Hospital Experience

For two weeks this summer I worked at a Moscow's National Hospital. However, when I boarded the plane for Moscow, Russia I had no idea that I would be working about 8 hours a day at a hospital. The trip was only made to visit my grandparents and to re-new my passport, but somehow I ended up sending my application for the hospital, and getting a phone call several days later saying that I was expected to be there at 7 am. I was extremely excited when I stepped through the revolving doors and entered the waiting room for the hospital. A nurse came by and quickly explained to me that I was expected to care for five elderly patients. I hardly understood her since she was speaking so fast in Russian, and me, not being used to hear the language did not understand half of her words! Nevertheless I arrived in the right room and headed over to my patients. I introduced myself but the patients did not immediately like me and sent me of to run an errand for them. It did not help that I couldn't understand what they were saying, and because of this made several awkward mistakes. However by the second week I had gotten used to their routine. Since by the time I would get there they would have just woken up and gotten dressed. They liked to start of their day by a hot cup of tea and some biscuits. After that I would have to take two of them outside, so they could enjoy the summer air in the beautiful garden that was located in the back of the hospital. Our walks would usually last about thirty minutes, usually ending up with two of them walking in front of me, and me just walking behind them trying to make them not so aggravated. Many nights I would come home and wonder if all of these community service hours were worth it. However on my last day in the hospital my five elderly friends were kinder to me that usual, and for once our walk had been enjoyable. When I left at the end of that day I was assured that for those two weeks I had made the lives of those five great people a little bit better. I had never been involved in such a large community service project, and that has motivated me to start doing more of them.