Hello everyone! So after talking to my parents and them both requesting that i make my blog posts shorter, I've taken their advice to heart! I was actually posting my daily journal entries, which I've realized take a very long time to type up. I still am not completely caught up, and I dont want to keep holding everyone up from being able to read what's going on here. I just finished y fourth week of clinicals, my second week in Dehra Dun. I spent the first week in Than Gaon, a small village up in the hills. The second week, like this past week, were in Dehra Dun, and the third week was at Landour Community Hospital in Mussoorie. I've gotten to see quite a few interesting things in the clinics and hospital so far, and I'm really glad I decided to take advantage of this opportunity. I've witnessed a live birth, seen two surgeries performed on babies in the neonatal intensive care unit, seen a teenage girl have her pleural cavity (the area around her lungs) drained of the excess fluid, seen two men have their peritoneal cavities (their abdominal cavities) drained of excess fluid, seen two incomplete abortion evacuations (many women use abortion as their birth control here...ideas about the procedure are very different than they are in America), seen a ER burn victim who was over 90% burned supposedly in an accident with a kerosene stove (this was incredibly sad...good to see from a clinical perspective but hard to see from any other perspective...we found out she died within two days of when she came into the ER), seen a man with a full heart block have a heart attack in the ICCU and be brought back by literally being punched in the chest, seen an attempt to insert an IntraUterine Device (a form of birth control we also have in the States), and seen many other interesting things. The way they practice medicine over here is a bit different that we are sued to at home, but I'm beginning to look past the differences and focus on the healthcare itself when I need to. It's all integrated, though, so sometimes it's hard to not focus o nthe lack of sanitation and sterilization, or the fact that three different patients may be in the doctor's office at any given time, all getting treated and consulted in each other's presence without any privacy. All in all, however, I would say these first four weeks have been a great eperience! I head up to Rishikesh tomorrow and will be there for either one or two weeks (depending on howmuch Alyssa and I like it.) It's been said that yoga was born here, and I kow we will be doing yoga at least twice a day while we're there, so I'm excited for the trip. Sorry it tok so long to get updates on here, but they should bemore frequent now that I've decided not to use my journal entries as my blog posts. The next group of program participants shows up tomorrow for the start of the next four-week session, so I am excited to meet them in the next few weeks. I'll try to get blog entries and pictures updated as often as possible!