Ok first things first. You cannot do medicine if you are squeamish. You just can’t. Or else you get over it fairly bloody fast. And I am not squeamish at all.

However, Tropical medicine is our new module. And I’m not going to go into detail here or anyone that is actually following this will be gone in a flash, but oh dear lord Tropical medicine is not for the light hearted. I have 3 words: Worms. Dysentery. Mosquitos. (Mosquitos interchangeable with tsetse flies, sandflies, other winged horrid creatures… Isn’t the word horrid quite wonderful. It makes me imagine perfect little boarding school ladies expressing polite disgust. It just sounds right!)

Or 3 alternative words via Mary: Making. Mary. Germophobic.

Agh, the fire alarm just went off. At first I thought it was a ‘Sarah is not concentrating on the lecture’ alarm but was (momentarily) relieved by the solemn man voice telling us ‘Attention. A fire has been reported in the building’ He sounded quite stern. I suppose you need to be in Ireland. For those of you that a. Are Irish or b. Have seen the Tommy Tiernan Fire bit from ‘Live’, you will understand. For those of you that are neither a or b – Explanation: We don’t really pass much heed of fire alarms in public places. I think this stems from the amount of times they would go off in school from people smoking in the toilets and such. Or just Corrib Village. I have yet to come across a fire alarm sounding over an actual fire. I hope that I (and you) never will. So much to our (Irish peoples) confusion, all the foreign students stood up and started to leave. I guess we just followed suit.

The adventure began. We traipsed down a little staircase I had never come across before and out on a random little road. Then a slightly angry looking man ushered us firmly up the road, and lo and behold we exited into the sunshine on a slightly more familiar street, dazed and confused from the sudden change from dark world of ebola virus to the fresh and airy brightness.  If anyone was driving by St. Stephens green today and passed a mass of scared looking pasty people holding onto notes for dear life, shying away from the light in fear- yeah, that was us. Then we learned it was all a drill and all went back inside. We did pass some garda dressed all in leather that led to some humourous suggestions about Pride Parade. That was the class adventure of Tuesday.

Anyway, that is what we learn about these days. Thus my somewhat cryptic twitter updates in the past 48 hours. On the other hand, we are so sorted for guessing what’s wrong in House now. And lets face it, that’s the main reason we go to Med school 😐

Next thing.. Em.. well with all the excitement  I may have slightly forgotten exactly what I was going to write. I will remember later. And update. I’m sure it was something of utmost importance naturally. Have to unpack when I go home 😦 Not looking forward to it. Will probably be very active online this evening in order to procrastinate.

P.S. Note to self: Avoid getting Wacki-Vacked out of Africa next summer. (That is my word of the day. Wacki-vacked. It refers to when you get gingerly shipped out of somewhere (mostly tropics) due to ‘going a little loopy’)