Hola!

Yesterday I went to English Camp in the morning and a Hospital in the city called Clinica Boliviana Americana.  It was really slow at the hospital because I guess in Bolivia people typically only  come to see doctors in the morning, so I we sat around a lot waiting to see if anyone would come in.  The emergency Doctor let us wait with him to see if anyone would come in and someone did.  A woman came in complaining of chest pain and pain in her arm.  The doctor told us he thought she was having a heart attack and sent her up to get an EKG.  By the time we got back to the waiting area the gynecologist was in and I got to shadow her which was really cool.  She didn't speak any english though, and at one point asked me to get something but I couldn't understand what.  She then made a call and a few minutes later a nurse showed up and told me to sit down and put a blood pressure cuff on my arm.  At his point I was completely confused and had NO IDEA what was going on... Then, using my great detective skills I realized that the doctor had called the nurse because her blood pressure cuff wasn't working and asked her to bring her a new one, so the nurse was trying to figure out why the other one wasn't working on me :)  The gynecologist only had three patients though, so I was soon reunited with my fellow volunteers in the waiting room where we waited for about an 1 1/2 before someone else came we could shadow.  Don't worry though, we got to watch Pinnocio in Spanish while waiting :)  We ended up talking with the physical therapist after that for like an hour, who by the way had PERFECT English, so that was very interesting.

Today I went to the Hospital of Viedma where I played with little kids who were in the burn unit there.  It was really hard to see how bad some of these kids were burned, and even harder to communicate with them because a lot of them spoke a mixture of spanish and Quechua (the native language here)!  One of the little girls I was playing with, whose name was also emily :), had her entire face burned.  Some kids just had parts of there bodies burned, like one arm or one leg, whereas others where constricted to their beds and pretty much all of their body was wrapped up.  In the afternoon I went to English Camp again, which I am really enjoying.  The girls are really sweet, and I think my spanish is improving as we help them learn english, which is a nice benefit!

Tonight we are going to play wally ball, which is some form of volleyball where you can use your feet and the surrounding walls... so that should be interesting with my volleyball skills.... :)

Chau for now!
Emily