Sleeping In...

I slept in today.  I was supposed to meet at the train station at 7am but either my alarm didn't go off or I turned it off in my sleep.  What ended up happening was that I woke up instead at 7 to realize that I had overslept on the worst day possible because we were going to a local clinic to view various surgeries today!! Thus began my wild goose chase to try to find this clinic on my own.

My adventure began with trying to get directions from our German program director.  She told me which bus to take and where to get off, which sounds easy, except for all the names of the stops and streets are in German.  I copied down what the names sounded like to me, knowing they wouldn't be correct, and ran out the door to catch the next tram.  Eventually, with some help from a very nice German man, I found the right bus stop.  That was the easiest part.  The clinic is hard to find from the bus stop so the only thing I could do was ask a woman getting off the bus if she knew where it was.  She was extremely nice and sympathetic to me and walked me all the way to the clinic while talking about the time she has spent in the US. 

The next point in my search was to find where I was supposed to go within the huge medical center.  I hopped between several receptionists before I found one who was able to call the doctor that I was looking for who directed me to go to the receptionist on the third floor (hopefully my last receptionist).  At this point I thought I was done and could finally join the group.  I was wrong and still had a ways to go because there was in fact no receptionist anywhere on the third floor. 

It had been a long morning and I was beginning to think I was out of luck but was unwilling to give up.  I asked the next doctor I saw if he knew where the doctor I was looking for was and he was more than happy to escort me all the way downstairs to the changing rooms.  After I'd changed into scrubs I continued my search for the group.  I had to then ask a pair of doctors in the OR section if they had seen any other students observing.  One of the men then brought me around to almost 5 different operating rooms until he found one with another one of the students.  I had found the group.

So one of the main things I learned today is really just how nice the German people are!! I asked a countless number of people today for help and not a single one wouldn't help me!  They were also all very interested that I was from Texas and one of the doctor's first response to finding this out was to ask me if I had a gun!! Well, that is all for now, later I will write another blog about my experience in the OR but I think this is enough adventure for now.