Bye MGH..I'm going to miss you!

I can't believe 4 weeks just flew by! What can I say but it has been an incredible experience.. No words can describe the sense of contentment and acheivement i feel in overcoming the steep learning curve, cultural barriers and long hours standing in the OR! Haha.

I'm really inspired by the surgeons here. Their drive for excellence is manifested in their work attitude and aptitude. The hours they work, the sacrifices they make..it's really their passion for surgery that carries them through.

I'm also really thankful to have gotten a great supervisor. I think he's a fantastic surgeon with great dexterity! He's allowed me to close quite a few wounds (subcuticular stitching) by myself till i got quite decent at it. I even got the chance to do some laparoscopic surgery like inserting the trochars into the abdomen and clipping the bile duct laparoscopically!

Anyway, this was a trip where I met many new people, including the other 2 overseas medical students who were in the same general surgery service as me--Yoshua from Mexico and Joe from Taiwan. We didn't really hang out much during the 4 weeks of posting cos we were so busy and we were in different surgical teams. But we finally decided to have dinner together on the second last day of our rotation..after 3 of us had finished presenting for Baker rounds.

It was great! We talked alot..and it was nice to find out i was not alone in feeling sick and tired of waking up at 4am in the morning,walking in the cold boston drizzle, being a little put off by cultural differences and so on..Plus as we exchanged stories about medical school life in our different countries, we realised medical students from everywhere were all stressed and overworked. Haha.

Another girl i met who stays in the same hall as me is Mariko..a really pretty Japanese girl. She's a great cook, always grilling salmon and vegetables and other nice dishes with rice in the kitchen. We always bump into each other in the toilet at night cos we both have the habit of having late night showers..Haha..but it's great talking to her. She's one of the sweetest girls i've ever met!

Another new friend i made is a Singaporean girl doing her masters in Public health in Harvard..Geraldine. She's really nice, and it was Mark who introduced her to me. Thanks geraldine for hanging out with us..it was great fun! And thanks so much too for the purple bedsheets--they made my room feel so much more like home!


It was a great dinner at Cottonwood Cafe..strawberry magaritas..slurp slurp! And yummy Tex-mex food!

The food at Durgin Park, north hall..near quincy market was great too! very boston atmosphere..had their famous chicken pot pie, crab cakes, corn bread and chicken tenders..plus lots of fries!! Also met up with my distant cousins..One's from jakarta--Jovita, and one's from papau new guinea--Marcy. We had great korean steamboat at this cosy restaurant in brookline..The beef slices were so fatty and yummy!