Madness (and a few jokes)
I wish that I could acurately describe how these past fews days as a Team Global member have been. They've been interesting, that's for sure, but they've also been tiring and difficult and laugh-out-loud funny. No matter how the rest of this week goes, I'm sure that it will all be very rewarding in the end.
Today I spent a good deal of my time tracking down students. Every new student had been given a schedule showing exactly when and where they are supposed to be, but words on a paper can be hard to enforce. At 8:40 a.m. many of the students had not shown up; I went with a group to Baridon to knock on doors. At 9 a.m. my group members were not on time for the campus tour; I used my walkie-talkie expertise to try to find them. At 10 a.m. only half of my groupies had come for their TB test; 4 of us fruitlessly perused 2 different dorms to find them. At 11 a.m. the students had already wandered off and I had to find them to give them their meal tickets...and on and on and on....
But, in between the choas, I managed to meet several interesting people from far-away lands such as Aruba, Belguim, India, Honduras, and Nepal. We talked about everything from tsunamis to religion.
Some comical languages mistakes have arisen where the medical forms are concerned. For instance, a rather large group of students unknowingly checked that they were HIV positive. Even funnier, a boy responed "yes" to a question that he thought was asking, "Did you eat breakfast?" The question was actually asking, "Are you breast feeding?"
More stories to come!
Today I spent a good deal of my time tracking down students. Every new student had been given a schedule showing exactly when and where they are supposed to be, but words on a paper can be hard to enforce. At 8:40 a.m. many of the students had not shown up; I went with a group to Baridon to knock on doors. At 9 a.m. my group members were not on time for the campus tour; I used my walkie-talkie expertise to try to find them. At 10 a.m. only half of my groupies had come for their TB test; 4 of us fruitlessly perused 2 different dorms to find them. At 11 a.m. the students had already wandered off and I had to find them to give them their meal tickets...and on and on and on....
But, in between the choas, I managed to meet several interesting people from far-away lands such as Aruba, Belguim, India, Honduras, and Nepal. We talked about everything from tsunamis to religion.
Some comical languages mistakes have arisen where the medical forms are concerned. For instance, a rather large group of students unknowingly checked that they were HIV positive. Even funnier, a boy responed "yes" to a question that he thought was asking, "Did you eat breakfast?" The question was actually asking, "Are you breast feeding?"
More stories to come!