Wow it has been awhile....

Helloooooooooooooo

Well It has been awhile since I sat here and wrote about my trips so please forgive me while I get reacquainted with how to write this blog. I have been very busy as of late...and while by busy I do mean lazy so now I get to try and jump start my ever so aging brain and remember what I have done in the last few weeks.

Ok so I suppose the best way to start is with the details that most stick out and from there hopefully things will come back to me. First off, I received my grades from the written portion of my exams the day before Halloween and HELLS YA I GOT THAT SHIT ON LOCK!!! Ok now with that out of my system Halloween was interesting. I started the night by going to a bar that was packed and my friend and I decided to try and find another one where its all you can drink and all you pay is cover. Well after a bizarre cab ride and aimlessly walking around we finally found it, and believe it or not we found it by following foreigners(did I mention my friend is from Taiwan). Oh the life of dodgy basment clubs, how I forgot how much I enjoyed walking down sketchy dark stairs in the back of a bar to reveal a hidden party zone in the basement with 4 turntables a couple djs one from hinton, yes hinton that small lil town in rural alberta. Imagine how surprised I was to meet him in the basement of a taipei bar. So I ended up drinking my fair share of free booze while getting to know the promotor's and DJ and well getting to know my friend a little better as well. Turned out to be a really awesome night even though the place was not busy, we were asked to go out to after hours party but it was already 4 am and we were both pretty tired and she needed to be up early so we decided to head out.

Following day I woke up around 11 thinking I was super hungover.....until I stood up and realized I was still drunk. Sat around my house and did nothing wishing I could get hangover pizza, anyone know how to say pizza in Chinese? well I do now but that didn't help. After I finally got over the hangover I headed out to meet my friend again where she convinced me to have stinky tofu at the night market.....can't believe I did it but I really have a weakness for ladies so how could I say no ahha. From there we went to visit a husky that was in doggy hotel, sooo frigging cute!!

Monday came really early as I start at a new hospital this week. After a early train ride we arrived and wow I am pretty happy to be here. It is a full TCm hospital 10 floors many different departments all of which I can be in. I have made my schedule and now to see what I get to learn here! Wednesday I ended up going for lunch with Renee(sorry that she will be coming up lots but we hang out a lot and I do want to record everything....if I don't my mind will wonder on to other subjects and I may never recall what happened, happened? what? where was I? Crap let me re-read this paragraph and continue on) Oh yes lunch.....so we went out for lunch yup I ate, it was good, I am now full.

Thursday at the hospital was really neat! I worked on all children which is something I really wanted to be able to do while being here. However with that being said it is very difficult to watch children who are this sick with cerebral palsy and watch them cry and scream as you needle them. I was a hit tho! lots of the children only wanted me to treat them and some even gave me names like lil uncle haha. Damn are kids cute.

ahh friday, its amazing it really doesn't matter where you are in the world that word brings the same joy and excitement....say it with me now F R I D A Y. Laura if you are reading this I am sure the word Friday brings back some great quoted moments "cuz it's friday........." I headed out to meet some friends and they were bringing me to there home village this weekend. An amazing place! we drove out at....
!!OH WAIT I FORGOT A DAY I WILL COME BACK TO THIS!!

Thursday night my friend brought me out for dinner, again I let him order and ended up eating a soup with congealed duck blood in it, ok seriously people whats with the vampire tendancies out here?? Other than the blood which I politely moved aside the soup was awesome! it was made with chinese medicine herbs and I really enjoyed the flavour. From there we headed out to the hotsprings where I had my own personal room and spring enjoyment...ahh the life...

AND NOW BACK TO FRIDAY......I headed out to meet some friends and they were bringing me to there home village this weekend. An amazing place! we drove out at night passing through a tunnel that took....CRAP I forgot something else, see this is why I need to write this stuff....I had my first earthquake!!! it was odd I was leaning against the counter and it started to shake, at first I thought I broke it until I stood straight and realized I was still shakin, rattlin, and rollin. There was actually 2 this night, the second one while I was sleeping woke me up. This is a really odd feeling, all I can think is how the strangest part of this all is your moving but have no idea where it is coming from or how it is happening, I really don't know how to explain it.

Ok now back to the weekend so we drove throught this tunnel that took them 15 years to build under the mountains, it is 12 km long and takes 15 mins to pass through, what a acomplishment to build this bad ass tunnel. We arrived and went to the night market where I had that soup again minus the blood. Saturday we headed down to a place called national traditional arts museum, it was more just a place where tourists can go to buy a whole bunch of stuff...."when in rome"...so now I have souvineers. We took a boat ride down the river, headed up to the mountains where we hiked to the largest waterfall in taiwan and enjoyed! Saw that damn ugly spider again however I saw one in the house later that made this one look like a dwarf (no offense to any dwarfs that may be reading this blog). On top of the mountain is a catholic holy place, a cave where mother mary apparently appeared and saved the lives of some people in the 80's, so of course it is now sacred ground. All right time to head home for dinner and an early night as I want to be up to watch the sun rise over the ocean in the morning. (this night is where I saw the spider, we do not need to talk about it though just picture the biggest spider you have ever seen and times it by 10000000000000000000)

Sunday morning was amazing, woke up at 530 am after only 2 hours sleep from having being on the phone most of the night, headed down to the beach and watched the sun say good morning. It was amazing there where fishing boats headed out at sunrise and I just watched in amazement while standing in the pacific ocean as the day began and the fog started to dissipate over the land. We stayed here and enjoyed the morning for a few hours before driving up through mountain pass's to get a glimpse of the ocean high above on cliffs, your really must see the pictures. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words and everyone of them would be descriptive. Drove back into town had some breakfast and picked up the rest of the crew to head back to Taipei.

I have a huge power point presentation to do this week for about 30 doctors in the hospital so I started it when I arrived back home. I have never used power point before so had no idea where to start, Renee came over as she apparently had experience....well I beg to differ, I got nothing done this night we didn't figure out what to do till it was late and I had no motivation to do anymore work.

Well its finally almost Wednesday, the presentation is tomorrow. I am no longer nervous about this as I have met most of the Doctors and interns now and they are all super awesome!! I must say I feel like a rock star haha as all they ever do is swarm me and talk to me, but in a friendly non creepy kinda way so I am totally diggin it cus You can never have to many global friends!! So I went over the presentation with them today and they told me that I made it to professional and in depth and because of the language barrier they will not be able to follow the medical terminology and what not.......really!!! I spent along time on this haha but I can see there point so I spent tonight trying to make it more fun and less work, hopefully they will enjoy learning about Canada and myself as opposed to my training and school. In there words they all ready know I am highly skilled from watching me, However the board at the hospital is curious as to what our program is like so I will try to incorporate both. I do have an hour after all shheeeeesh.

Ok I think I have noted most of my experiences, I will update if anymore come to mind. I am slightly sick and need to review my presentation so I must go now, but again thanks for reading! see you all soon!! I have also not re-read this blog so have fun reading it!! If you got through it and are reading this message I congratulate you! here's a cookie.....

Chris