Lattitude Lunches, the Fureai Center Welcome Party and more to come

These past few days have been crazy! Better get yourself settled in for this post, it might end up a short story.

It's my last week in the cerebral internal medicine ward on the 6th floor of the East wing of the Iizuka Hospital. And so far, it's been really great (well...not the same without Bell man). We've been keeping up with a variety of daily activities consisting of preparations, patient cleanings, sheet changing (I make hospital corners like a boss!), moving patients from the recovery rooms to other wards of the hospital, patient showers, delivering lunch trays (always smelling the most delicious - I'd jump down a flight of stairs for the free food!) and other small tasks.
We've also started to become more familiar with some staff members and speak more English with them. The other day, Taichi san (one of the nicest care workers who always gives us work to do) told us to take a break by saying "half time!". He also made me call out to another worker when he said "say Rio san...call him, call him!" so I did.."RIO SAN!" and ran away. Turns out it's not his name at all...and I'm still not exactly sure what I said. Apparently it was a joke though and we all ended up laughing anyways ("Rio san" went bright red!). Taichi san also likes to say ":O *gasp* Ohh my goodnesss!" It's too cute! Samantha and I also taught him that in English we say 2 or 3 or 4 people, but 1 person. He understood then continued to tell other members of the staff while laughing. He then looked at us and simply said "muzukashiiiiiiiii"..."difficult!" hehe. We also think it's great fun to wave at people walking around the lower floors...they love it because they smile huge and wave with both hands. :)

This week we also started our Lattitude Lunches! We spend our lunch time with staff members of the Fureai Center who wish to practice their English. So naturally we spoke about our food (they all had rice and egg with a variety of other things) and made other small talk. It was nice to get to know people a little better. We'll be doing this every Tuesday and Thursday. Tomorrow I'll be bringing in a Calendar full of Canadian/Ontario landscapes that my Uncle Mike sent me, they're going to lose it! :D

Also on Tuesday, the Fureai Center threw a party for Samantha and I! :D It was so beautiful! They used the cafeteria space downstairs and printed pictures of us and stuck them all over the walls (they couldn't stop looking at the picture of my family and saying how beautiful we all are and how alike we look). They had huge Canadian, United Kingdom and Japanese flags and lots of foooooood! Only when we began, Yano san said he'd like us to make a speech (agaiinnn??) and have time for question and answer, yikes! So I did the best I could (receiving lots of 'ouuu' and 'ahhhhh' - the Japanese are very excitable listeners) and Yano san translated bits I didn't know in Japanese. When it came to the questions...this is what two ladies asked:

"Do you have a boyfriend?! :O" ..... "errr?....no."

"So what do you like in a man?" ..... "uhhh.....Nihon-jin!" ;) ("Japanese" - they loved that.)

That was the extent of the questions asked in front of ~50 people.
After that we shared excellent food (sushi, sashimi, sandwiches, cheese cake, fruit, sushi and more sushi) and I had a chance to talk with a lot of people including Tanaka incho (the president of the hospital). He gave Samantha and I some Godiva chocolates from San Francisco, amazing!! I was also invited mountain hiking and offered a prescription for antibiotics by a dental surgeon...I think he misheard me when I said I had my wisdom teeth removed 5 years ago. The night was really great and ended even better when Samantha, Hanaoka san, Yano san and myself were last to leave because we refused to let them take away any trays with edible materials still present. So great.

As for what's coming up this week! Tomorrow I have another opportunity to observe in the surgery room! I'm so excited! I'm not sure what surgery we'll be observing yet but I've shown my excitement for either brain or heart surgery. I'm still not over what an amazing experience I'd had last week observing surgery and I'll be back at it again tomorrow afternoon. Sicking sick! Updates on that soon.
Tomorrow night I'm also going to be playing badminton with some members of the hospital staff. Let's hope I've still got it and can kick some surrious butt! :D

Here's a short clip from the welcome party where we got "Rick Rolled" and I was a little too intrusive with the camera.