Bienvenidos!

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Skating and stuff

Yesterday we went on Mario's first ever trip to skate on an ice rink. It's not surprising really, given that he grew up in a country where the ambient temperature hovers around 30 degrees C most days. The rink we went to is the first to be built in Panama, and has been there for less than a year. I was a bit unsteady when I first got on the ice, but I have the advantage of having been before so it didn't take me long to be able to go around without looking too much like Bambi on the frozen lake. I wobbled a fair bit but managed not to fall over (hurray!). Poor Mario though - it took him about 15 minutes to do his first circuit, holding on to the side as he couldn't figure out how to do the push-off-from-one-foot-and-slide-on-the-other thing. It was a good thing that the ice was fairly empty when we arrived. He eventually managed to figure some form of propulsion out and only half-fell over a couple of times. He didn't land on his bum, so he tells me they weren't proper falls. Plus he kept close to the handrail so he could just grab onto that if he lost his balance. We had a lot of fun though, and there were a couple of american-sounding kids who kept talking to us and showing us what they could do. One of them asked if Mario was my dad. Tsk tsk I say. He doesn't look that much older than me! I took a few pictures so it will be cool (boom-boom) to see how they come out. When the rink started filling up just before we left the heat made a layer of mist rise from the top of the ice. It looked tres groovy.

Hospital was a bit boring today. The presentations this morning had no slides so I couldn't follow them very well, and all we did in the ward was rounds. I spent more time talking to the other students in a broken mix of spanish and english than I did paying attention to what was going on. It was pretty much the same patients as yesterday though. I can hardly believe it's my last day there tomorrow. It has gone by really fast. I think the best week was neonatology - I got to do a lot more stuff and there was more teaching. I'm definitely looking forward to being able to sleep in past 5am though...

1:00 p.m. - 2006-07-13

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