is-salaam alaykum

Saturday, 02 September 2006

Location: Home-Cyprus, Cyprus

Hey there folks, hope you are all doing well.

We are having a great time in Cyprus, swimming and chilling out, it's been great! Went to Nicosia the other night to visit some people who used to work in the Naz hospital, H and D - was great to talk Naz for a bit! Last night we had a barbecue with some people my dad works with, that was good too, always nice to meet people.

Today we are planning a wee trip to Lefkara, where they make the lace, just for a spot of sightseeing, then tonight we are going to a picnic just outside Larnaka which is an inter-church event or something - it's actually a farewell for my dad's predecessor who is leaving soon. Then tomorrow, we will go to Paphos to see the sights and so my parents can meet up with my dad's very first boss, will be strange to see them again!

So lots happening in a nice and relaxing way - it's much hotter here than in Naz (if such a thing is possible!) - in Nicosia it gets up to about 43'C during the day but is quite pleasant at night, but here on the coast it's pretty much mid 30's all the time, doesn't drop much at night. So loving the air-con and taking it easy!

Will try and take a few photos to prove we are still alive!

Jx

Tuesday, 29 August 2006

Location: Larnaka, Cyprus

Well kids, looks like our elective has drawn to a close...it went so fast! We'll continue to post until we get back to sunny Dundee and will add some photies if we can find any in all the messy packing...

Currently in boiling Larnaka, arrived this morning after leaving Netanya at a stupid hour and being put through the ringer at BG airport security - 'why are you here? No, really, why are you here?' (griller then asks Aaron in Hebrew why we are really here, I resist the urge to say 'fine then, I won't come and see your gorgeous country and work in your hospital and treat your bomb victims, leave me alone!') follower by much bag MRI-ing and searches...but we got here in the end. Tis very very very hot, we slept for a few hours in nice air-con, now recovering and wishing we could sleep again really!

CM is back in Naz for another week, and Aaron is, as I write, on a plane home, so our merry group has disbanded - we had a great laugh and got on really well.

Will be here in Larnaka til next thursday, then back to the motherland to start term. Hope you are all well, I'm going to drink more water!

Jx

Sunday, 27 August 2006

Location: Netanya, Israel

Hello people, hope you are enjoying the new photos put up today by CR - sorry for lack of posts this week, we've been very busy in our last week in Naz!

On wednesday we were invited to Aaron's boss' (H) house for dinner - H has a massive family, 10 brothers and a sister, and they all live in various levels of the same house which was built by their parents over several decades - people here quite frequently get married and live in one room, and over their married life build their houses around them - patience is a virtue! The meal was delicious, though poor Aaron was tortured a bit ('Aaron, you must eat, you are a man not a bird!'), and it was really nice to meet some of the family. H has a small neice (my namesake!) who at the age of 5 and a half can sing perfectly in tune in Arabic, Hebrew, English and Italian - impressive! Anyway, we ate a lot and had some great company and it was really enjoyable.

The next night, we were invited to CM's distant in-laws' house for a meal - her second cousin grew up in Naz and married an Israeli girl, it was her parents' house - CM's auntie is a fabulous cook, and we were advised to starve for a while before dinner, but CM told us a dirty great lie and said that after the soup all the food would be put out at once, so we happily munched our way through lots of salads and pitta and little meaty things, and just as we were feeling comfortably full, out came the 3rd course of chicken and rice with lebenah (cooked yoghurt), followed by fruit, followed by Arabic sweet cake, followed by ice lollies! We were all in pain! I managed to pass on the last 2 courses but still it was a painful but delicious experience!

On friday morning Aaron's ward had a breakfast party for him, with big Arabic bread things which are cut up and eaten like pizza - though none of us could eat much, still stuffed from last night! Was really nice to go around saying farewell, but we'll miss the staff we've got to know. At lunch time we got a taxi to Netanya, where we'd visited a few weekends ago, but this time Aaron's grandmother's flat was empty and available for us to use - it's right on the beach, literally just across the road, and it's a gorgeous flat, recently redone. It's a kosher flat, which means no meat and milk can mix - there are different sets of everything in the kitchen, including cutlery, glasses, pots, pans, crockery - if you have dairy products in a meal you can't have meat within 3 hours, and vice versa, so we've been enjoying creating various kosher meals!

Aaron's friend Adam joined us on friday for Shabbat - he's a med student from Manchestr Uni, just starting his elective in Jsalem. He's Jewish too, but a bit more observant than our Aaron, so we kept Shabbat fairly properly - an interesting experience! Adam's really nice and fitted in with our well-formed group instantly - we did feel quite sorry for him though, all four of us seem to have developed what we think is giardiasis (hideous diarrhoea for all you non-medics!) but we hope is just a virus, probably caught when swimming in the pool in the Golan which smelled suspiciously like dead sheep - so none of us are currently at our best, but Adam took it all in his stride and seemed to like us anyway!

