Today began with a 6am run, showers, and then biscuits for breakfast! Priscilla and I baked biscuits, it was incredible! Also incredible, I can sleep through the 4:30am bell ringing and men’s choir now! After breakfast we headed to the hospital to begin morning rounds with Dr. Wegner. Rounds are always really cool because Dr. Wegner and Dr. Harvey actually take the time to teach us. They ask us questions, have us examine people, and pretty much walk us through their diagnosis process. It is super interesting and helpful of them because they basically go through this process in both French/Lingala, and then English for us. They have so much patients with us and never get (or at least they don’t show it) annoyed by our never-ending questions.

After rounds we headed to the ER to begin vital s and helping with shots and IVs. I gave a few shots to help treat malaria (which literally everyone has here), and observed many IV placements. This afternoon though I actually got to put in my first IV!! I had it pretty easy because the man I did it on was so skinny that his veins were BULGING to the surface of his skin, but hey I STILL DID IT, AND ON THE FIRST TRY! Nursing here is very interesting, because about 80% of the stuff they do here would get you fired in America. It’s not that it necessarily bad, its just resourceful and unwasteful. For example, if you do not place an IV correctly on the first time in Congo, you just continue using the same needle until you get it in. In America you get a new needle every time you poke a patient, NEVER REUSE! So many things that are reused here would be considered unethical or super unsanitary in America. But in Africa, there are limited resources and things are expensive so they need to be reused if possible. It is funny because the American missionary nurses will teach us things, but they always preface their lessons with “Don’t ever do this in America.” Many people came into the ER, few were really sick; most were dehydrated or had malaria. Weirdly there was a whole troop of Brazilians today though haha, and they could understand my Spanish! The nurses actually used Priscilla and I to communicate with them because we can speak Spanish and the Congolese nurses only speak French. It was nice to feel needed and not just a clueless/French-less burden!

After work we went to the Wegner’s house to celebrate their daughter Isabelle’s 11^th birthday! We had a delicious dinner and CAKE! Priscilla and I even ventured into the market by ourselves today to buy Isabelle a present, we can’t speak French or Lingala, but we accomplished our goal of getting the present! We are getting really good at playing charades here hah.

Well goodnight for now! Please pray for my feet, standing on your feet all day is so hard, I feel like such a weakling haha.