My name is Sojato

So my Quattro de Julio was not a whole lot different than most other days! We mustered at 0730 in 2AFT, like normal, talked about what was coming up, like normal. But after Muster we didn’t have to do anything else! There’s only so much cleaning and restocking you can do in one little ward, eh? So I went and signed up for a COMREL with RP2 Fields, in the Chaplain’s office. And my good ol’ friend RP3 Strother was there! (RP2 and 3 are their rate and rank, RP stands for Religious Person and 2 is beter than 3) So I hung with him for a bit. We were joined by a Colombian friend of ours, Laura Lara, who’s on the ship with the UCSD Pre-Dental Society, but I think she’s studying political science… But yeah! We all headed up to chow, which was filled with all sorts of random Spanish phrases that Jarvis wanted to learn, such as “Tu eres un ganzo bobo” which means “You are a silly goose.” And I learned more practical words that I could actually use without people looking at me strangely. Such as how to say CJ in Spanish (non-American people never get my name) you pronounce it Sei-Hotah. So Jarvis was trying to tie that into one of his silly phrases and it came out more like Soh-Hatoh, so now my name is Sojato!

After said meal was finished I went to sit with my LDS friends Ashley, Lisa and Emma (Lisa and Emma just came on board recently) and found out that they were all about to go down to the OR and watch an operation! –we haven’t started operations yet, but Operation Smile is on board using our facilities to do a bunch of cleft-pallet repairs- So I joined their little crew and ended up being the only person seeing the operation! The Doctor was a cool Nicaraguan guy who was always laughing in Spanish (jajajaja) about something or other, the nurses all said he was crazy.
The procedure he was doing was a minor cleft pallet in the back of the little boy’s throat, you couldn’t even see it, but he said the muscle on top of the mouth wasn’t connected so the throat couldn’t close correctly to form words and stuff. So he cut open the roof of the mouth, cut the muscles and stitched them together, then stitched the skin back up! I don’t think it was more than 45 minutes, if that. I felt all official in my scrubs, disposable hat, shoe covers and face mask. Purtroppo I don’t have a camera so ya’ll’ll just hafta imagine me!

Then last night we (Me, Lisa and Manuel) were out on the Port-side Weather Deck just talking about something and we saw some fireworks that somebody was shooting up on shore! Pretty neat that they’d do that on our independence day.

Some Stuff!

So hey! Here's some stuff that has happened in the past while!

Some media people from the church came to the ship! I wasn't doing anything at the time so I helped them out. I basically was their run around boy, I'd run down to the Personal Affairs Office if they forgot a mic cord or a tripod knuckle or a reflector or something like that. then I'd help them set stuff up and show them how to get places, cause this ship's quite confusing if you haven't been here a while. And then they inteveiwed us! most of us at least, I got to be outside in the wind and stuff :) Cause they'd already done some videoing in 2Aft, where I work, and in the Hotel ward which looks alot like 2Aft. They were filming for a segment in the World Report this next conference, So be sure to watch it! I'll probably be in it!

When we were underway between Tumaco, Colomba and El Salvador we saw a bunch of Dolphins! A bunch of times! It was way awesome, they'd come right up by the bow of the ship and jump out of the water, sometimes 3 or 4 at a time! I think there were at least 15 of them, you could see them swimming underwater too. There was a mom and baby too, it was really cute they'd both jump at exactly the same time. And I saw a sea turtle the same day! It was probably about two feet across, and it came really close the the front of the ship underwater and kinda flailed around, heh. I think it was probably riding the surf off the bow.

My spanish has gotten alot better! It's still pretty pathetic, but better than before! Which was about nothing.. But now I can greet people several ways, give directions, tell people when and where to sit, ask them what they want to eat and drink, tell them what I'm doing when I take their vital signs, ask if they're in pain, and where it hurts... and any combination of the above! Apparently I have a good accent when I speak spanish cause the patients and their escorts never know I don't speak more then I do. They often ask me long questions or give me detailed descriptions of what type of pain they have and I just look at them quizzically and say "...no intiendo" and then they try agin but explaining diffently until I say "no no no, no intiendo espanol" That always gets a good laugh "no intiende espanol? No hable??" Or the other night I was talking to another corpsman (the navy guys that do the same thing as me) named Crain, and an escort came up to talk to him but first asked me "como se dice 'el quiere gelatino'?" which means "he wants jello", I just laughed, cause crain speaks more than I do. heh heh.

So yeah! that's somewhat of an update for ya!