Today we are a bit better, still feeling very washed out and still visiting the bathroom on the hour (at best), so we're staying close by the flat! Tomorrow we are planning to stay close to home too - CM will go back to Naz for another few days, and CR, Aaron and I will go to Tel Aviv airport and fly to our various destinations - Aaron back to Oxford for his term starting this week, and CR and me to Cyprus to spend a week or so with the parents.

Things I will miss about Israel:
Aaron - we've become quite close in the past 6 weeks, it will be horrible not to have him around any more, but we are planning to keep in touch.
Sunsets - stunning here, and every night they repeat just as beautifully
Food - delicious and plentiful!
Other people we have met - staff and other people from Naz, they've been great

Things I will not miss about Israel:
Looking the wrong way when crossing the road, no matter how much I think about it before!
Being hot all the time - 4-shower days are common
Mosquitos - yuk
Various nasty bugs - giardiasis, ringworm...yuk yuk yuk!

Enough for now I think, it's about half 8 and we are planning a wee skinny-dip in the med in the dark! Hope you are all well, will write again when in Cyprus.

love Jx

Monday, 21 August 2006

Location: Israel

Oh!
Have just read Jo's post and all her promises of more photos but I've left them up at our flat so I will try to put them up tomorrow- sorry. Have not got much to add to Jo's detailed account of our trip, except for my jelly sandle incidents! I didn't have any shoes for gorge walking in gullan heights bought my first pair of jelly sandles at the age of 22! and then promptly lost one in the sea of Galilee! (Its sill floating about there somewhere..) Luckly Jo and her super long sighted contact lenses, spotted a pair in a passing shop at 11pm on our way back from our amazing chinese meal, so all was well and I completed the gullan walk all in one piece with both Jelly sandles intact!

Our whole road trip was great fun and sharing a youth hostel with a batallion of soilders back from Lebanon definately added to the breakfast in Israel experience! The hostel was guarded all night so we were definately in one of the safest places! The walk in the gullan was great, was a bit scary at parts (climbing down beside a waterfall on metal rings!) but was great fun and the leaflet about walking in the gullan was not your typical tourist leaflet with pictures of mines to watch out for rather than rare birds or cute fluffy animals!! We had to put everything in plastic bags and swim across pools along with various groups of teenagers who kept us entertained! I'm afraid we don't have any photos of the walk though- as a camera would have involved too many plastic bag layers! Anyway It's great that we've been able to travel north before the end of our trip and hopefully we can do some more next weekend too! Hmm I'm getting used to this whole blog thing now!..will be in touch!
Catherine

Monday, 21 August 2006

Location: naz again, Israel

Oh apparently the photos did work after all...CR's coming soon. Jx

Monday, 21 August 2006

Location: naz, Israel

Hello people! We are back in Naz once again after a fun-filled weekend road trip around G*lilee and the Golan Heights! We hired a car (all power to Aaron for driving a right-hand automatic for the first time and not crashing it!) and set off on saturday morning to do a spot of sight-seeing north east of here.

First stop was T*berias, which, because of Shabbat, was pretty quiet - also it was hit pretty badly in the war so was almost completely devoid of tourists, except for us I suppose! We pottered along the pier (photos available, CR's are better but I forgot to bring her camera down to the computer and she's gone to Arabic lesson so I'll do it soon!) and had lunch at a restaurant right on the water - Aaron ate a St Peter's fish, which was actually just a big grilled fish with eyes and teeth and everything - those of you who know how I feel about fish can guess my reaction! Got back in the car and drove on a bit further to Kafur Nahum where there's a ruined synagogue where Jesus apparently preached, and the ruins of what we are told was Peter's house (do I sound skeptical?! Just wasn't aware that they built houses with stone then!) - very hot there but lovely new church built which was nice to sit in out of the sun!

Carried on round the lake, stopping occasionally for sightseeing at the River Jordan (somewhat smaller than expected but with much wildlife, including otters, crabs, fish and a turtle!), photo opportunities and a spot of skinny dipping in the sea of G*alilee (one to tell the grandchildren! Before the oldies/parents out there go 'oh my, the youth of today' may we remind you that you were students in the 60's!), then found our hostel in one of the towns near the lake - seemed to be us plus a huge number of s*ldiers on rest from Leb, lots of guns at the breakfast table! Went out for dinner at a fabulous Chinese restausant (Kosher, believe it or not) which was recommended by 2 independent sources and which lived up to all expectations!

