Thursday, October 23, 2008

It’s our last clinic day today. This realization, coupled with the fact that this trip has gone by entirely too fast, hit me this morning. Aaaak! That, and I think that the schedule of late nights and early mornings has been catching up with me. Ugh! It took me only a short while to discover that today would be difficult attitude-wise as well. Petty little nothing things were annoying me to death. I could see it happening, and it frustrated me, but Lily helped by laughing at me, helping me to laugh at myself.

Over the lunch break today, we had our first "official" Spanish lesson with Profesor DeHoyos. We learned about yo, tu, ello/ella, ellos/ellas, and nosotros, as well as the changes to the verb endings. Lots of helpful stuff, and lots of laughing. I'd take Alfredo for a school teacher any day!

We saw 41 patients today! That has got to be a record, or close to it, especially with only one doc. Dad says a normal day in the office for him at home is like 12-15 patients. Of course, the count of patients includes cleanings, which Dad didn’t do, and doesn’t do at home either. Still, that’s a lot of people! I think a lot of it is due to the excellent way mom handles her receptionist job. She’s real tough when she needs to be, but a softie when it comes to closing down the clinic…”Can’t we just see one more?”

Dad just grins, “Bring ‘em on.”

When we returned from lunch, we were delighted to see how many people were waiting for us! Lots of kids! Yay!! ☺ During one of my breaks from assisting, I gathered a bunch of the kids waiting for treatment and showed them the photo booth program on Jamie’s computer. They had a blast with the picture distortion features. “Look, I have two heads!” “I’m a one-eyed monster!” (rough translation) A little later, Joe and Dany went out and told a story. Dany translated, while Joe shared the gospel and his testimony. I was so proud of both of them!! Oh, and Jamie did her ever-popular Frisbee-chasing dog story. Always a hit!

The sterilizer kind of malfunctioned, so we had a backlog of instruments waiting to be cleaned, which means the hygienists had to get a little creative towards the end of the afternoon. It seemed like barely any time had passed, and we were finishing up the last two patients. Clean-up went as normal, without too many mishaps. I only spilled ONE box of crowns…whoops! DIF workers brought us cokes and cookies again … Lord, bless those DIF ladies!!

Jamie and I power walked our loop again before dinner. The sky turned cloudy, and the air thick and humid. We hoped it wasn’t going to rain, because Joby and Josue had just taken part of the roof off to repair it. It’s just a spot over the porch, but still! It started to get dark just as we arrived back at the house.

I think we are hooked on Sequence. We seriously played like 6 games, but split up the lovebirds. ;) Poor Joby and Paula, they didn’t win even one game last time! The ultimate winners of the evening turned out to be Lily and Paula. Rejoicing in spirit, we drifted off to sleep, excited for our day off and trip to Monterrey the following day.