Words of Advice...

If you ever plan a trip to Taiwan, I have a few words of wisdom for you:

1. Carry tissue with you everywhere--public bathrooms often don't have TP

2. Learn to squat, because the toilets look like this:

Sometimes the public bathrooms there will be one regular toilet and the rest "squatters"--totally worth it to wait for the one regular one in my book.

3. Don't care that you sweat. The hospital and our rooms both had AC, but most places don't. You are constantly sweaty. All the time.

4. Expect a bad hair day every day.  Along with the heat is humidity, which for me means frizz.  So if you were wondering why I have a ponytail in all my pictures, it's because that's all I could do.

5. Learn to love firm mattresses.  The people believe that firm mattresses are better for your back-- which may be true, but I'm a soft mattress girl.

 These are the beds in the dorm we stayed in most of the time--and the thickest mattress I slept on the whole time.

6. If you hear something that sounds like an ice-cream truck.  It's not.  It's probably a garbage truck.  No joke--they play music.  Although I haven't figured out why.  I haven't seen anybody come running, garbage in hand, when they hear it!

7. Beware the red bean.  The Chinese love red beans and think that it's sweet.  They put it in desserts.  I've seen it in cakes.  I've even come across a red bean popsicle.

8.  Wear slip-on shoes.  It's polite to take your shoes off whenever you enter someone's home. I got really tired of un- and re- tying my white nursing shoes ten times a day.

9.  If you want to go to the 4th floor, look for the 'f'' button.  The number 4 is similar to the word for death in Chinese, so they think it's bad luck.

10. Practice your chopstick skills.  I only saw one fork the whole time I was there.

Finally... an important phrase: Shay shay boo yah--it means no thank you.  I was glad I knew it when offered a few foods I wasn't ambitious enough to try.

Taipei all the way!

We were planning on flying out of Taipei, so we decided we might as well spend a few days there and explore the city.

We went to the National Palace Museum.  It is a very famous museum and it's huge!  The most famous thing in the museum? A jade cabbage.  That's right, a cabbage.  It's not even very big, but we waited our turn to see it.  It was a very accurate representation of a cabbage, but I'm still not sure what the big fuss was about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadeite_Cabbage 
One of my favorite exhibits were some ivory miniatures.  The were impressive, some you even needed a microscope to see.  We also saw some beautiful calligraphy, bronze work, jade carvings, and some religious.  We didn't even make it through half of the museum.

We also went to the top of Taipei 101.  It's the second highest building in the world.  The viewing platform is on the 89th floor.  (There are 101 floors--I felt silly when I asked how many stories it is--it IS called Taipei 101).  The elevators inside are the fastest in the world.  It goes 1,010 m/min.  It took 37 seconds to go from the 5th floor to the 89th.  It was pretty cloudy so the view wasn't that great, but we were there in time to watch the sunset. If you're ever there, I'd recommend going around 6 pm--this way you get to see the view in the daytime, the sunset, and the lights at night.

I looked over the side of the stairwell and took a picture looking down.  Crazy!  You can't even see the bottom!


We visited the Chiang Kai-sheck Memorial, a monument dedicated to a former president of the president of the Republic of China.

We also got to do a session in the Taipei temple.

Saturday morning we left to head home.  30 hours later here I am.  Although I had tons of fun and learned a lot, there's no place like home :)

Time to hit the Beach!

We spent our third weekend in Kenting--a national park in the Southern tip of Taiwan.  It is known for it's gorgeous beaches and permanently sunny weather.  Unfortunately for us it rained.  The whole time.  I came here knowing full well that I would be here for the rainy season, but we thought that if we drove down to Kenting we could leave it behind.

We got there in the afternoon on Thursday and hit the beach anyway.

Friday we woke up  full of excitement, because the weather was supposed to be better.  Nope--rain, rain, rain.  We had plans to snorkel and went ahead with them anyway.  We decided to rent scooters too, to get around.  Our hostel was right on the beach, which was nice, but it was a little way from the main part of town.  I was a little nervous because the people here are crazy drivers, but we had so much fun, it was worth it.

Snorkeling was a blast.  The rain let up a little, so it was only sprinkling when we went.  We did a beach entry and swam above a coral reef.  I saw so many fish--I'm no good at naming them, but I can tell you it was just about everything from Finding Nemo.  The price was right too.  It was about 10 bucks to rent wet suits, snorkeling stuff, and have a guide take us out for the day.  Not bad.

Saturday we had to leave pretty early, but we decided to get up and take a scooter ride through the national park.   It was beautiful and the sun was shining.  At least our last few hours were sunny :)

Sunday Parade

 Last Sunday the nurses invited us to what they called a "temple party."  We weren't sure what quite to expect.  It turned out to be a celebration of the 100th anniversary.  Of what, we aren't quite sure.  I think it was the hundredth anniversary of one of the temples here.  It was like a parade but a little different.  People dressed up like different gods and walked from temple to temple.  The purpose of this was to invite the gods  to visit each temple.  When they got to the temple, they would do sort of a performance--some would bow, some would dance, some would sing.  They say that noise is important so that the gods can find the temples. Many of them play as they walk.  Sometimes they light off firecrackers after the presentation to make sure the gods hear it.   It was pretty noisy!  We tried to explain to them what a parade is like in the US.  They were surprised when we talked about throwing candy!

It's not that great of a video, but kind of gives you the idea of what it was like. They are carrying a god in a chair to present at the temple.

Weekend at Hualien

This past weekend was really fun. We went to a place called Hualien. It's a smaller city, but it was really nice. It's more of a tourist destination , so more people there spoke English, which is always really nice. I didn't quite know what to expect, this whole trip people have been asking, "Have you been to Hualien?" So now I can say, that yes, I have.

