When work becomes fun, you know you're in the right place

I've decided to make this blog entry short and sweet considering the novel series that I wrote last time (and trust me, I held back my story telling....a lot!).

Today was my last day volunteering with the team from the Hospital's 7th floor North wing, or the "N7" as I like to call it. So last night, I thought I'd set aside some time to make a little something for the staff members in return for their kindness (okay...really it was their patience and perseverance I was thankful for) towards me for the two weeks I worked there. If my dad were here, he'd surely tell them "Thanks for putting up with my daughter". However, in his absence, I settled on a culinary way of thanks: cake. Cake has this funny way of always messing up. But still....she persists, and always decides to make cake. This weeks attempt was only semi successful as the chocolate dip portion of the cake making process was a complete disaster (who knew melted chocolate can be over melted and it turn into a clumpy, not so yummy, not so melty chocolatey mess?). Anyways, I managed to save face with some serious redesigning of the project, remodeling and quite a bit of creativity. The outcome was a success of epic proportions if I do say so myself (if only I'd taken a "before" picture!).

I also took the chance to put my artistic self to the test in designing these crazy thank you cards for Nakano san and Nishimura san. They are the nurse aids that I've been working with these past weeks. They call themselves my mammas (big mamma and chibi mamma) and are an absolute laugh to work with (especially when trying to teach them the correct pronunciation of the English alphabet, particular difficulty with "f", "v" and "w"). The other day they caught me drawing in my notebook (oops! - I was studying Japanese, I swear!) and really liked my random doodles, so I made them personalized full page doodles as a thank you gift. 

I hadn't even realized how much time I'd spent drawing and cake disaster relief-ing before I noticed it was 2am! Yikes! On top of that, the Iizuka rain stops for no one, not even sleepy and restless Olivia. Walking my cake bites, computer, camera and postcards to the hospital at 8am the next day would have been easier with the use of my umbrella arm. Regardless, all things turned out great and the cake was successfully delivered to the staff. They loved it! Here's a photo of us all together (yes, the cake and postcard are part of the previously mentioned "us").

I had such a great time volunteering with this team! I'm sad to leave the N7, but also excited to start on the 3rd floor of the South wing Monday morning for Respiratory Medicine. I also didn't realize just how little these two are! "big mamma" is on the left and "chibi mamma" is on the right. But being little never stopped them from making a big impact on my volunteering experience here in Japan.

This week concluded with another trip to the operating room for a "kengaku"; study by observation. I'm beginning to recognize faces and become more friendly with staff and they're catching on to how excited I am to watch surgery. Today I walked from room to room to see what interesting and exciting things were happening. I'd just missed a mitral valve replacement, but caught them closing the chest cavity (I also enforced a "call Olivia when the next mitral valve replacement comes in" rule). I saw a portion of a liver surgery when I'd opted to watch a hip replacement in the neighboring room instead. It.was.so.awesome! Ahh I can't help it but allow orthopedic surgeries to trump the other ones, they're definitely some of the coolest surgeries to watch.

For dinner, Yano san wanted Ken and me to join him at his favourite restaurant, Yoshimura's. Even better was that he was happy to treat us after I'd gracefully declined ("I can't, I broke. Golden Week took all my money") saying that Ken and I are so young and we need to eat more. It's interesting how telling people I don't have any money ends up getting me free stuff. After many hours contemplating (and soul searching), I've convinced myself it's wrong to use this tactic for the remainder of my life...

This weekend's forecast calls for sleep with little to no spending of  the money that I don't have. I'm officially hibernating until Monday. 

Mata ne!