First day on the job (John)

So far Angola has been good. Different but good. Language learning is under-weigh. We are communicating in Portuguese, but it's not smooth enough to be independant in clinic. Lori and I are taking daily language classes for 2 hours. Hopefully when we take over in January, I will be fluent enough to work.

I stumbled into a good situation here regarding my goal of training Angolan Ophthalmologists. I was able to attend the first ever national residency program formation council. Angola is trying to start an Ophthalmology residency training program! If all goes well I could be teaching the first class of cataract surgery as early as January.

So, that means that I need to get up to speed quickly on my surgical technique. Today was the first day in the OR, and I did 2 cataracts and a tarrsorhaphy. SO a good start. I'm so thankful for my time training in Paraguay; I was able to hit the ground running surgically here. I have 5 SICS (cataract) cases scheduled for tommorow. We shall see how they go.