Sorry for the gap between posts. October 24th I started my 10 day, 60 hour training course. After it took 2 hours to get from one end of Jerusalem to the other, it took my friends from Tel-Aviv an hour, I thought things would be better. Well, they didn't get worse but it sure did feel like we were in jail. I got the hotel/hostel at 10am Monday and did not go outside until 11:30am Tuesday. It was a very long, sunless, 10 days to say the least. And not only because I knew most of the material already, but none the less, the 6 Career Israel MDA participants had a lot of fun together. I got to know other kids on my program that I didn't know before and the 2 I did, got to know them better. I also met some new people.
After returning to our apartments on Wednesday, there was a meeting for the Jerusalem volunteers at the station. Most of my friends took shifts on Thursday and Sunday but I wanted an extra day to recover from training and then I had some family in town on Sunday, so I started Monday. My first shift was Monday morning 6:45-15:00. I had 6 calls in 8 hours. None of them were urgent, and all my patients were over the age of 53. My second shift, also a morning, was today. It was rather boring. We didn't have a driver until 11:00am, which meant we sat in the station for 4 hours waiting. After we got a driver though, we had 3 calls that took the rest of the day. Our first call, I thought we were going to have to do CPR on the lady in the ambulance she looked that bad, but thankfully we got here to the hospital. The other 2 were boring, a transport and an older lady with general body pain.
Over the weekend my cousins Don and Sharon, my dad's first cousin and his wife, with whom I am close with, were in Jerusalem. On Friday night, I met them at their hotel and went to services with them and then they took me out to dinner. It was probably the best meal I'll get in 5 months. On Sunday, we were supposed to meet at Yad Va'Shem, the Holocaust museum, but there was a mix-up and never saw each other. Thankfully, they saw my email and called me when they go back and I was able to meet them for dinner Sunday night. I had prepared myself to not see any family at all while I was here so it was a very welcome surprise to hear that they were going to be in Israel. And also, as it turns out, their daughter, Sam, will be in Israel in December on a Birth Right trip which I am super excited about.
All in all things are going well. It feels so nice to FINALLY start doing what I came here to do. It only took 2 months but things are underway and it is awesome.
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