Cyle's Birthday

We made it through the night without any more spider sightings! Our train ride back to Surin was early on Sunday morning, so we were back in time for lunch. Cyle went to get his birthday massage, which was half off, and we decided to be productive and go to the laundromat. (By laundromat, we mean eight washers that are randomly placed on the sidewalk.)

(Here's the spider from the last post...nobody wanted to get close enough to use their hand for a size comparison.)

For dinner, we met up with the new child care volunteers and met the one new medical volunteer who is with us this week. Cyle was surprised when a cake was brought out to him for dessert. Garrett and Nicky had gone to a famous bakery in Surin, and after eating we realized why it was so famous. The rest of the night consisted of playing cards before bed, as this is turning into a nightly ritual.

Yesterday the clinic was pretty slow, and we did most of the work on ourselves. Garrett needed his foot cleaned and re-bandaged, Kelsey was beginning to have a sore throat so we diagnosed her with a common cold/allergies, and we think Patrick has traveler's diarrhea from something he ate on his weekend trip. We are all being even more careful to wash our hands now because he seems very sick. Before the day was over we did see a few more patients for wound care and diagnosis. 

After clinic, our leader Wi joined us all at the exercise park, and a few of us rented bikes for 20 baht for an hour! We got our workouts done just in time before a pretty strong downpour started, then met Wi again at a nearby restaurant for dinner. We had been to this restaurant before, but it was much better this time with Wi's help ordering our food and with the owner there to cook. After another satisfying meal, we returned to the house to play cards with two of the new child care volunteers.

Today has been another relatively slow day in the clinic, but we have seen some interesting cases. There were a couple of mystery bug bites/cases of edema, an eye condition that we had never heard of, an ear problem, an allergy to a popular Thai fruit, and a woman who had her staples from a C-section removed. We also finally took the time to explore the temple across the street, and Wi explained some small Buddhist symbols to us!