Zunil – a town about 30 mins from Xela

View from the truck ride to Fuentes Georginas

Steaming hot waterfall at Fuentes Georginas – the natural hot springs!

Fuentes Georginas – note all the steam!!

Xela Cemetery – Public Graves

Xela Cemetery – a row of private graves

View from the highest point in Xela Cemetery – it’s HUGE!

Xela SuperChivas game!

The band at the game — they set off fireworks from within the stands!

Just another chicken bus…

Lines of cages at the Xela zoo

The zoo includes animals like sheep and domesticated rabbits!

Touch of Greece?

Cafe RED Murals

Cafe RED Burrito + Fresh Limeade!

More to come.

Until then,

K

I chose this school relatively arbitrarily off of a list of programs my medical school already supported, and I’m so, so glad I did. My school, Pop Wuj, has been fantastic and exactly what I needed to learn medicine and Spanish simultaneously.

My afternoons are jam-packed with Spanish. Each day from 2-6 PM, I receive one-on-one language tutoring, which is fantastic, because my learning is tailored to my specific needs. Typically, we spend an hour on grammar, an hour on medical vocabulary, and the remaining time either reading Spanish stories aloud or conversing. I’m probably a really difficult student, because I tend to be pretty shy at baseline, so when you add in the constant struggle of a foreign language, I’m not super talkative. Regardless, I’ve been learning a ton and I can barely imagine where my Spanish will be in two more weeks!

My mornings, however, are way more fun. On Mondays and Thursdays, we have medical lectures on tropical disease, nutrition, or other common problems in Guatemala, while the other mornings are dedicated to clinic.

On Tuesdays and Fridays, we run clinic at our school. It’s a free clinic, and patients line up even before 7 AM to secure an appointment with the doctors. The clinic is set up and runs similarly to those in the US, but operates on donated medicines from an American NGO, so when the medicines run out, it’s time for Plan B. Students are responsible for triage (taking vital signs and getting a basic history) and consults (the actual patient visit) with the help of two Guatemalan physicians who are actually around the same age as me! I have to apologize for not having pictures of the school clinic yet… it’s a busy place!

This Wednesday, I traveled to mobile clinic in “Alaska.” Okay, so obviously, I didn’t really hop on a microbus to Alaska (would I even be there yet?), but that is the nickname of a small community called Xeabaj that was forced to rebuild its entire community after a hurricane several years ago:

Again, the poverty was palpable; we traveled down bumpy, dusty, motion-sickness-inducing roads to the middle of nowhere and held our clinic in a one-room concrete building:

…I’m not really sure why we left ONE chair in the middle of the room.

Here, we’re limited in medications (we were forced to prescribe an antibiotic that doesn’t cover skin bacteria super well for an abscess!) and privacy (lacking the ability to perform a pelvic exam, we had to treat a woman for both urinary tract infection and vaginitis). Working at a safety net hospital in the US sometimes feels like working with few resources, but this experience has been an incredible reminder that much can be accomplished with even less!

My Xela home!

My room in Xela.

Typical street in Xela

Parque Central!

Main Cathedral

Because why wouldn’t you hang advertisements on the old beautiful church?

Just a pretty building we found…

La Democracia – a bustling, colorful market that sells anything you can imagine, including avocados bigger than my hand!

“Almuerzo economico” – Saturday’s lunch special!

Chicken buses!

Walmart really is everywhere..

View from Panorama – a restaurant overlooking the whole city!

Tomorrow will be my first actual clinic here, now that we’ve had several days of teaching on Mayan medicine and tropical diseases. More on that soon!

Until then,

K

My school channels much of its tuition into buying the supplies for these stoves, and the students volunteer to provide the labor once per week.

The day began with my first chicken bus ride!

I have yet to take a good picture of a chicken bus myself, so here’s a stock photo!

Basically, a chicken bus is a school bus clad in colorful designs or cartoon characters jam-packed with native Guatemalans in local dress. I was kind of bummed because the one that we took was unfortunately just plain yellow, but I have to admit I never thought I’d be riding a school bus again!

As the bus headed farther and farther outside of the city, the change in socioeconomic status was visible. The scenery transformed from colorful storefronts and houses to dilapidated sheds without doors in fields of dust:

Our group of four arrived at a small little home barely larger than my bedroom in the US, which was home to a couple and their three sons, ranging in age from 1-6 years old. There were stacks of concrete bricks, sand, and concrete mix waiting for us, but we almost immediately ran into a problem: the family did not have a water source in their home.

