Medicine - ARGENTINA Daily Life

Daily life of a Medical Volunteer

I lived in a beautiful house in the middle of the city of Cordoba. I shared a room with two other volunteers, which despite the small room worked out very well, especially in the winter when we all huddled together near the small heater for warmth. We lived with our host parents and their cat Alemendra, and the five of us shared one bathroom, which could get a little hectic in the morning. However, most days, we got up earlier than our "parents" to go to work at the hospital. The house had a nice kitchen that we were allowed to cook in. It took me many tries to learn how to light the stove, but after that, we cooked quite a bit and even made dinner for our family on the last night. Our house also had a washer, which we used regularly and hung our clothes up in the courtyard. The coolest thing about our house was that we had an asado, or an outdoor barbeque, right on the roof. The only bad thing about the house was that it took us a while to learn how to find it, since it was the only residential house on the short street and was hidden on top of a workshop. All in all, it was a wonderful place to live.

A typical day began around 6:30am when we would get up, eat breakfast, and walk to the hospital, about a 20 minute walk. During the day we would attend medical school classes, as well as shadowing Dr. Pedro Pizarro, an abdominal surgeon, on his rounds, and watch surgeries if there were any. On special days, we were able to work with other doctors like an AIDS specialist or a breast cancer specialist. We also worked in many different hospitals with Dr. Pizarro, so we got to see a diverse range of patients and treatment styles. I got to see a lot of different patients and learned a lot about a wide range of conditions as well as social issues. Car rides with Dr. Pizarro and the other volunteers were always full of fierce discussions about all sorts of topics ranging from treatments to religion to politics.

We would usually arrive back home around 5pm and have free time to roam around the city until dinner, which was around 10pm some nights and 12am others. We got to know Cordoba very well and did a lot of shopping because the exchange rate was so favorable. We also traveled a lot around the northern part of Argentina. We would usually take off a Friday and a Monday and then travel for four days during the weekend. I was able to go to Iguazu Falls, Salta and Jujuy, and Buenos Aires. Traveling by bus in Argentina was very easy, safe and comfortable, and staying in hostels was always really fun and cheap. Everywhere we went, we made it a priority to eat at great restaurants because the food was amazing and very inexpensive compared to the U.S. The volunteers all became very close, and we would hang out on the weekends and have picnics, asados (barbeques), or go clubbing. They also became very reliable travel buddies.