Medicina en Paraguay

Hi all, this is Tyler writing this week’s blog post! I’ve had almost 5 weeks to prepare for this and nothing to show for it, so bear with me! It’s hard to believe that we have less than a week left in Jataity! It seems such a short time since we all were worried about how we would get along with our host families. Now with only a few days left, our worries have shifted to how we are supposed to thank and say farewell to these wonderful families that so graciously opened their homes, shared their meals, and gave us their time to make us feel welcome here in the campña.                 This past week was a busy one for all of us! It seems like more and more people come for consults in the clinic the longer that this warm weather sticks around. We’ve consistently had 10-15 people per day and with all of those patients have come lots of new experiences and learning opportunities for the team. On Thursday J...

   The morning we left the States I remember having the thought, "goodbye comfort zone."      When we arrived in Asuncion, after stumbling through purchasing a multi-entry visa and customs in Spanish, a few of us learned our luggage was not going to arrive until the next day. The man who was attempting to help us get our luggage soon realized the ignorance of our plans for the next six weeks. "Do you know how long you will be in Asuncion?"  "No, not a clue." "Do you know where you are staying tonight?" "Uh..no" "What about your final destination?" "Hmm, wherever the McKissicks live...so not really."    Thankfully one of us had Dr. Jeff's number to give him and we were able to laugh about us being in a foreign country and being pretty much oblivious to what we were going to do for the next six weeks.    Since then we have been here in Paraguay a little over a month. The days are flying by and I'm ...

Alright, second attempt at writing the introduction. First one felt a little forced and I was typing it on my phone. Now I’m writing it in my notebook so that it’s a little more personal. Hopefully, knowing that this post was originally handwritten warms your heart. If not, then well maybe baby goats will! Boom second intro done. Jury is still out on if it was successful or not. This was an action-packed week and it flew by. The sun decided to make an appearance and stay for a while so naturally the response was to sing the doxology. Being the true epitome of eloquence, Megan reflected, “the sun is warm.” Detective level work there Megan. The sun means soccer, volleyball, and lots of patients (because the roads are functioning). We had 12 patients on Friday and 12 yesterday, not to mention a lot of OB visits.   It’s always fun to see healthy babies via ultrasound.  Visiting with Amy was also an adventure. We got to visit what I like to call the Jataity zoo. This famil...

I know, I know. the title looks like a fist full of letters randomly drawn for a new game of Scrabble. Here in Paraguay, it's a formal greeting, a way of saying "hello, how is life?" I'll go ahead and answer by saying the T.I.M.E. team is doing great! By this point, many of us have passed the overwhelming bits of culture shock and we're constantly absorbing more of the routines, rituals, and habits of Paraguay as we go. Our bodies and minds are slowly settling into the the Paraguayan culture that we dove headfirst into a little under two weeks ago (but not without some hilarious hiccups along the way)! The language barrier is in full swing, and so communication with the locals and our host families consists of formal greetings, rudimentary sentences of Guarani and Spanish pieced together, and the universally understood language of hand gesture and miming. The part-time miming gig often gets us more laughs than our attempts at speaking Guarani, and Google Translate...