a looong trip and an even longer first day
22 June 2007
After a quick flight from Madison to Chicago this morning we settled into our 13 hour Chicago - Tokyo flight this afternoon. The most entertaining part of the flight was one of the snacks, when we were served ramen. I found this particularly amusing because we all got our noodle cups, then we had to open them and wait for the flight attendants to pour boiling water into them, then they had to sit on our tray tables and wait for a few minutes. Turbulence, anyone?
The plane was showing Freedom Writers, which was good, but not great. Sort of an overdone topic and MTV didn't add any new insights. I managed to doze for chunks of the flight, which made it slightly more bearable. I was also sitting next to a real jerk of a guy who made me climb/jump over him when I wanted to get up because he was too lazy to get up for me. (I should note that every other minute he was up walking around the plane so it wasn't getting up that was the problem)
We were delayed in the Narita (Tokyo) airport for an extra three hours, so we wandered around the airport getting food and trying to stay awake. The airport was very clean and the people working security were so much nicer than they are in the US. My favorite part of the airport was the Hagendaz vending machine. After a 6 hour flight to Bangkok we cleared customs (after all the stress they didn't even stamp my visa!) and collected our luggage. We were picked up by drivers working for the university and delivered to our hotel close to 4am local time (4pm the following day Madison time)
23 June 2007
After too short a night Rachel and I packed up our stuff to drop in a classmate's room (something about having to make a room change because our room didn't have a key... we never really did figure out what the problem was) and grabbed a quick breakfast. The vans that would become a constant figure in our trip met us at the hotel and took us to Mahidol University, for our first day of classes. We took a group photo and learned about the history of public health at Mahidol. Everyone was exhausted and jet lagged, and it was hard to sit and listen. We took lots of breaks for coffee and bathrooms, but as the day wore on it become more and more difficult to focus.
Thailand is an interesting country because they have health problems of both developing and developed countries. Examples include hypertension and diabetes but also infectious diseases. Faculty at the university are concerned about the role media and pop culture play in health and worry that health education is not successfully integrated into school curricula because teachers lack appropriate knowledge and training. Thailand has a universal, integrated health care system with many levels of differentiation. District level hospitals work with village health care centers and villages have what are called village health volunteers - individuals who talk with members of the village about their health concerns, then meet with health care professionals and other volunteers, then report back to their communities with the information they've learned. I thought this was a really neat system - not only does it give the community ownership of their health care, but it pools the resources of other volunteers and health center staff to brainstorm solutions. Sounds like a good system to me.
We had a delicious lunch and then went outside for a little walk during our break. Of course we got lost and couldn't find our way back to building #7 from the inside of the Faculty of Public Health compound. We wandered around for a bit before we ran into someone who spoke English, who took us to find one of the women who had been with us in the morning. We interrupted some kind of initiation ceremony to have her escort us over two buildings. YEAH AMERICANS!
By this point in the trip I was already feeling frustrated with the behavior of some individuals in the group (notably the medical students) specifically in regards to privilege and homophobia. This would turn out to be a trend for the trip.
I made a note to myself, which I now need to go back and check, to find out of as much attention is being focused on health care for undeserved populations in Madison. The Center for Global Health has three different exchange programs and a Global Health Certificate, but does anyone look at the other side of things?
After our marathon day of introductory classes we were taken to a welcome dinner put on my the university. I was seated immediately next to the dean which was unfortunate because I was too tired and too hot to eat or say much during the night. We ate at a classy restaurant on a pier and got to watch a cool lightening storm as well as all kinds of boats shooting by. All I could focus on, however, was getting back to the hotel to sleep for a bit.
After a quick flight from Madison to Chicago this morning we settled into our 13 hour Chicago - Tokyo flight this afternoon. The most entertaining part of the flight was one of the snacks, when we were served ramen. I found this particularly amusing because we all got our noodle cups, then we had to open them and wait for the flight attendants to pour boiling water into them, then they had to sit on our tray tables and wait for a few minutes. Turbulence, anyone?
The plane was showing Freedom Writers, which was good, but not great. Sort of an overdone topic and MTV didn't add any new insights. I managed to doze for chunks of the flight, which made it slightly more bearable. I was also sitting next to a real jerk of a guy who made me climb/jump over him when I wanted to get up because he was too lazy to get up for me. (I should note that every other minute he was up walking around the plane so it wasn't getting up that was the problem)
We were delayed in the Narita (Tokyo) airport for an extra three hours, so we wandered around the airport getting food and trying to stay awake. The airport was very clean and the people working security were so much nicer than they are in the US. My favorite part of the airport was the Hagendaz vending machine. After a 6 hour flight to Bangkok we cleared customs (after all the stress they didn't even stamp my visa!) and collected our luggage. We were picked up by drivers working for the university and delivered to our hotel close to 4am local time (4pm the following day Madison time)
23 June 2007
After too short a night Rachel and I packed up our stuff to drop in a classmate's room (something about having to make a room change because our room didn't have a key... we never really did figure out what the problem was) and grabbed a quick breakfast. The vans that would become a constant figure in our trip met us at the hotel and took us to Mahidol University, for our first day of classes. We took a group photo and learned about the history of public health at Mahidol. Everyone was exhausted and jet lagged, and it was hard to sit and listen. We took lots of breaks for coffee and bathrooms, but as the day wore on it become more and more difficult to focus.
Thailand is an interesting country because they have health problems of both developing and developed countries. Examples include hypertension and diabetes but also infectious diseases. Faculty at the university are concerned about the role media and pop culture play in health and worry that health education is not successfully integrated into school curricula because teachers lack appropriate knowledge and training. Thailand has a universal, integrated health care system with many levels of differentiation. District level hospitals work with village health care centers and villages have what are called village health volunteers - individuals who talk with members of the village about their health concerns, then meet with health care professionals and other volunteers, then report back to their communities with the information they've learned. I thought this was a really neat system - not only does it give the community ownership of their health care, but it pools the resources of other volunteers and health center staff to brainstorm solutions. Sounds like a good system to me.
We had a delicious lunch and then went outside for a little walk during our break. Of course we got lost and couldn't find our way back to building #7 from the inside of the Faculty of Public Health compound. We wandered around for a bit before we ran into someone who spoke English, who took us to find one of the women who had been with us in the morning. We interrupted some kind of initiation ceremony to have her escort us over two buildings. YEAH AMERICANS!
By this point in the trip I was already feeling frustrated with the behavior of some individuals in the group (notably the medical students) specifically in regards to privilege and homophobia. This would turn out to be a trend for the trip.
I made a note to myself, which I now need to go back and check, to find out of as much attention is being focused on health care for undeserved populations in Madison. The Center for Global Health has three different exchange programs and a Global Health Certificate, but does anyone look at the other side of things?
After our marathon day of introductory classes we were taken to a welcome dinner put on my the university. I was seated immediately next to the dean which was unfortunate because I was too tired and too hot to eat or say much during the night. We ate at a classy restaurant on a pier and got to watch a cool lightening storm as well as all kinds of boats shooting by. All I could focus on, however, was getting back to the hotel to sleep for a bit.