Sweet, Sweet Kandy

Sorry it's been a while, folks, but I've been busy. I'm going to start out with something depressing I found out and then it'll get more fun. While talking to one of the doctors here, he asked me about salaries for doctors in the US. He then told me his salary, which comes out to $265 a month. Senior doctors will make $350 a month. I make more in 2 weeks working at Target. I found that horribly unfair and unjust. It's just different here.

Anyway, last week I finished my rounds in general medicine by actually going into the operating room. The head surgeon really likes me because I'm foreign and speaks really good English. I did some clinical examinations with him and some other students, so we got to chat quite a bit. After asking what we would do next to this patient that presented with a lump by his groin, I said, "Perform an ultrasound to confirm the hernia." The doctor gave me a look that said 'Yeah, we'll do that right after we ride unicorns to work and there's peace in the Middle East.' He actually said, "Yes, ideally, but we don't have those facilities." Also, the guy we were examining had fluid buildup in his scrotum from the hernia, so it looked like he had a testicle bigger than my fist. I guess your sac stretches a lot. "Here, palpate and feel how hard it is." "....ok." So, I got to feel this lovely scrotum that was very hard and ridiculously huge. With no gloves on. We washed our hands after, so it was totally ok. So, the day after I got to second base with a random Sri Lankan guy, this other student and I got to go into the OR to watch some surgeries. I handled it better than I thought I would, only getting kinda sickened by the surgeon cutting a tendon inside this woman's wrist, but I was totally OK with this guy's stomach wide open. The first surgery I watched as a circumcision. (Let's all wait for the joke.) The doctors were discussing why he was having the circumcision and said that it was for medical, not religious reasons. There was a lot of awkward looking around the room from the younger doctors and a really loud silence before the head surgeon realized he had to ask me the question everyone in the room was wondering, "Are you Jewish?" You could actually hear everyone in the room relax when I said no.

I'm going to explain real quick a game the three guys here (Sam, Gareth, and me) play with the girls. It's called Lies. We tell the girls outrageous things and they believe us. I told Michelle that Spiderman was based on real events and Sam asked Marieke to get him a left-handed paint roller from the other room. These will come up in my narration.

This past weekend we went to Kandy, which is in the hill country at the center of the country, about a 4 hour bus ride away. It's a little cooler there and it's really beautiful. Lisette and I showed up before the people from Galle because their train took forever. We were sitting at this restaurant where we were staying, and there was nobody there except the managers and owners. One of them really took a shine to me and wouldn't stop talking to us, but mostly me. He kept saying that I could be his son and that he had a daughter my age that I should meet. He even held my hand while he was pointing out where else to visit on a large map of Sri Lanka. (It's customary over here for two guys to hold hands, but it wasn't any less uncomfortable.) On Saturday we went to the elephant orphanage. I asked Marieke if she'd ask if we could see the elephant hatchery. Their eggs are huge. At the orphanage they have a bunch of elephants in this field with really no protection between you and them. The guys have there little spears, but it's an elephant. Let's throw a toothpick at a tank and see if it stops. We got to pet the elephants and took some cool pictures and then went to where the elephants get to swim in the water. Hopefully I'll be able to post pics of that. They let you get in the water near an elephant if you give them a little money. Once again, we get to see how few rules they have here. I think I'm going to try to put my pictures on photobucket. See how many gigantic penises you can find. We also got to go for a short ride on some elephants. Chloe (who watches 24 and might be my favorite person in the world) rode with me and didn't stop freaking out the whole time. I got a picture holding the little spear while riding the elephant with her. I told her I could totally control the elephant with that thing, but that was another lie.

Then we went to buy saris and sarongs for a wedding in two weeks. (Diwali!) This hour in the shop may have been the best of the trip. So, every time I bumped into someone, "Oh, sorry." Sam and Gareth are just as bad as me. After Sam took a while picking out a sarong, he said, "Hey guys, sorry that took sarong." "That just was sarong, man" We also invented a game called So Wrong. We wore our sarongs out one night (they're pretty much ankle length dresses) and whenever we were sitting with the group, we'd see how far we could pull it up before the girls noticed. We're not even close to mature enough to wear those. The puns continued all weekend.

We also visited a botanical garden (the square bushes grow from square seeds...) and saw some traditional Kandy dancing. They played with a bunch of fire towards the end and actually encouraged people to sit right by them to ensure you got covered in ashes. I will miss those things when I go back to the US.

Random stories:

I was in bed reading one night and all of a sudden this thing crawls across my ceiling. It could have been The Thing from the Adams Family, but no it was a spider. I've actually seen this spider in a zoo before. It's called the Sri Lankan Screaming Spider because if you actually see one in the wild, you can't stop screaming for 10 minutes. Aragog was like, "Dude, that spider's huge." So in my extreme desire to kill it, but my secondary desire to want to get a picture, I did manage to get a bag picture of it before I killed it. I hoped to never see one again. (We saw one in Kandy...)

I really wish there was just one more American here. Someone had a Kit Kat bar and wanted to know if I wanted a piece, so I said, "Yeah, break me off a piece of that." Nobody got the joke.

There's pic on facebook of the hole I fell into, it was added by someone else. Go check it out.

When we woke up on Saturday morning, there were about 1,000 bugs on the floor of the place we were staying. It looked like a horror movie.

I'm going to try to put up some pictures. I have to go to tsumani camp soon, so I might not get the chance. This week though, really. I'll make another effort and tell you about how I failed. Really, I will.

-Kurt