Weather is pretty and the locals are spoiling us rotten. So far we've been treated to salmon in every conceivable concoction, moose, musk ox, caribou, homemade jams, trout, king crab and some scrawny squab. It's like their favorite local sport is: Who Feeds the Soldiers Today.
Spent the first week teach classes to the kiddies at school. Now I'm taking patients. It's been...interesting. These folks are NOT primitive by any stretch of the imagination yet there are some things we take for granted that just have not caught up with them. It's amazing how they'll describe their lives of subsistence hunting, fishing and berry-gathering when they suddenly stop in mid-sentence to check their email on their smart phones.
COOL STORY: Around 2200 local we got a call that there was a veterinary emergency on the island of Little Diomede. They have a video teleconferencing suite in each clinic (even if the clinic is nothing more than a spare room packed with med supplies). Using the VTC suite our vet was able to talk the health aides through administering IV fluids and antibiotics for a husky pup--whose sire won the Iditarod this year-- that had contracted parvo.
Rumor control said the week before we arrived another village health aide was able to insert a chest tube.
