Sights: Seeing the Red Sea for the first time and the largest fountain in the world at night. Awesome!!!! Seeing different ways that people are dressed. Having to interpret what people are thinking with only seeing their eyes. Some women have their heads covered, others have a face veil so you only see their eyes and yet others have veils covering their entire face. Men are dressed in regular clothes, in white long robes and some in what looks like white towels. Some men also have head coverings. Seeing almost everyone with an iPhone. Watching a movie on TV with Arabic sub titles. Seeing that most of the babies in the unit are IUGR (for my non NICU friends that means Intrauterine Growth Retardation) haven't figured out yet if it is due to lack of nutrition for the moms or lack of prenatal care or the babies are IDM (infants of diabetic mothers) again lack of prenatal care? There seems to be a need for obstetrical education.
Sounds: Listening to all of the different languages is very different experience for me. And hearing English as a second language, I feel like I have to listen so much harder to what everyone is saying. I am only understanding about half of what is being said. It makes it doubly hard that you can't see their faces. The others in my group have said it took them about a week to finally understand and they still don't get everything. Being in the NICU and hearing all of the alarms and not having them silenced. It makes me feel like I am working in our NICU at least 15-20 years ago before we learned that all of those alarms would harm the babies hearing as well as our own.
Touch: Using the paper towels at the hospital feels like you are using toliet paper to dry your hands. Feeling the intensity of the heat and going from the heat to air conditioning.
Tastes: There a lot of different foods. Fried egg on a Club Sandwich with beef bacon, TexMex Arabian style, foods that I have never seen before and foods that I don't even know how to pronounce. Having a lot of carbohydrates available all of the time. Interesting fruits that look like a porcupine. I have not been very brave about trying anything new. But yet they do have American restaurants all around including places like McDonalds, Hardys, and Chilis to name a few. I will be going to Baskin Robbins though, I have missed their ice cream.
Smells: Cologne must be fairly cheap as it is used in abundance by some. Sitting at a restaurant and having 2 gentlemen smoking right next to me. I had forgotten that smell.
Have a great day. Thanks for all of the prayers. It is hard to believe that I have only been gone for 3 days. Tomorrow starts our week-end, 2 days off. I'm glad that I get to sleep in tomorrow. Still trying to recover from jet lag.
Porcupine fruit (I don't know what it is officially called)
My co-workers from Minneapolis
The largest fountain in the world.
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