When there I stayed in my first hostel. They gave us one room with 5 bunk beds that all nine of us piled into. It wasn't bad. We had a community bathroom for the whole floor. It was actually kind of fun to have all of us in the same room.

Our first day we spent hiking in Taroko Gorge. We hired a taxi to drive us around for the day. It ended up costing about $70 US dollars for the day for all of us. Totally worth it. They drove us first to what they call the Bridge of 100 lions because there are 100 marble lions carved into it.

Almost all of the gorge is made of marble, so there is a lot of marble all throughout Hualien. For example, many of the sidewalks are paved with chunks of marble. Next to the bridge is the start of a hiking trail. There also was a sign that made me kind of nervous.

I guess we were in a rainforest, after all! I was on the look out for bees the whole time! We hiked for quite a while. The area is in an Aboriginal reserve--something similar to our Indian reservations. We past a couple of spots that looked like they were farming, but out of respect we weren't allowed to leave the trail.

After hiking the drivers drove us around to major spots along the gorge that we explored. They were things like look out points, shrines, and we even stopped at one Buddhist temple.

One evening we went to the market and walked around and got souvenirs which was fun. Hualien also is famous for having a stone market which we went to one night. I splurged and bought myself a jade bracelet. All the nurses here wear jade. It is supposed to bring luck and protect them from disease. I just think it's beautiful. The stone market was really cool. Besides having tons of jade, they also have a ton of other stones which were fun to look at. In between all the shops there was a stage where later in the evening we were able to see a performance. Some aborigines came and performed traditional dances. It was really interesting to watch. On some of the songs they came to the audience and invited some of us to dance with them. I'm such a bad dancer though... I don't think I figured out what the steps were until the song was over.

This picture isn't that great, but you can sort of see me in the back wearing blue

It was a wonderful weekend. I could never get over how beautiful everything was around me--the trees, the water, the mountains, the warm rain. It was great.

Clinicals!

The other day Matt asked me what I'm actually doing here. He said, "you only talk about the fun stuff!" So I thought it was about time to post something about it. It's true--we are doing our fair share of tourism, but three days a week are spent doing nursing things.

I just finished my first two weeks. With 4 weeks total here we spend two doing community nursing and two in the hospital in an oncology unit. Community nursing has been quite interesting. The nurses drive to each patient's home and we take care of whatever the particular patient needs. Most of the time we do things like put in NG tubes or change catheters.

Me putting an NG tube in

The nurses visit most patients about 2 times a month. The doctors visit about once every two months. A couple of times I was able to be there when the doctor did rounds. Afterwards he took us out to lunch.

Taiwan has a universal health care system that covers almost all of its residents. From what I've seen this really simplifies things a lot. The nurses know how much each visit costs the patient and the patients pay right then in cash.

I was really impressed with how strong family ties are here. Rarely are people put in nursing homes. Some people would be in their seventies but still be the primary caregiver for their parent in their nineties. While talking to the son of one of our patients he said that all of his sisters had moved to the U.S., but he felt that it was his duty as the only son to stay here and take care of his mother.

While many family members serve as caregivers, many others hire live-in caregivers. These caregivers are equivalent to a CNA in the US. Most of the caregivers are Indonesian (about 70%) the rest usually are from Vietnam or the Philippines. They usually come for 3 years at a time, leaving their families at home. They can make about 10 times the amount of money here in Taiwan then they can at home. They work and send the money back. Lots of them even have young children at home.

The woman on the left is a Vietnamese caregiver. She was cute. She was really excited to meet us and was thrilled when we agreed to take a picture with her. The man on the right is the patient's son.

I've liked community nursing because I've gotten to see how the people live. Some of our patients live in really nice homes. One patient had a five story home. Others live in very small, crowded homes.

I learned a lot in the community setting, but I'm excited to see what things are like in the hospital tomorrow.

Some say love, it is a river...

Each year the nurses take the students on a trip. This year they took us to a city called Kaohsiung--about a 1 hour train ride from where we're staying in Tainan. They were so nice, they spent their whole Saturday showing us around. It was really nice to have them order for us at restaurants too. The first thing we did was go to Monkey Mountain. There is a long uphill road to get to the hiking trail. We saw a lot of people riding bikes up it. I guess it is called Long Life Road because people get such a good workout going up it. They also stopped at a few viewpoints on the way for us to take pictures. Kaohsiung is on the ocean and is a major port for Taiwan.

Monkey Mountain is home to thousands of macaque monkeys. There are hiking trails that go though it. The monkeys are everywhere, and will swing through the trees and sometimes land right in front of you. We saw some cute little baby monkeys playing together. In addition to the monkeys, the hike itself was beautiful. The mountainside was lush and green.

After our hike, the nurses treated us to my new favorite dessert: tsua bing! It is shaved ice covered in fresh fruit, whatever you want to order-kiwi, bananas, pineapple, mangoes, guava, papaya, the list is endless... The top it with a kind of fruit syrup and then drizzle sweetened condensed milk over it. It is amazing! The nurses ordered one that they said was supposed to feed ten people, but I think it could feed more like 20. It was huge!

Here is a normal sized one (yes, I've had this multiple times):

We then went to the beach and watched the

sunset. It was beautiful. The water was warm and the sand was soft.

Afterwards we walked back through the market and got dinner.

Love really is a river. After the beach we went to Love River Park--it runs along the riverbank downtown. I asked several people, but no one could tell me why it was called Love River. There were lights in the trees and several boats that had lights as well that take tourists up and down the river. There were also cafes and live music. It was funny, we taught all the nurses how the difference between liver and river. They would say, "We go to Love Liver." It was really nice-a fun atmosphere and beautiful lights.