Skew Skewin' in Surin

Our next day was our travel day to Surin, which was mildly uncomfortable to say the least. We were excited to take elaborate mini vans at first, but the 7 hour train ride after was not as luxurious. But we made it! We are staying in one of Starfish's two guest houses with 11 others. There are 6 girls from UConn School of Medicine, a guy from Notre Dame (which was very exciting for Kelsey) and 4 girls from Scotland who are living with us and doing medical volunteering. The second house is full of the volunteers doing the child care project. Our wifi is shared between the houses and only 5 of us can be on at a time, which is why we have been limited so far (sorry family and friends). Surin is a bigger town than we imagined, and our house has food stands, restaurants, a 711, thai massage place, Big C (walmart equivalent), gym, and exercise park very closeby. There are also nightly markets and other shops a few miles away. 

Our first day volunteering consisted of being in the community clinic (the bright pink building above) in the morning and going to schools for vaccinations in the afternoon. The clinic serves around 7000 people and is used mostly for primary care, dentistry and hospital referrals. We we were told just to observe our first day, so we saw school kids having a dentist check-up (with many cavities being filled), wound care and diagnosis.

After lunch at a local restaurant, which cost roughly $1 each, we drove to two schools to help prepare BCG and MMR vaccines before the nurses gave them to the very well-behaved kids.

We should mention that whenever we are driving anywhere, we are sitting on benches in the back of pickup trucks and going through the rural areas waving at all of the kids who stare at the strange white people. The kids are very amused by us and love to read our Thai name tags and say "bye bye" and "excuse me" (sometimes even an "I love you") as often as possible. They also swipe their nose & say "skew skew" laughing hysterically-the meaning is still a mystery.

Today was our second day in the clinic, so we got to clean and dress a couple of wounds. They have mostly been motorcycle or fieldwork accidents so far. We also saw our first case of hand, foot and mouth disease, which is pretty common in daycares here. After another delicious and cheap lunch, we went to two more schools for more vaccines. 

When we got back home we were excited to head across the street from the house to Cafe Amazon for some smoothies and good wifi to update the blog, but our hopes were dashed again with spotty wifi that none of us could connect to. We still enjoyed our drinks outside on the cafe's porch and witnessed our first downpour since arriving in Thailand-hello rainy season!