Retreat Day 1: Hypertension Clinic

The short version:

I'll post the long one later.

Today was our first day at Retreat Community Health Clinic.  I spent the morning working with Sister Van Reenan, aka Sylvia, who showed me the ropes of the "club" which is what they call the room for all of the chronic disease patients.  Mondays are always hypertension days so I helped with the weighing of patients, taking brief histories and stamping their charts prior to sending them in to see the doctor.  I really felt like I accomplished something today since I was doing more than merely observing and taking notes on what the doctors were doing.  It was one of the first times that I felt like I was putting my public health education into practice..even though it was a really small deed the line was extremely long and Sylvia seemed really grateful.  When we went to tea/ lunch with the other sisters I realized that they have to bring their own tea, cups, sugar etc. She gave me her cup and made coffee for me--tomorrow I'm going to pay her back by bringing my own cup and bringing a few vanilla chai tea bags!

This afternoon we were dropped off at the grocery store since we were basically out of everything except for rice and pasta.  We made our mark at pick and pay and Woolies--I finally got myself a reusable grocery bag...did I ever mention that you have to pay for ANY plastic bag that you get at the grocery stores? sounds like a pretty good way to cut back on all that waste (cough cough wegmans!)

We went home with all our goodies and decided that we would check out the gym that is right down from our house and ended up picking up memberships for the month and worked out for about an hour which felt beyond amazing.

We finally had a huge family dinner with everyone around one big round table and now i'm here at a new cafe (Lyra's) with unlimited wifi and a pretty relaxed atmosphere.  Overall a great day and I am ready to make the most of the last three weeks here!