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.

Stop at Barbados

Imagine this, waking up a bit earlier than you are used to and seeing the sea turn from black to golden. Stepping out onto the balcony from the highest part of a ship at sundown to see the sea start to turn red, and then slowly to black. Finnaly if the moon is out around 11 pm you will see nothing but a small moon trail on the ocean. This winter break my family and I went on a cruise around the Caribbeans. The cruise line that my dad got tickets for was very small, and the ships were extremely small as well. The first night was the most memorable nights for me, since I have never been so far out at sea. Me and my sister stayed up all night sitting outside on our little balconies watching the passing cities, and how their lights would come closer and as we would move farther away they would disappear. The first day we stopped at some tiny island that was no bigger than 5 miles wide and about 12 miles in length. There was not a lot of things to do so that day we quickly looked around and then went back on the ship. It was quite interesting for me though since it was the smallest country I have ever been in, if we had wanted to we could have walked around the island in less than a day! The most interesting place that we stopped in was in Barbados. There were a lot of trips and excursions so we tried to get the most out of the stop. We went zip lining over the rain forests, and at first it was extremely scary but soon I got used to the hight and the speed and got to enjoy my birds-eye view down to the rainforest floor. Then a tour guide showed us around the island and pointed out the most interesting things. At the end of the excursion he dropped us of at one of the best beaches in Barbados. The waves were extremely big, but the sun was so hot we had to go into the water. When in the water my sister decided to take pictures from the sea, so we carefully moved the camera into the water. When it was time to go my sister had trouble climbing out with the camera so I go out and was getting ready to help her when she slipped and fell straight into the water...with the camera. We searched and searched but couldn't find it. It was a shame since all of the pictures of the cruise we had so far were only saved on the camera and not where else. When our parents had asked about the camera we told them, and they said it was ok since we had two cameras and could continue taking pictures. The stop at Barbados was one of the most interesting stops that we made while on the cruise. It was quite the experience.

My Trip to Turkey

Last year I was fortunate enough to take a vacation in Turkey. Before that I still lived in Canada, where the winters are cold and long. When we got of the plane in Turkey and a rush of warm air hit me, I was extremely happy to be out of the cold. We went to our hotel, which was located on one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever been on. The hotel offered a lot of all-inclued excursions and trips, some of which I enjoyed most were painting class, and a scuba-diving course you could attain your PADI certificate and a scuba-diving certificate. In two weeks I finished two art works. The first one was a painting of a cat with acrylics, and lined with gold glue. It was a simple piece but it was still very fun to do and turned out very nice. The second art work was far more interesting. Using water-color and a special pen I was able to draw a design on a table cloth and color it in. I also decided to take the scuba-diving course. It was a total of 10 dives, which worked out perfectly since I was in Turkey for two weeks. The first couple of dives were in the pool, where we learned how to operate the different equipments. After that we had dives in the ocean, where we had to preform lots of tasks, like swimming 10 meters without our goggles on, taking of the equipment and putting it back on in the ocean. As our final dive we dove about 10 feet to a sunken ship that was about 50 years old, and to explore a little bit. I highly enjoyed my trip to Turkey, and I would love to go there again sometime.