July 16th

Today in class we were split up into the groups that we'll be rotating with for the next few weeks. Given that Jon, Zack, and I are only here for two more weeks, and each rotation is a week long, we're allowed to join whichever group we please. There are seven different specialties they're rotating through, and the first I plan on seeing is cardiology/pulmonolgy, which should be pretty interesting. After sorting out groups, we had a lecture on geriatrics. We talked a lot about comprehensive geriatric assessment, who all is involved in geriatric care, and what sort of tests should be done during the assessment. Comprehensive geriatric assessment focuses on four aspects that each cover a wide variety of factors. We learned a lot about geriatric care and the benefits of comprehensive assessment. The next class we had was ophthalmology. The students had a quiz to start class, and I took it as well, even though I'm not actually in the class. It had about eight questions, and having had essentially no experience in ophthalmology, I made educated guesses on just about every question. After the quiz, we learned about nearsightedness and farsightedness and discussed the procedure behind LASIK surgery. After that class, we went to the festival again for lunch and I tried something new yet again. Today I tried skaapsterjie which is Afrikaans for sheep tail. It was pretty fatty and there wasn't a lot of meat on each piece, but it had a good flavor. After lunch we had obstetrics lecture and talked about various physiological changes of each organ system that occur during pregnancy. Later on in the evening, we went to the festival for dinner and to see some live music. There was one woman who played violin to popular songs and she was very talented. We met with some more medical students who were very excited to have finally met an American. This festival has been very enjoyable and I'm glad that it's given me the opportunity to try a variety of South African foods and get to see some local artists. The festival is here all weekend, so I'm excited to get to try even more new food!