On sunday we went on a hike in the Golan Heights, in the Yehudiyya River - basically you park at the information centre and get a wee talk from the guides about how not to step on landmines and not to pick up bullets, and about how some of the hike actually involved climbing down a 10-metre cliff face and swimming across a pool (no way of walking - wonderful for getting over phobias - heights for CM and Aaron, water that you can't see the bottom of for Joey!), then we packed up and hiked away into the gorge! It's a few hundred feet deep, which is exciting when you are starting the walk and going down, and gutting when you get to the end and are exhausted but realise you have to climb back up again! Much tramping over rocks was done, plus the obligatory swimming and waterproofing of all our stuff with bin bags - we were soaking wet for about 6 hours in total I think! Brilliant walk if totally exhausting, we all feel quite stiff today (perhaps with the exception of Aaron, who seems to be part mountain-goat) and my feet feel like I put them through a cheese grater - many scratches and much swelling!

All in all a great weekend had by everyone! Well done Aaron for overcoming his fear of driving in Israel too! Have just tried to upload photos and the stupid thing won't work, so might just wait for CR to get back and use hers - they are better anyway! No pictures of the Golan I'm afraid as we weren't sure how waterproof our rucksacks were going to end up and didn't want hundreds of pounds worth of soggy cameras to deal with!

Hope you are all well, photos coming soon I promise. Jx

Friday, 18 August 2006

Location: Israel

Hi all!
Jo has finally persuaded me to leave a small note and let you all know that I do actually exist and I'm here in Nazareth too! Its week 5 of 6 now and I'm really enjoying it, although time has gone so fast! I was given a bit of a strange timetable with my first week in General medicine, the next 2 in Obs and Gynae and then the rest back in General med/ A&E again. Our usual day consists of going in for 8.30 to help take the bloods, drinking arabic coffee (expressos with cardamon in it-they're tasty and wake you up!) and then going on the ward round. In the afternoon we hang around A&E where there's usually a lot happening (except for yesterday) and occasionally get asked to do things. There's also a few other medical students around. There's a girl who studys in Italy, a first year studying in Hungry and a dentistry student studying in Prague. The doctors are quite happy to teach us all which is great! We're going to rent a car this afternoon and go to Tiberias by the sea of Galilee tomorrow. Not to scare anyone but this could be the most dangerous thing we've done yet! Apparently the death rate went down in Israel when the rockets first started landing, as less people were driving than normal! Anyway, hope you're all well and doing ok! Will try posting again another time soon!
Catherine

Wednesday, 16 August 2006

Location: naz, Israel

Quite an interesting afternoon yesterday, CR and I went to the emergency room (called miyoon in hebrew) to see what was going on - there was a guy with a nail through his finger, which was quite exciting! They had the xray up on the other side of the room and I just thought it was a broken finger which had been fixed with a Kirshner wire or something - i.e. a review film, so wasn't too impressed, till Catherine realised I was missing the point and pointed out the nail end! How dim I am sometimes! Anyway, the patient was a carpenter (good profession for a town like this I hear) and had a nail gun which had gone astray a bit - was nice and easy to remove once had established that he has missed the bone - a good shot, apparently! There was also a young guy who had managed to sit on/stab himself in the butt with a large piece of iron which would have been quite interesting to see, but we were unceremoniously removed from the room because the patient 'was too shy' to have women looking at his injured rear! Fair enough, but first time I've been thrown out for being a girl!

Am aware that you must be getting the impression that all we do is eat, but the reason I end each post with 'must eat' is that we usually have a wee lull before lunch (if I have managed to drag myself in before then!) and so do all the posting then, so we are eating meals, not just eating because we are greedy! Just to clear that up!

Hope you are all well, have a good day. Jx

Tuesday, 15 August 2006

Location: Naz, Israel

Well, our wee death certificate lady is still with us...would love to call her doctor and yell at him but Arabic/Hebrew not good enough! Interminable ward round today with not much English being spoken, but one of the nurses is actually a doctor but doesn't have the right paperwork (how frustrating must that be?!?) and he was explaining stuff which was good. He likes to shout at Aaron though which is less good :-(

Yesterday afternoon CR and I went into town to do some travellers' cheque changing, and I bought a gorgeous wee sheshbesh board - we went to our regular haunt cafe (the owner is really nice and looks like Dr Iannis from the Captain Corelli's Mandolin film!) and played a few games while having a drink and some bakrawa (yummy). Was really nice to have a wee outing, even if we did have to walk up the evil hill on the way home - probably good after bakrawa!

Have decided I need an attitude change, although am not quite sure how I'm going to get it - just have an intractable case of the can't-be-bothereds at the moment - don't know quite what's caused it, maybe a combination of never quite getting enough sleep, bed being way to comfortable, nobody actually noticing if I turn up or not, not understanding much (my fault entirely), and very long ward rounds! Bloods are done at half 8 on our ward, an the rounds start at more like half 9, and I'm afraid I don't feel strongly enough about taking bloods to lose the extra hour in bed! Starting to feel bad about it though, especially because CM is always out of the house at 8am sharp, CR is more dilligent than me, and today Aaron said 'I don't mean this in an accusing way, but why don't you come in earlier?!' - note to self: must try harder!

Going to eat soon which will help my motivation no end. Hope you are all well. Jx