Hable mas despacio, por favor?

So here I am sitting at the kitchen table. The sliding doors to our balcony are standing open to the most beautiful view. The Andes are sloping up in all directions, scattered with red roofed homes. To the right is el Christo, the largest statue of Christ in the world. He is standing on top of a hill, completely white with His hands stretched out and His back towards me. Our apartment is on the fourth floor, and down below I can hear almost constant car alarms, construction work, wild dogs barking, and bits of conversation en Espanol. Which brings me back to the title of this post. I have a little Spanish phrase book to help me with my immense communication deficiencies, I decided to take a phrase from the book to title each post, helping me memorize some important phrases (hopefully!). This title translates: Speak more slowly please. A very useful phrase considering anytime I try to understand what someone is saying is just sounds like one long word.

Let me tell you a little bit about my day so far. One of the very first sounds I woke up to this morning was one of the medical students throwing up in the bathroom. A really great thing to wake up to. All three of the other med students here from USC are having "stomach issues." I personally am attributing it to the chicken they bought at the market and cooked last night. No, not chicken breasts, an entire chicken - feet, intestines, heart, head, eyes, the whole package. They didn't wash the chicken before they cooked it or wash the counters very well after cutting off its head and preparing it. Thankfully Maggie and I have evaded this problem so far!

After dressing in scrubs and gathering some supplies Maggie, Laura (the throwing-up med student who has been here for 8 weeks), and I caught a taxi to Hospital Viedma where I will be working. After dropping the supplies (mainly child's soap since the nurses have been bathing the children with Dawn dish detergent) at the Burn Center we entered the huge hospital to meet with the chief doctor, Dr. Montano. He was late, typical Bolivian style, but finally arrived and spoke perfect English - phew! He was very interested in what we wanted to get out of the experience and what areas we wanted to work in. Then he asked us if we had noticed how empty the hospital was. He then began to inform us that many of the doctors and hospital workers were on strike! Apparently no healthcare workers have been paid in two months because the government is lacking funds. However, more than once the president's recent, extravagant trip to the World Cup has been mentioned. I couldn't really understand how doctors could go on strike so I asked Dr. Montano a few more questions. He explained that the doctors stopped coming to work, so the hospital will not accept any new patients, regardless of their condition, and the patients that are currently hospitalized are cared for by family or workers who aren't striking. This obviously has major repercussions throughout the city as people will die from lack of healthcare. I'm not sure how long this strike will last but pray that it is resolved soon before many have to die.

After our tour of the hospital, Maggie and I returned to the apartment by taxi and changed out of our scrubs for lunch. We ate at Lia Lia, a Chinese restaurant. The food was amazing! Now I am sitting here with my Coca-Cola Light researching what I can about the Bolivian healthcare system and enjoying the breeze and the view of hermoso Bolivia - beautiful Bolivia.