Cesuo (pronounced tser-swoh) means toilet

It's getting a little more difficult to post blogs as often now :( We are very busy seeing and doing things and don't always have good internet access when we are out and about on our weekend trips. Here are my posts for the past few days.

Tuesday May 18th

I went to the ICU again today. Rainy and I are partners so we go together. Sarah and Sophia are in the ICU next door to us while the rest of the girls are in community. ICU is fun and interesting, but since Rainy and I can't do very much and half the time we don't even know what the nurses are saying to us, we just watch and take pictures. Needless to say, We got a little bored today and Rainy had the idea of taking pictures with just our BYU nursing patches. Jim told us that he wants pictures that have the BYU patch to go on BYU's nursing blog site... so this is kind of our spoof on "the patch" and how the patch really does all of the work. Look on my profile on facebook if you want to see the photo album. It's probably only funny to BYU nursing students... actually, its probably only funny to Rainy and I :) but you can look at it anyways.But besides taking random pictures with just the patch in it, we did do a few things that day. I was able to give a Sub-Q injection (probably the most exciting part of my day) I just love giving shots! haha Rainy and I also took turns feeding patients through their NG tube, changing positions of the patients and putting restraints on the patients who like to pull their tubes out. Although I think I could work in the ICU, I don't like the feeling of putting a sedated patients cold, limp hand in a restraint. I think I would like to be able to talk to patient's on a regular basis. Oh yeah, and Rainy was able to take a blood glucose measurement  :) 

Me putting on an arm restraint

Rainy getting a blood glucose measurement... the awesome thing is that she had to use a lancet instead of the springy things. She was kind of scared at first :)

Trying to figure out which end to pull out of the NG tube stopper... the nurses put it in a funky way

Giving my first shot...in Taiwan

One thing that I saw today was a patient getting a femoral catheter put in for dialysis. It was pretty sweet to watch; however, I thought it was a little weird having another patients bed right there in full view. (they sometimes don't have enough room in the small ICU) :( Here is the pic.

We can't patient's faces so I tried to just get the two beds 

After clinical, we went to a church members house to have dinner. Guo Baba was the one who invited us.. he is the ward choir director and is going to have us sing in sacrament meeting this upcoming Sunday. I learned today that Baba means father and Mama means mother (go figure :) ) in Taiwanese. So the ward members call Brother Guau, Guau Baba because he is the oldest one aka the father of the ward. While we were at Guau Baba's house we ate a delicious dinner made of chicken, veggies, rice and curry... Yum! It was delicious. We also had fruit (oh how I will miss the amazing fruit here in Taiwan when I go home... it is sooo good) and a ward member brought over brownies! Brownies are not that common in Taiwan and it was so funny because one of the sister missionaries got so excited and said how she hadn't had brownies for over a year. It amazes me that Mormon culture can follow you everywhere... including the brownies :P After we ate dinner, a ward member gave a little lesson. He had each of use read a verse out of the scriptures and explain what it means to us... then a sister missionary translated back and forth for us. That was probably one of my favorite times while being here because it is so neat to see the strength and the faith of the members here in Taiwan. Guau Baba asked us all who had families who were all L.D.S. and most of us girls raised our hands. No one from Taiwan raised their hands. Guau Baba said that most people here in Taiwan come from part member families. I am so thankful for strength of my family members and the support that I receive from them...we are so blessed to have the gospel and to have each other.

Guau Baba on the left and the Bishop on the right

everyone!

After we went to Guau Baba's we went to see Robin Hood. Jim only has 2 days left here and he wanted to see it... so we went!

Wednesday May 19th
I slightly regret going to the movie last night because we didn't get home until about 12:30 and had to get up for clinical at 6:30 ...Oh well

Once again, I didn't do much in the ICU... but I did get to do other things. The girls in the ICU units went to a meeting and learned about antibiotics from one of the doctors. It was really interesting but I had a difficult time staying awake for it. We then went back into the ICU where Jim taught us (I should actually say re-taught us) how to read EKG's. While on the subject I told my group of bicuspid aortic valve and how I have a split S1 heart beat and they all wanted to listen to my heart haha.

Doctor Chan (a doctor in the ICU) then brought us all tsau bing (shwa bing... the ice with milk and fruit on it) because he knew that we all loved it so he treated us. After that we went and toured the mother/baby and labor and delivery unit. The laboring rooms and beds were so small. The director who was giving us the tour commented on how their beds can be small because the women here are so small. We actually get a few Taiwanese women mentioning to us how big we are compared to them haha... its true... but surprisingly they are just as much obsessed with losing wait and being skinny as Americans are. Most of the nurses that I have talked with say that they are on a diet because they need to lose weight... hah, yeah right :)

After clinical, we went out to a buffet with some of the ICU nurses. It was pretty fun. At this buffet, they had a heating system or stove on each table and they put a pot on it with two different types of sauces.
Then you go and pick whatever meat or veggies you want and put it in the pot to let it cook on your table and then eat. It was very delicious and tons of fun. The nurses are always so awesome and so fun to be with.
after dinner we just hung out at our dorms. We made a video for Jim (because it is his last night here in Taiwan) and showed it to him. It had a bunch of inside jokes that were created while on this trip... You can go to my profile on facebook and watch it.

close-up of Katelyn and I at dinner

mmmm.. mmm.... good! (talking about the food of course)

I am so excited for tomorrow and this weekend because we are going to Hualian to hike the Marble canyon (Taroko Gorge)  and hang out in that town for a couple of days.