Upon venturing across the neighborhood a few times to refill buckets of water at a neighbor’s house, we got to work: soaking the bricks so they would adhere to the cement. Mixing cement. Stacking the bricks in a precisely measured and leveled rectangle.

And my favorite job: chopping apart concrete bricks with a machete.

My handiwork!

In the end, we’d made this:

Our stage 1 stove! There are two more stages to be completed in weeks to come!

There’s no doubt that the extreme poverty of this family was striking, but what stood out even more is their generosity. While six year olds in America have no qualms asking for a laundry list of items for Christmas, the six year old in this house divided his single cookie into five parts: one for himself and each of four volunteers.

Why is it that people with nothing share so willingly, while people with everything hold on tight?

My experiences this week have made me acutely aware of how dangerous this situation can actually be. When speaking to Guatemalans, I can demonstrate a reasonable grasp of Spanish, and often receive responses that are far more complex than I can fully understand. Sometimes, I just get the general gist of things. Other times, I make incorrect assumptions and miss the point altogether. Or worse, I may not have even the slightest idea what was said, but don’t feel comfortable enough (or can’t remember the words!) to ask them to slow down. But typically, I’m only trying to buy a bus ticket or understand my host brother’s new job, so a few words lost in translation are usually not a huge deal.

But when explaining a cancer diagnosis or the risks and benefits of a surgery, losing words in translation is not an option we can afford. I have no doubt there are patients for whom English is a struggle, but they may be too embarrassed or respectful to interrupt to remind us that they can only handle the basics. No wonder patients have difficulty complying with treatments, or even articulating what exactly their medical problems are.

Though I came to Guatemala to learn Spanish via cultural immersion, this trip is also a firsthand experience confirming the importance of using interpreters, avoiding assumptions, and checking to ensure patients are understanding their providers, regardless of language.

This time, I was waking up at 2:30 AM for this:

Even though it was cloudy (apparently normally, it’s also really foggy), there was something incredible about sitting at the top of a Mayan temple watching the sky change colors over the trees, with a chorus of colorful birds and howler monkeys around you. (Howler monkeys are unbelievably loud!!)

And thus began our trip to Tikal, an impressive Mayan ruin situated in northern Guatemala. If the above scene seems vaguely familiar, it’s because a similar shot is featured in Star Wars Episode IV… awesome!

The Temple of the Grand Jaguar (R) and the Necropolis, as viewed from atop Temple II, all within the main plaza.

Temple III, which you’re allowed to climb via steep steps that are far too high for short legs, but I climbed anyway!

Those are MY hands. Holding a tarantula. And nothing terrible happened.

These sprawling ruins are the remains of what was once the capital of a booming Mayan civilization, and features six very large temples among a collection of causeways, plazas, and the acropolis. Three restored temples may be climbed, while most other structures are closed to the public, although, shhh!: our guide let us step into one of the palaces, where we were greeted by bats!

After a long morning of exploring the ruins, we were grateful for a relaxing evening in beautiful Flores, a charming island town just an hour away from the ruins. How freaking cute is it?!

We stayed at Hotel Mirador del Lago – Viewpoint of the Lake!

Parque Central de Flores

All of the buildings are so colorful!

Tonight, I take off for Guatemala City and will catch a morning bus up to Xela, where I’ll make my home for the next four weeks. I’m so excited to meet my host family, visit the medical clinic I’ll be working in, and start really learning Spanish!

Until then,

K

And it was SO WORTH IT. I mean, look at this place:

Semuc Champey is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever gotten to visit, and my day here was absolutely incredible.

We climbed slippery rock steps for 40 minutes to reach this viewpoint:

Then we jumped, swam, and slid down waterfalls in this gorgeous water:

We took a tour of the Kan’ba Caves, which was simultaneously awesome and terrifying. We were provided hand-held candles for lighting and climbed down a rickety ladder into the water below. At times, we were treading water with our candle hand held high, and at other times, we were clenching the candle in our teeth as we climbed a waterfall via a rope ladder. I think the most terrifying part, however, was when we had to drop into a hole with a waterfall pouring in and no view of the other side… just lower yourself, take a breath, and drop! (No pictures, because I wasn’t risking my camera in the cave, but click here to see the Google images…)

But we ended our day of adventure with the ultimate in lazy river rides, and cruised down the river in tubes.

