Thelma and Louise Take on the World: Cathartic Painting

Monday the 12th was a great day. By morning, the flood had receded in our house. We woke up at our usual time and headed to the hospital. No power = no breakfast. Awesome. When we arrived to the hospital at 7:32 we were abruptly surprised by the 20-30 extra people present for change over. We thought that it was overcrowded before...Ugh. Turns out the local medical students are back from their testing break. Thelma and I were not too impressed. To calm our feelings and our stomachs, we went to find some breakfast. 30 minutes we returned to the meeting. It still wasn't over and because of all the people, we couldn't hear a thing. So...we stood there patiently, sweating like frogs on a hot plate! Awesome. We made an effort twice that day to print our evaluations for this rotation, but alas...no power. The power was even out at the hospital for a bit. Real nice. We retired for the day at 10 AM and went home.

Having had so much exposure to medicine here, we have decided to join our Norwegian friends on an early 2 week vacation to the coast including Tonga, Pemba Island, and Zanzibar. Apparently, traveling is the thing to do here. The medical students are used more as a supply of money rather than anything else. So...we are going to make the best of it. We spent the rest of Monday morning planning some of our trip and reserving our hotel on the island of Pemba. The beaches look gorgeous and I can't wait to enjoy the Indian Ocean. This leads me to another point. My sun burn from Friday is now itching and driving me crazy. Awesome.

That afternoon, we had our painting class. It was so much fun. We went through and picked out the paintings that we wanted to do. We got to select from a huge variety of paintings that the local artist has done. Once we had our selections, I purchased a nice Kilimanjaro hat to wear. Ingrid thought it was embarrassing to sit next to me while I wore it, but I quite like it. Anyways, we spent the afternoon working on our paintings. The supply were 10,000 shilling and the instruction was 10,000 shilling. That's a total of less than $13. It was an amazing deal. Our paintings looked great when we were finished. While waiting for them to dry in the sun, we went IndoItaliano and had some red wine to complete our artful afternoon. It was delightfully cathartic and very relaxing. I am so glad we decided to paint. We may need to do it again. :-)

That night the Norwegians cooked up their African version of their Norwegian style tacos. They were amazing. Also happy, Thelma was able to try on her new brassiere that she had bought at Nakumatt that day. They don't do sizes here, so she just guessed and guessed right. She will probably kill me for including this in the blog, but I don't care. :-) Thelma and I also found out that we matched into a Family Medicine Residency. We don't know for sure where until Friday, but we are 99% sure it will be South Bend. We will keep everyone posted.