Thursday May 20th
Today we rode the train for 5 1/2 hours to get up to Hualian. The trip actually didn't seem that long. I filled my time with sleeping, blogging and picture editing. By the way, I am so thankful for neck pillows... I wouldn't have had such a pleasant trip without one :) After we got off of the train, we went to buy our tickets for our trip back. Jim told us that we would be fine with just buying the tickets once we got there... oh how wrong that assumption was. :) Because this weekend is a supposedly a holiday (it seems like almost every weekend here is a holiday) the trains going south were pretty full. There were only 4 spots left on the train that we were planning on taking. Sadly, we now have to leave Hualian earlier than planned.

We walked to our Hostel (woohoo, I can now say that i have stayed at a hostel!) It was so so so so disgustingly hot today though I was sweating like crazy by the time we arrived. Funny story: Kris thought that since we were traveling in such a large group, we would hopefully get a room to ourselves. This was the second wrong assumption of the day lol We ended up having a roommate who is a 24 year old man. oops! Just a little sketch.

Hanging out... too bad no one told me the picture was being taken :)

During the afternoon, we traveled up to Taroko Gorge. We jumped in a couple of taxi's and had them take us around. It was kind of scary because there were a ton of buses traveling on these tiny roads in mountainous areas... but we made it out okay. Taroko Gorge is Beautiful!! While at one of the sights... a couple recognized some of our BYU t-shirts and started talking to us. They were L.D.S. and from Salt Lake. The husband had served his mission in Taiwan so he helped translate to our taxi driver our next location.

Katelyn and I sitting together in the front seat of the taxi. We had one extra person for the amount of seats so we kept switching off who shared the front one

After Taroko Gorge, we went to a jade market and were able to see a bunch of gorgeous jewelry and pots etc. made out of Jade (and marble). We then watched another aboriginal dance performance. I liked this one better than the last one... mainly because Christina Bohn got to go up there and be lifted up onto the back of one of the male dancers :P   We also saw the L.D.S. couple again so we hung out with them for a while and ate and shopped in the downtown area.

The Jade market... we got there pretty early I guess so it wasn't very busy

 They are carrying Christina around the stage :)

Friday May 21st

So my first night in a hostel went well. It was kind of hot and I didn't sleep with any covers, but I slept soundly. We were all pretty lazy getting up so we got a later start than planned. We needed to be at the train station at 11:30 a.m. so we didn't have a ton of time to travel anywhere. We ended up flagging down a couple of taxi's and decided to go to a park here in Hualien. Once we got there however, our non-english speaking taxi drivers told us to stay in the car while he talked to the other driver. We were slightly frustrated because they talked for a while and were running up our bill (typical Americans) :) We found out afterwards that he had called a translator to tell us that this was not the best or most beautiful place to go. The taxi drivers started driving again and we had no idea where they were going. After about a half hour we ended up at a lake called Li Yu Lake. It was really beautiful. The lake was also surrounded by green mountains which definitely added to the beauty of the place. As we drove up we noticed that there were a bunch of paddle-boats at the dock in the shapes of swans and dragons. We were so excited!! We rented out two dragon boats and went paddle-boating out on the lake. We were the only ones out there. This may not be too exciting to some people, but the reason why we were so stoked to go out on these paddle-boats was because we had learned that every summer in Taiwan there is a dragon boat race. However, this year it doesn't happen until June 16th and we will be gone by then. We therefore had our very own dragon boat race! :)

There are so many!

And we're off!

 There is a funny story that goes with this last picture... Tara needed to go to the bathroom really bad but we were out in the middle of the lake and we didn't want to go back before our time was up. So Tara and Katelyn decided it was best for Tara to go pee over the side of the boat. It was so hilarious and I can't believe she actually succeeded. Sophia kept trying to take pictures from the other boat so I had to keep turning the boat with the steering handle in order to keep the other girls from seeing. We later saw a canoe on the side that Tara was going to the bathroom on  haha good thing they weren't too close :P We then took another 5 1/2 hour train ride back to Tainan. We were sad to leave but I feel like the trip was worth it and we got a few good stories and memories in for the weekend. 

During train ride home...this Taiwanese guy was helping us get to where we needed to go. He said some funny things lol Here are two of the things that I remember:
He started talking to our teacher Kris and he told her "I could tell that your eyes were saying 'help me!'"
and the man later said that due to the economy of Taiwan the company he was working for was going out of business and he was getting fired. (he was actually very energetic when he said it) Kris mentioned that America seems to be the same way right now and the Taiwanese man replied "I am sure that your President will lead you from the darkness into the sunshine" hahaha I had a really difficult time keeping myself from laughing after he said that. He was a very optimistic person... which is very good.

An additional note: I learned this week that Taiwan's trash system is different from ours. The garbage truck goes around the streets and it plays a little tune (like an ice cream truck in America) and then the people bring their trash outside and put it in... or hand to the truck driver. I don't know which, but I now know what that little ice cream truck sound means here in Taiwan.