As today, I have officially been in Nepal for 8 weeks. Crazy!
This week in the hospital I spent time in the Radiology Department. It's been extremely interesting thus far. Two days I've spent in the ultrasound room, watching numerous ultrasounds on different parts of the body, even the BRAIN! Wednesday, we spent time in the office looking at CTs and X-Rays while the radiologist wrote the reports for each individual case. I went into this week thinking that radiology would be somewhat boring, but I've actually enjoyed it a lot, and learned so much already! Radiology is a part of medicine that I never thought about perusing, but after this week it might be something I have to look into.
Wednesday afternoon I made the decision to go with two of the volunteers (Sindhu and Suku) to the villages to do a day of volunteering. We hopped on a bus bound for Devghat around 3pm. Since it was afternoon, and it being monsoon season and all, it was pouring rain extremely heavily. About 30km outside of Kathmandu, our driver was going way too fast, passed a car on the wrong side, struggled to gain control due to the ruts in the road, hit a rock our tire blew out and the bus tipped and slid along the road, into a ditch. No one was injured, PRAISE GOD, and other than a few bruises and a little bit of shock I'm okay. Frankly, that was one of the scariest moments of my life. It was all a blur when it was happening and I can't even remember the moment I realized we were crashing. I fell out of my seat onto the floor and grabbed on to another seat to prevent falling down onto the window that was sliding onto the road. I was in the back row, and the windshield behind me was completely shattered. As soon as the bus stopped moving I remember standing up, making sure my friends were okay, and then calmly asking the mother that was sitting in front of me if she and her baby were okay. Then I proceeded to climb out of the bus, and was assisted by two men to jump down from the side of the bus that was now facing upwards. Once I stepped back and took a look at the bus, I was overcome with emotion- and began uncontrollably crying. Partially out of fear, partially out of pure joy and amazement that we weren't dead. Since we were all quite shaken up, we were able to catch another bus, and we came back to the city.
Just another experience in Nepal that has taught me how truly blessed I am.
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| Our bus in the ditch |
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| Our bus in the ditch, another view |
I head home for the states tomorrow morning (Nepal time), and arrive to Chicago Saturday evening (Chicago time). Once I'm settled back in Nebraska, I'll write a follow-up post, to the amazing 8 weeks I've spent here in Nepal.