friends.

"She held her grief behind her eyes like an ocean & when she leaned forward into the day it spilled onto the floor & she wiped at it quickly with her foot & pretended no one had seen." -brian andreas

the clinic.

This week has been my first week working at the local government community health clinic. I will be working at the clinic three days/week serving however is most helpful. Some days this involves taking blood pressures, giving vaccines, helping with prenatal check-ups...etc. What I love most about this clinic is the diversity in the patient populations that we serve. More than half of the patients are Akha or Lisu (two hill-tribe people groups here). Beyond this, most of the others are northern Thai villagers. Because it is a community health clinic we will also be going out into the community every few weeks to teach about preventative healthcare issues.

One thing that has been quite a challenge is that most of our patients and the staff speak Northern Thai. I have been studying central Thai. Central Thai is main language in Thailand that you can use everywhere in  the country, and the language that is taught in the Thai education system. However, in each part of Thailand (North, South, East, and West) they have their own dialect specific to that region. For some words this just means a different accent, but for MANY words it is a completely different vocabulary. I'm excited to learn more Northern Thai, but have quite a ways to go yet.

The staff I work with are all Thai (one masseuse, two public healthcare workers, one nurse practitioner, and two nursing assistants. Everyone works together very well as a team and they have been very kind in welcoming me to work alongside them.

more photos.