of their regular immunizations. Obviously this is because of the region that they live in and what they are exposed to. Also there is a nation wide polio vaccine campaign to make sure that polio doesn’t spread since it is so prevalent here. Margaret did a pap test and I am sure that in her blog she will explain the room, however I will note that there were no stirrups and I had to hand her wooden tongue depressor type things to actually scrape the cervical cells with. It was less than sterile. We also were witnesses to a young pregnant woman getting a rapid HIV test. The nurse made her read the results herself and for a few moments she thought it was positive and in a way…it almost seemed as if she “knew” that that was her destiny one day. Thankfully it wasn’t positive, but she didn’t smile. She was still very quiet. And it is sad, because when you talk to people here a lot of times they feel like it is their destiny.
Yesterday Margaret and I were in the AIDS/HIV clinic working with ARV drugs. It was very educational. We got a book to bring back with us that tells us a lot about not only the virus, but the drugs the lifestyle you should lead to remain healthy with the virus and all the side effects from the drugs. It was really sad to see 16 year olds come in to the clinic. We also saw a girl with a horrible case of shingles. It is an opportunistic infections that attacks the body usually in the 3rd and 4th stages of the disease. She was in horrible pain and needed help putting her shirt back on and the worst part was is that most of the patients were not much older than us.
OK I have to go..we are going to trivia night with some of the SA nursing students and I am going to be on a team with Margaret and Janel..We are going to win so I have to brush up on my knowledgeable facts about who britney is dating now and how many days nicole ritchie will be in jail without stilletos. — Cortney