I AMsterdam

forgot to include a photograph

Wow, i really can't express how quickly time has gone by. i thought i had just recently posted an update, however, it's been three weeks. tomorrow is my last day at my praktikum, and as is custom for such an event, i baked a treat to bring for everyone. being an american, i figured it would be a good (and easy) plan to make chocolate chip (or chuck in my case) cookies. What have i been doing? some of the interesting things include observing various procedures in the hospital (e.g., the meter long butt-cam) and i have been allowed to perform/assist by several. the other day, i punctured the belly skin and pumped 4L of built up liquid surrounding the intestines- sort of gross, but totally cool. Another interesting thing that i did was go to Amsterdam. There i enjoyed the beauty of this historic city as well as many museums.

Another update

Praktikum

In February i started my internship in Marien Krankenhaus, Bergisch Gladbach, on the orthopedic station. My experience on this station was very positive, and i feel that it gave me a good introduction to patient care. I stayed on the orthopedic station until the first or second week in March, then i moved to the station for inner medicine. To say the least, this was a shock. At the time, a noro-virus was going around, and my first day was spent up to my elbows in foul-smelling diarrhea. Thank God, this virus went away! My time on the station for inner medicine has allowed me a more intensive view of patient care, especially for difficult to care for patients. It turns out, i really enjoy what i've been doing- despite the not-so-pleasant sides of nursing. Unfortunately, there is a death about every week, and this is sometimes a little bit sad. For the last three or so weeks of my praktikum, i should have the opportunity to observe a few surgeries and procedures, and will continue working on the station for inner medicine.

why haven't i posted anything in a while? quick summary before i have to go again.

Last week i was in berlin- seminars, sight-seeing, enjoying the company of other people, and, for a small minority of the time, sleeping. This past week i started my internship at the Marienkrankenhaus here in Bergisch-Gladbach. I have been working the morning shift, and this means that i need to wake up very early (4:45) in order to catch a bus and make it work on time. Needless to say, i am very tired after work and go to bed very early, except for last night. Last night i had the opportunity to attend a karnival sitzung with my neighbors, and we didn't get home until 0100. This left me with a nice catnap before waking up for work. This weekend i will be enjoying the more-than-likely last winter vacation of this year for me in Winterberg. i want to take a nap, so i think i will do that before i 

hope for the future

sometimes we may doubt the competence of today's youth. how is the future going to look with these truly creative geniuses?

 

as the someone in the don bosco club put it, they made an especially manly snowman.

While i still have plenty to write about from Christmas and New Years, i thought that i would fill you in on what i've been doing more recently. I decided in December that i did not want to continue in the school after winter break, which meant that i had a two and a half week period between the end of winter break and a seminar in Berlin. I decided that i wanted to spend this time doing a mini-praktikum at the Don Bosco Club in Köln-Mülheim. This is an interesting borough of Köln. In the last sixty years it was a booming industrial center with many factory positions. To fulfill these positions, many guest workers (Italians, Greeks, and Turks) were brought in. However, these factories were closed in more recent times (last twenty years?). This left a large, un-educated population living in very close quarters (there is an old army barracks that was converted into housing after the second World War. fifty thousand people lived in these barracks, which is probably on a piece of property the size of two football fields). This inevitably created a cycle of poverty to which drugs and violence are natural. What i do is volunteer in a youth center, a safe haven if you will, for the kids to have a chance to be kids. Essentially, i play games all day. it is extremely fun. We play monopoly, risk, pool, kicker, soccer, ping pong, connect four, and much, much more. Even though the kids try to BS me all the time on rules, i still show them who's boss. Actually, they'll walk all over you if you let them. It's not all fun and games, but the majority of it is. 

First off, I must apologize for being less than attentive in my  blog posts. I tend to use the internet at night, and often I neglect writing and/or speaking to my mother, and instead i go to bed. Never the less, now I have lots to write about, but one step at a time.

Advent

The two biggest traditions that I observed in advent season are advent’s calendars and advent’s wreaths. We (in Monroe at least) are familiar with the chocolate advent’s calendars. Here, there was a much greater variety of calendars available. Many people had home made advent’s calendars. These were pretty simple, consisting of little, numbered pockets on a larger surface. Another variation I saw was a paper calendar. It was about as exciting as it sounds. Instead of a piece of chocolate behind the flap, there was a picture. [Sarcasm]I know that would have motivated me a child to count down the days before Christmas.[end sarcasm] The advent’s wreath is four candles (for the four Sundays of Advent) arranged in a wreath composed of coniferous greenery. Also in this pre-Christmas period, it is obligatory to bake enough cookies to feed the family and neighbors for a month in the case that you’re snowed in and all other food mysteriously becomes inedible. Ok, so maybe not that many cookies, but the fact remains, that I spent an entire day slaving away in the kitchen baking delicious cookies. One type of cookie was a hazelnut-spritz-cookie, another was an almond-spritz-cookie, and the third was a normal sugar cookie. Delicious