Friday morning's leprosy clinic was fantastic.

We got to see someone with a claw hand from ulnar nerve damage, a kid with an extensively scarred arm from a reaction, and someone who was presenting for the first time with a gigantic arm lesion. That last visit was tough; she was crying and terrified because of course nobody wants to be A Leper. We ( Read more... )

Brazilians hate and fear the letter L. They either turn it into an R (Playa --> Praia) or drop it completely (Salida --> Saida). If they're backed into a corner and have to use one, they pretend it's a W (words like "Brasil" end in sort of an "ooo" sound). They do begin some words with L, but that's about all they can handle ( Read more... )

Last Friday night we went out with some people from the lab to dance Forró, and it was more like Charlotte described it ( Read more... )

The buggy ride was suuuuuuuuuuuuuper fun. It was an all-day tour of the beaches up between Natal and a famous lighthouse to the north, at the point where South America is closest to Africa. The buggy periodically went zooming around the sand dunes like a roller coaster, and we stopped at little places for activities like ziplining into a lake or ( Read more... )

We celebrated our day off by walking around an upper middle-class neighborhood downtown. Maybe it was classier than that, I don~t know, but all the houses were behind walls so it was hard to judge. Many of the houses were quirkily attractive, and Pooja kept snapping pictures of people~s front doors prompting fears of being arrested for casing the ( Read more... )

We have the day off from work for "a Catholic Holiday," although nobody at work was able to tell us exactly what it is ( Read more... )

This week we are In The Field, which means we are picked up at 6am to go rumbling off in our jeep to the homes of people with confirmed cases of VL, or as they tend to call it here, Calazar (Kala-Azar means Black Fever in Hindi although darkening of the skin on the extremities and abdomen is a rare symptom). At the houses, Pooja and I do physical ( Read more... )

São João was super-fun. There were ridiculous outfits, line dancing, and scrumptious desserts. My favorite part was when someone~s mom started harassing her sons, who were busy putting drinks in the fridge, to teach us a traditional dance.

WHY ARE YOU NOT TEACHING THE AMERICANS HOW TO DANCE THE FORRÓ???
JESUS MOM I CAN ONLY DO ONE THING AT A TIME, ( Read more... )

I didn~t realize how badly the ads screw up that page layout. Apologies.

So apparently I~ve been confused about the date for days, and not even because of Portuguese~s weird days-of-the-week naming system. I thought until noon that it was Friday, and yesterday I couldn~t figure out why they didn~t want us to come in to work today. Well done.

( Read more... )

For fellow med students: this morning I woke up from a dream in which Kathi Huebner was yelling at me about paperwork and Robin Paetzold was asking me "now, what country are you in again???"

I WILL NEVER BE FREE OF THEM.

Minh, this university looks just like the one we walked through in Bangkok on the way to the snake farm. I think of that every day ( Read more... )