Working at the clinic

Hi everyone!

I´m sitting in front of the computer sweating like I´ve never sweated before, but I´ll tell you about that later!

I´ve spent 3 days working at the vet clinic now, and I´m enjoying it, although unfortunately I´m not getting as much surgical experience as I would like. One of the reasons for this is that Irene decided to leave the clinic on Tuesday. It´s a long story, but the owner of the clinic isn´t a very nice woman and seems to have something against Irene. Total rubbish, because everybody at the clinic has been delighted with Irene´s work. Anyway, Irene couldn´t take it anymore and decided not to work there anymore. She moved out of the appartment and into a small hotel near the beach. I´ve decided to stay at the clinic, at least for the rest of the week, but I moved into the hotel with Irene so at least I see her in the evenings!

Anyway since then I haven´t helped with any operations. I keep gettng promises, but no delivery! I have helped with other things though. Cleaning up a dog´s leg every day (he was hit by a car) with Joel, one of the assistants - today I vaccinated all of the dogs up for adoption in the shelter, about 50 of them!! They all live outside and it´s very hot so it was tiring work, but at least I did a good thing! Today I went to another branch of the clinic in the afternoon to see a pyometra operation. The dog had a huge inflamed uterus which was succesfully removed. And I´ve also seen some interesting consultations and practised taking blood samples, which is always useful. Still I hope for more operations... I have a chance next week to take part in a castration and sterilisation project at the other branch that I visited today, at least that´s what the owner of the clinic told me, but I´m only really interested if it´s certain I can learn to do it myself. Irene and I are looking into working for a week somewhere else, so I don´t know.

Apart from that I visited the centre of Porlamar yesterday evening, with Irene and Mike, an American guy who also spent some time working at the clinic as an assistant. We had pizza and went to the beach, although it was dark so I didn´t see much! There are lots of shops here, it´s quite modern, though I haven´t seen many tourists besides in the hotel. Today Irene and I had some dinner in the centre and went to the sports centre where Irene has been quite a few times before. We did and hour of tae-bo! After 10 minutes I thought I was going to die but I kept going and broke through the pain barrier! I enjoyed it but it was exhausting. Hopefully I´ll look better in a bikini after a few sessions!

After this we´re going to replace the burnt calories with some ice cream ;)

Anyway I really have lots more to say but I´ll leave it for another time. People here are very friendly and generous I have to say, and it doesn´t feel unsafe, although we stick to the main streets when we´re walking somewhere, and of course not on our own in the dark. But people do stare at us when we´re speaking Dutch, and even when we´re not because we look so obviously not Venezuelan!

More from me later!