Hello from the Highlands!

So, I'm sure that you'll all be pleased to hear that I made it here in one piece! Hurrah!

In actual fact the journey was pretty non eventful, everything went to plan and it all ran rather smoothly.

Here's how it went: 

Manchester - London (overnight in London)

Heathrow - Kuwait - Bangkok - Manila

Manila - Port Moresby - Mount Hagen

Mount Hagen - Kudjip

So, door to door it took over 3 days for me to get here without a huge amount of sleep in between, but it was much less stressful than I was excpecting so I was quite relieved!

My first impression of Papua New Guinea was of the spectacular landscape. The view from the plane as I was landing in Mount Hagen completely took my breath away, I filmed it on my phone but it never looks quite as good watching it back on a screen! As I was waiting to be picked up from the airport I was approached by the only other foreigner on the plane who asked me if I wanted to borrow his phone, and it turned out that he was from Burnley! It was pretty funny but also quite comforting to hear another northern accent despite having travelled to the other side of the world! Luckily my lift turned up a few moments later and we were on our way. 

The drive from the airport is only around 28 miles but despite being along the 'national highway' it is difficult to ever pick up any speed as there are huge, constant potholes. I was quite happy during the journey to just sit back and take in the view. The landscape is really lush and green and surrounded on all sides by huge mountains. In many places the clouds come down around the mountains so it feels like you are in the sky!! (Apparently where the hospital is based it's a mile above sea level).

When I arrived here I was shown to my flat (which is nice - quite basic and a bit of an issue with ants and cockroaches at the moment but I'm working on that!) had a shower and grabbed a 20 minute nap before Andy, one of the doctors, turned up to take me to the hospital. It's only a 5 mintue walk from my flat which is handy. I spent the afternoon in clinic with him seeing patients and trying desperately not to fall asleep! Then I had dinner with Andy and his wife and headed home for an early night to get over the jetlag.

This morning I was back in the hospital at 7.45am for a doctor's meeting, then the ward round and then some more time in clinic. I also went into surgery with one of the other doctors who was operating on a 15 year old girl with an imperforate hymen. It was interesting to see as up until now that's something I'd only read about in books! The end of the morning was very sad as were called to see a newborn baby who had arrested in the incubator next to her twin sister. I performed chest compressions whilst Andy administered some adrenaline but unfortunately we got there too late.

This afternoon I went into town with one of the other volunteers to get my groceries (I'm becoming American already!) for the next few weeks. The fruit and veg market was interesting and slightly overwhelming but I enjoyed it and bought a lot of fresh veg so hopefully that will keep me going! We also picked up two new volunteers from the airport - a doctor and his wife who are originally from Germany but live in Australia, so I'm no longer the only non-American volunteer!

Unfortunately, there is no wifi available in my flat and the ipad is only able to connect to wifi so for the time being I may have to sporadically pop over to Andy's flat to use his internet connection so that I can reply to emails etc. I'm not sure how often I will be able to post on here but I will try to keep on writing and saving it and then maybe once a week use their wifi to post it up online. We'll see!

So hope everyone is well anyway and the last thing I just wanted to say was happy birthday to Chinny Chin Chin!!! Not sure if you're reading this but I can't send a text so this will have to do! And also happy  birthday for tomorrow to Grandma Jo - lots of love to you both!

Lots of love to everyone else to and hopefully I'll be able to write again soon! XXXX