My personal physician

Friday, February 25, 2011

Dr. Wendy, as she is called on campus, is a Phd doctor.  Now in the states where people are strict and pharmacists don’t just hand out any old drug over the counter they may say that this means she can not diagnose medical conditions or prescribe drugs.  I know for a fact that this is false as I often go to her myself for d & t.  And unlike many doctors she will even take you to the pharmacy and help you pick out the drugs, she is good!  (Most doctors don’t even make house calls).

Case in point, today, tired of my eyes looking like I’ve been

a) crying,

b) drinking too much,

c) running thru a hive of bees or

d) recovering from a bar fight

I decide to get some drugs.  My mom reminded me that as a child the only way to reduce the swelling in my face from a poison ivy incident was a round of steroids.  So after lunch Wendy took me to Morobe Pharmacy where she identifies which steroids I should take from the two the pharmacist is holding out in her hands.  Yep, you ask for a drug and they sell it to you, no need for a prescription.  If they don’t carry it, they’ll order it for you, and you can probably get it within in 2 or 3 weeks.  Once back on campus with the help of dr. google she tells me how much I should take.  Hey, she does have ‘doctor’ in front of her name, I’m just putting it to good use 🙂

Thank you Doctor Wendy!

TGIF

Friday, February 25, 2011

Thank goodness…sometimes the week just flies by so fast and it feels like I’m barely keeping my head up, so then I’m soo thankful for Friday, except that I have a weekend full of work to do…just so that I can barely get through next week.   Hm…must be the beginning of the semester…should slow down in a few weeks.  At least working from home means working in my pajamas, good coffee and a clean bathroom…  

Class portrait

My second year students – all soo happy to be back in school and drawing each other’s lovely mugs… 😉

Back to school

Monday, February 21, 2011

And we’re back!  Only one class today, the second years for studio, I somehow manage to talk for nearly and hour and a half!!!  (Wow, I’m getting better at the ‘lecturing’ part of the lecture…).  Most of them were on time and seem like a good bunch (of course they are a bit shy – to be expected), and now I have them practicing measuring (on themselves) for some work with anthropometry, scale and proportion.

The office secretary told me this morning she saw some raskols on campus Friday morning try to hold up another vehicle and they fired a shot…Sounds like it may be the same guys, in which case I’m very glad they fired the shot in the morning and not in the afternoon around me!

…makes you stronger.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

After a good night’s sleep I’m feeling ready to face another day.  And to think this last week I felt like not much was going on…

This morning on my way into town all the security guards at the front gate ask if I’m ok and express their concern, this continues everywhere on campus.  Some of the ladies from the main office tell me not to let it scare me and they are right.  Ok, so admittedly, I’m really jumpy, the sight of two guys running across the road in front of the vehicle ahead has me flooring my car and passing with all the adrenaline rushing through my arms…But life goes on.

I know I’m extremely fortunate nothing worse has happened and that I’m extremely fortunate I got away with only a bit of damage to my car.

I stop in the security office this afternoon as I had been requested to, to give my statement to Joe, or ‘Corporeal Joe’ as he tells me he is the new head of police on campus.  I give the entire story (for the 3rd time there) and then he asks me to write it up and turn it in as well so they can officially investigate.  There has actually been a few incidents in the last week and it’s suspected that they are the same couple of young adults doing this.  I leave my house to go into town for dinner and I have not one, but three security guards in my yard (one policeman and two kuima guards).  They will stay there thru the weekend at least at night.

I see the cutest thing on the way into town this evening – a bunch of kids using a very large tree trunk and a smaller tree trunk as a seesaw.  They are having a blast.

What doesn’t kill you…

Friday, February 18, 2011

So not to be morbid with the title of this post…but, I feel it’s appropriate.  Bad things can happen anywhere, anytime, there are no guarantees in life.  So not to dwell, I’ll just explain what happened today:

I’m on my way home after driving to the clinic to pick up some medecine for my ‘eyesic’  (my eyes are extremely swollen, best guess – spider bite) and I stop at the market on campus (as I do at least 4x a week – although I usually walk).  I back out of the market and pull out onto the street, it’s a really busy afternoon on campus, Friday usually is and even more so with classes starting on Monday, so there are tons of people out.  I glance down and back up and notice a boy in the road messing with a pothole, I think ‘hm, good thing I didn’t run over him’ and I slow down.  At this point a couple of young men run out into the road and the next thing I see is a homemade gun pointed at my car.  Honestly the first thing I think is that this is a joke, they’re gonna start laughing in a second and put the gun down.  It slowly dawns on me this isn’t a joke.  The gun is still pointing at me as he moves across the front of my car and I’m thinking, he probably doesn’t have a bullet, most likely no bullet…

internet saga continues

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

oh, you thought you were done hearing about the internet?  Nope.  So after last weeks rounds with telecom and the super slow internet at my office I decide I’m ready to attempt again.  I go directly to Datec to buy a router that will make the Wimax internet compatible with my mac, but of course it’s not actually directly there…most of the roads are closed for construction (yay for construction!  new smooth roads will be sooo nice).  I wait around for a sales assistant as I don’t see anything that looks like a router to me (not that I really know what I’m looking for) and I wait.  Eventually someone assists me and lets me know that they are out of them, they are also out of stock at the Port Moresby location as well and furthermore, I’d be better off ordering one from Australia, it would be cheaper and quicker.

pregnant

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

No, not me, one of my students.  One of my favorite students just came up to my office, I am very happy to see her as she wasn’t quite able to finish the semester last year because she had become very sick, supposedly with malaria…  I have been concerned she may not return because of that so I am happy to see her smiling face.  We discuss what she needs to do to finish those classes and get a grade so she can register for this year’s classes.  After which she tells me she is 5 months pregnant!  She giggles and covers her mouth which she always does when she talks, her comments and observations are very straightforward but from habit acts a bit embarrassed to actually say them.

Five months means she may barely finish this semester before she has the baby.  As if it isn’t hard enough being a student and being a female here (maybe 1 out of 4 students is female here, and that’s on the high end)…but she has a good attitude and says that it’s only hard if you make it hard.  I ask how her family feels about it, her dad is mad and doesn’t want her to marry the father (personally she doesn’t seem to be too interested in marrying the father anyways).  If her mom or sister care for the baby she will continue school the following semester, otherwise she won’t be able to.

She says there are a lot of returning pregnant students this year, hm…I guess cancelling classes for five weeks due to riots is having a longer lasting impact…  She jokingly says that the guys (in general) pulled lines like ‘I might die tomorrow…’  She says it’s a joke, but it does make me wonder how many really ‘intelligent’ guys pulled lines like that…

I’ve seen a few more students from last year (none of them are pregnant that would require a miracle of nature)…

Cain

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

hm…so apparently Cain is now 23…  He’s not sure why last year he was 14 and now he’s 23…  I hear that you get told what someone thinks you want to hear…  maybe he didn’t understand the question?  I (and everyone else who has seen him) has always thought he looks older than 14 or 15, so that explains why 😉

Anyways, that makes him too old for his first choice school, City Mission.  In the meantime he does a good job with the yard, but I’m still gonna try and find him a construction job / training.

ouch

you know what’s hard to do when you don’t have power?  (There are so many correct answers here…)

Try taking out a splinter…

Power has been out for most of the afternoon, it’s just getting dark outside and I feel something in my foot.  I can’t see it but I attempt to pull it out…no can do, not by candles or flashlights at least.  I deal with it in my foot until the power comes back on (hours later) and I can finally dig out that tiny glass shard.   Ahhhhhhh, so much better 🙂