Happy Thanksgiving!

My first Thanksgiving away from home with no turkey and pumpkin pie, definitely a shift in tradition. It was a little rough getting up this morning as last night I went out with some people in the lab to watch the Brasil v Uruguay futebol match. Plenty of beers and other alcoholic drinks were provided along with meat and french fries. The game began at 9:45 so as one can imagine it was a late night.

Today I spent some time in the Leshmania lab getting to know the routine there. They are doing experiments to see which drugs are more effective at killing the parasite that is known to cause a lot of problems here in Brazil. I can't begin to explain how difficult it is to learn from people when you can only understand about 75% of what they're saying, I constantly feel like I'm missing important points. Reading over the protocols does help, although these are often in Portuguese as well. It looks like I'll be spending tomorrow and most of next week in the Leshmania lab learning as much as I can; I've also gotten in touch with one of the docs in the research clinic to see about tagging along with him for awhile.

I still have no idea what kind of project I'm going to initiate come next year. I still need to find a few physicians to shadow within the hospital system here, preferably get out and see even more clinics. Keeping myself busy while I'm here is beginning to seem like a surmountable task, as opposed to my first weeks here where I was just feeling like total dead weight. Only a couple weeks till I'm out of here for Christmas, time flies.