Easily one of the most incredible days of my life. And tomorrow, it’s on to Flores so we can visit the Mayan ruins at Tikal!

Until then,

K

Yes, I’ve been incredibly neglectful of this sad little blog for months, and for that, I apologize. However, turns out it takes up a lot of time to travel across the country to interview with eighteen different residency programs. But the good news is, my rank list is completed and certified, and I will hopefully be matching in (drumroll, please!) Combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics come March.

But we can talk about that later. The more exciting news is that I’m typing this from here:

…in beautiful Lanquin, Guatemala, a little town in the eastern portion of Guatemala well-visited by tourists because of its proximity to Semuc Champey, a gorgeous natural wonder which I’ll be visiting tomorrow.

Wait, rewind… I guess I should tell you how I got here. I enrolled to participate in a Medical Spanish course at a school at a little town up in the mountains called Xela. I’ll be there for four weeks starting this Sunday, staying with a host family, and embracing some cultural immersion to improve my Spanish, which I’m discovering needs LOTS of work. I’ve been grateful for my travel buddy who has spent two weeks here already and has a much better grasp on the language.

But for now, I’m fumbling through my Spanish and enjoying a week of tourism. I arrived in colorful Antigua on Sunday and spent the evening ambling around the beautiful town. Most of my photos, however, happen to be from early this morning… we had intended to book our bus for 2 PM today so we could enjoy a leisurely walking tour of the city, so when we discovered late last night that we’d miscommunicated and booked 8 AM, the only option was to wake up at 5:30 AM and enjoy a sunrise tour of Antigua. We weren’t disappointed:

One of Antigua’s charming, colorful streets.

Inside the Las Capuchinas convent… because they’d left the door open at 7 AM, so we let ourselves in…

Nuestra Senora de la Merced

I just can’t get over this archway with the mountain in the background. Gorgeous.

The other highlight of my (three-day) trip thus far? Hiking Volcan de Pacaya. The ascent was PAINFUL (and my legs are still sore), but the incredible views were totally worth it!!

An incredible view…

This view negated any doubt that the trip to the volcano was worth it.

Some areas are so hot from the lava below that you can roast marshmallows…

Volcan de Pacaya itself.

At the top of the world…

But for now, necesito practicar mi espanol! Hasta la vista!

K

Image from The Walking Dead

Okay, so that’s not always me. It’s me when I’m in the midst of my second week of night shift for my pediatric subinternship. If that’s not an excuse for an extended absence, I’m not sure what is. At this point, even coffee gets me to about here:

 And of course, I’m also working on my residency applications right now, which makes me look something like this, even on a good day:

But even among the hustle and bustle, I’ve been hoarding ideas for future blog posts. Like about the time that an elderly veteran in ophthalmology clinic decided to read my palm. Or about how I finally managed to write a personal statement after months of procrastination. Or about my patient who disappeared off the floor at 1 AM. Or about narrowing down which residency I want to pursue (!).

Really, I’m going to write about all of that. Someday.

But right now, all I can think about is sleep.

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 It’s the first anniversary of Medical Mondays, and I am so grateful for the efforts of Emma and Jane over the past year. It’s been so much fun to connect with other medical student/medical wives/medical professionals in the blogosphere. The posts shared each week remind me that I’m not alone in the hectic world of medicine, enlighten me on the various roles played by different staff in the medical system, and provide advice on everything from raising children as a physician to the latest in interview suit fashion. While I hop on into my bed, I highly recommend you hop on over to their blogs to meet the other fabulous participants of MM.

Yesterday, I spent the day overdramatically collapsed on my bed, exhausted after spending the prior two weekends travelling, and the days in between scrambling to finish oral presentations, studying for and completing Step 2 CS, and doing laundry. I was grateful for a day that demanded absolutely nothing of me, and I chose to indulge in absolute nothingness.

But the consequence of my indulgence? I’m now one day late on acknowledging my one year blogiversary! 

I can’t believe it’s been one year since I started this, intending to offer stories to family and friends during my third year, when I had few other opportunities to catch up with them. And despite my third year schedule leaving dozens of stories yet to be told, I’ve managed to keep in touch with family and discover a whole community of medical (and other) bloggers, mostly thanks to Medical Mondays.

Special thanks to all of my readers for all the support and encouragement. Looking forward to another awesome year with you!

<3, Kay