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| This is a picture of me on a camel in Jordan. I include this photo for two reasons. (1) All blog posts should have photos. (2) It was a lifelong dream of mine to ride a camel. One of the best things about MSIH is being able to cross things off your bucket list. |
I’m so excited to be writing for this blog! I remember reading it last year as I prepared for medical school, wondering what it would be like to live in Israel. While it can be wonderful, adjusting to life in a foreign country is difficult. There’s a new language to learn, a new culture to comprehend, a new..everything. I’m not sure I’ll ever understand why grocery shopping in Beer Sheva is a contact sport, or why the bus schedule is always wrong over the holidays, or why the corner store near my apartment seems to close at a different time every day. Sometimes, living in Israel is endlessly frustrating.
Yet other days, I get to be a part of something that exists nowhere else in the world. This past week, Israel celebrated Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day. In this small country of around 7.5 million people, almost everyone knows someone who was affected by the Holocaust. There are memorial services hosted by various institutions. There is also a siren throughout the country. Check out this youtube video of the country’s response to the siren- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeozUSWdoQA. I was very moved by the experience. It was so incredible to see people of all ages and backgrounds come together and give respect to those who suffered such unbelievable tragedy.
Two days later, I was part of a group of first years who interviewed Holocaust survivors as part of our Clinical Medicine course. We’ve been practicing taking medical interviews for the past few months, and the last few weeks we’ve been learning about geriatrics. Holocaust survivors make up a significant proportion of the elderly in Israel, and have unique health issues. I was fascinated by the stories I was privileged enough to hear. One woman described her year in a concentration camp at the tender age of eight with chilling accuracy, and went on to casually mention learning French and German in less than a year after being taken in by a Swiss family after the war. It made my struggles with Hebrew seem ridiculous. I look forward to further geriatric care while I’m in Israel. I love listening to the stories that can only come from a long life. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up wanting to do a residency in geriatrics. - blogger of the month, Rebecca Lapham
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