The trip was good. I saw so many sacred and/or beautiful sites (that's a given), had fun with newly made friends, learned a lot about cardiology, bought many nifty souvenirs, and gained conciderable experience and confidance in me (really, hearing the other people from different non-English countries say to me "I could not imagine anyone speaking better English than you!" is rediculous, but quite an ego-booster).

I liked their health care in general, with lighter workload for doctors, shorter waiting time for patients, better organisation (typed charts! no decrypting famous doctors' bad handwritting needed). Curiously, Israelis still complains of their health care system not receiving enough money, and it's true that they are dedicating a much smaller percentage of their buget to health care compared to Quebec. I wonder why the system still works, maybe because the population is relatively younger?

Some parts of their multiculturalism are really good, but of course there are some big drawbacks there. Before going there, I thought the place would be like Montreal, with a considerable proportion of people speaking English not knowing French, and verse versa. Instead, what I found was a wonderful mix of Arabic, English, French, Russian, and many many more other languages native speakers all also speaking the commun language of Hebrew. Just amazing to see a country managing to do that, with a language revived from death not so long ago beside that. I have once seen a dance class (ok, baby dancing class, but it's the women who's really dancing...) with one woman in sleeveless shirt and a mini skirt together with the other woman dressed completely orthodoxe, together with the obviousely muslim woman. But from there on things really break. I can sense the discrimination against arabes, all the muslim doctors and med students I have encountered went to do their studies at the abroad, there must be a reason behind that. I'm not sure I got it right, but it seems that the Palestinian side of Jerusalem could not build new houses even when they need it without a permit, while one Jewish family can choose to install themself in the West-Bank in the middle of nowhere, and the state actually have to send like 4 soldiers after them to protect them. And Jerusalem, with almost every single branch of the 3 monotheism religion (by branch, I mean like Catholic, Protestant, Greek Orthodox etc in Chirstianity, for exemple) wanting their share of it, if not the whole thing, and sometimes all the redundance of symboles from each branchs makes rather funny sights.

I have been to a few different department of cardiology during those last two weeks now. Quite a few things are surprises to me. First, it turns out that everyone in the hospital use cellphones. Everyone. There's the sickest patient who's waiting for a heart and kidney transplant and who is barely conscious. There's the Hassidic husband perfectly dressed in his white shirt, black jacket, black overcoat, black hat on top of his kippa, and who takes out his super modern cell phone and give it to his equally modestly dressed wife so she can call his other cell to join him after she wakes up from her sedation. In a conference of one hour, at least 10 phones would ring, and doctors will answer it on the spot. Even in operation room, it's not unusual to see the doctor open the cell with his wrists, and answer with the cell stuck between his head and shoulder while still maneuvering the catheter. As it turns out, they don't use pagers, so cellphone calls could actually be emergencies. This is very different from McGill doctors who would apologize for a pager beeping in conference, and would not call one back if they are teaching or in OR unless it's a true emergency. Actually, i much prefer the practice here. So much more efficient to just answer your cell then paging, and wait until they call you back. It's proven that cellphone don't actually interfere with medical equipments, afterall.

I also learned that in Israel, the med school is 7 years, and that's after the Israeli served their 3 years of army! Talking with other exchange students, this does not seem to be unusual, actually. It's 6 years in Germany, 6 years in Turkey, 6 or 7 years in Russia, 6 or 7 years as well in England. Yes, they don't have to do an undergrad before going to med, but still, that's 7 years that they spend in learning medicine, instead of the super fast 4 years for North-America. Which means some countries are still able to give med school 3 months of vacation every year like for other studies. They would spend the first 3 or 4 years just learning theory. Indeed, the Turkey girl that I'm sharing the room just finished her 3rd year, and she had never ever set foot into an hospital as a med student before this summer exchange! There's that American guy who's going into his last year (since it's 4 years in US, that means he just finished his 3rd year too, just like her) with her also in neurosurgery. In basically her own word, "it really shows that he's in his last year, he knows everything!" The Israeli girl who's with me in cardiology, also in her last year, is still talking with the other equally last year Israel med student about how before doing this rotation, she thought she might want to do cardiology, but not anymore... They can only apply after finishing their 7 years and passed the final exam, you see. So she still has time to decide for what she wants to do into her 7th year! I'm kind of envious of them, cause I don't really like the fact that we have to apply by the begining of 4th year. This means that the 3rd and begining of 4th years's elective choices have to be already in the speciality we want to practice, and since one needs to apply to the electives 6 months to 1 year in advance, this effectively means that by 2nd or max early 3rd year, we have to decide what we want to practice. Way too early, if you ask me. Oh, and this effectively means that the doctor evaluating me has no idea as which year student he should treat me. He could just evaluate me as a second year, or he could consider me as a student 2 years before graduation, which would be a 5th year med student here. Quite a difference, no? In the end, he seems to have decided that he will think of me as a fourth year (ie the first year Israeli med students come to observe in hospital). This is only fair, I guess, since that's exactly the stage I'm in, after spending the last 5 months observing in Canada.

 Wow, I think I have been on Livejournal for more than 2 years now, since it has been more than two years that I know Richard, and I'm posting my first entry!

So it's been basically 5 days since I'm in Israel. Of all the things I thought might be difficult, namely language barriers, school, transportation, etc, the biggest problem, a very surprising one, is actually to feed myself. You see, the hospital's cafeteria provide a reduced price lunch for me, but I need to find food for the rest of the day. I'm not living in a big city here, so there's only one single mall with one single supermarket at walking distance from my dormitory, and a few fast food places (2 McDo in the hospital, among others) You see, ever since I moved out a few years ago, I have basically been living on TV dinners, veggi & fruit & orage juice and cereals with milk. And they don't carry frozen premade dinners (beside frozen fried junk food), very few fruits that could be called remotely fresh, or any not artificially colored and flavored juice. On the good side, they have very yammy cream cheese that I could put on bread, and also super good sandwich meat that I have no idea what meat it's made of beside that it's not pork. So the first day, beside some food, I went to buy a plate, a bowel, and a cup. After litteraly drunk my cerel, I learned that I need spoon and knife to function, and proceed to buy those as well. So now, I'm trying to cook with no pan (since I came by plane and will be leaving by plane, it's too wasteful to buy a new one just to throw out 3 weeks later), and using nail clippers instead of scissors to open packages (again, since I came by plane). That's a fun advanture.

On the other news, the people here are nice, school's been pretty easy, I got plenty of time to study, my hebrew's advancing very slowly but surely. I went to visit Tel Aviv the other day, their beach's very nice, I was suprised by how salty the  real sea water is compared to St-Laurence's golf/river mixture in eastern Quebec, that's quite a good surprise. Now just imagine how it's going to be floting on the dead sea... Oh, and I also can't seem to find one single gift shop or even a place that sells poster cards in the most busy street of downtown Tel-Aviv. Weird, I'm sure I didn't know how to find it, not that they don't have, and this mystery will be solved!

Can't wait until July arrives, when the other exchange students will come and the social activities will be organised. I hope my roomate will be nice...