This is the view from South Tipperary General Hospital (I'm pretty sure it was the inspiration for the American soap), where I spent the month of February. It was always nice to leave the hospital after a long day and be greeted by that view, especially at sundown. I'm not sure how the rest of the populous feels about being able to see the hospital from every part of town, though.

All and all it was a great month. Of course, traveling back and forth between Cork and Clonmel had already worn itself thin, but in terms of teaching I couldn't have asked for anything more. One of the cool things is our main contact there is the first Irish woman to both summit Mt. Everest and hike to the South Pole. It's a small hospital, only 6 physicians in medicine (others in surgery, pediatrics, and obstetrics) and very few students. Because of this the consultants can take the extra time to actively teach us during rounds, and some of the other meetings for the entire staff were expanded to make them useful as well. I was with a geriatrician, and because of a general lack of specialists in the hospital, her patients had everything under the sun. Parkinsons, stroke, heart disease, kidney failure, and of course pneumonia. I was finally able to learn a little about disease and patient management, which was great. I got to interview and examine patients in Dr. Pillay's outpatient clinic, see how tilt-table tests are run, learn how to do an arterial blood-gas, do venesections, and spend more time with anaesthetists.

I won't lie, I was sick of the round trip every week. This is my first week in Cork since the middle of December. With my 3 week vacation coming up, I won't have spent very much time in this apartment, or getting to see my friends before the somewhat hellish build up to summer exams. To make it even more ridiculous, our first week up there coincided with something called coursing. Some activity where greyhounds chase bunnies through a field. In today's world the dogs are muzzled, so the rabbits are only subject to abject terror, but very little, if any physical harm. People come to this year after year, so all of the b+bs are booked well in advance. We stayed with Bernie, who is a pal of the woman who runs the place we were in for the bulk of the time. Bernie was very nice. Somewhat strange to be staying with just a random woman (she is not an inn keeper). She is also the aunt of one of our biochem lecturers, as it happens. So the beginning was a little crazy, returning from my trip to Boston, starting in a new hospital, and hanging my hat in so many places. But for these two weeks I'm sleeping in my own bed, cooking my own food in my kitchen, and generally having a slower time of it.

I'll leave you with some pictures of the place I made home for the month of February