Week two in Mae Sot

It seems like a lifetime has gone by since my last post!  Life in Mae Sot has settled into a nice routine, full of interesting encounters with local people, challenging and rewarding work at the clinic, and a good group of fellow foreigners who remind me how wonderful it is to speak in my mothertounge and be understood!
A day in the life goes something like this: wake up under my mosquito net to the sounds of roosters, traffic, and neighbors, bathe, find some food for breakfast (theres a little burmese noodle shop just outside my home), and get on my bike to head to the clinic.  On the road, I pick up Alex, my fellow medical student and best friend here,and together we ride past fruit stands, stray dogs, trucks, and rice fields about 5km to the Mae Tao Clinic.  The clinic is always bustling, and after drinking a coffee with Alex at a little stall on site, we head to our department to see patients.  Ive been working in the adult inpatient department these first two weeks, seeing various patients who are sick enough to stay in the clinic. Most are Burmese, either from across the border, or illegal immigrants to Thailand.  Free health care is provided to Thai citizens, but as illegal migrants, these people have no access to other services. Its been an incredibly steep learning curve - figuring out what diseases are common here, what labs and medicines are available, how to chart - not to mention the cross-cultural learning!  Most of the medics Ive been working with are Karen refugees, trained by the clinic in their "community health worker" training project, and they are both useful translators, as well as excellent clinicians.  Ive been amazed by their clinical skills and judgement... I guess thats what happens when one has to rely solely on their own two hands and their mind for diagnosis.  For the first time in my training, I find myself using my basic clinical skills and observation - skills that have been made nearly obsolete by medical technology in the West.  It is challenging me to think critically and thoroughly, to use testing judiciously, and to be firm in my decisions.  I work as a team with the medics, problem solving, learning and teaching in turn.  As the days go on, Im beginning to feel more comfortable and more useful. 
My heart has been doing some learning and growing as well at the clinic... seeing diseases of poverty, and conditions that would have been nipped in the bud months or years before in any Western country.  There are many things that we cant work up to diagnose, let alone treat.  So, patients languish with family members sitting beside them on the hard plywood beds, people eating, conversing, laughing, babies breastfeeding as people heal or pass away.  The great chaotic, senseless, beautiful dance of birth, life and death is all happening here, between these concrete walls.
Im happy here, learning and feeling and reflecting on the things I witness, both difficult and beautiful.  Its a gentle life too, and Im revelling in being just a small, curious human with much to learn - listening to the rain, taking in the smells, the stories of this place.
thinking of you all, with love, Laura