Ward 6E and this weeks activites.

Iam officially half way through my time here in Japan and also probably about 3 stone heavier! For some reason i thought i would come to Japan and magically eat healthily and love vegetables and exercising. Unfortunately none of this has happened, i still love mcdonalds , crisps and chocolate and i still hate vegetables and exercising!  However i am trying some new foods, for instance last night i was ever so adventurous and healthy and instead of pasta and cheese for dinner i ate a chicken salad, followed by an ice cream ooppsss. Ill get there eventually!

 So unfortunately June is rainy season in Nagasaki, it is roughly 27degrees most days but about 85/90% humidity so it is soo hot in the hospital. For some reason there is never any air conditioning on in the patients rooms only in the nurses station so i try hang about in there as much as i can! This ward which i started last week is the only ward i have not yet worked on and everyone is really lovely here. Every ward i have been on so far has a team briefing in the mornings at which point i normally stand and day dream because i have no idea what is going on and it doesnt really include me as i just follow people around who give me jobs. On my first day on 6E, last monday, they began their team briefing in the morning and i went off into my usual day dream, probably thinking about food and next thing i know all the nurses were staring at me and i was pushed into the middle of them all. I had no idea what was going on and for some reason i waved at them all and day hey and at that point the head nurse said ' Good morning...' and then i realised i was supposed to have introduced myself. oops. Unfortunately there isn't much to do on this ward and on more than one occassion i have been told to go and sit in the linen cupboard and learn Japanese. I wouldn't mind this so much if it wasn't like sitting in a sauna!!
The patients on this ward keep trying to speak to me which is nice and some even try in English but  all they really manage is where are you from but it is lovely that they try! Ive had two seperate patients draw me a map of Britain, one knew where Scotland was which was a first! However he thought Glasgow was inbetween Liverpool and Manchester... The other patient could not grasp the concept of Scotland being a separate country from England and kept asking if people in Scotland spoke English. It is rather hard trying to explain when my Japanese isnt very good so in the end i gave up!
On Wednesday we were back at Tai-chi for the first time in two weeks so it was a little bit tough getting back into it, my legs were very sore in the morning. Not quite sure if that was from Tai-chi or my spontaneous jog down by the river which was not a good idea in the heat! After work on Thursday we went off to Ikebana and normally we have some food there. On the past two occassions they have made us chicken as they know it is basically all i like! However this week there was a huge bowl of prawns, mashed potatoes with fish eggs mixed in and various salads and vegetables. This was my worst nightmare, i tried to be polite and try the mash which was not to my taste but when Konaka-san offered the prawns i could not face it! Somehow i dont think i will ever like any kind of food which comes from the sea.