Métro Boulot Dodo

I'm quickly finding out what it's like to be in the real world and no longer a student (for the time being), and it fits in perfectly with the French expression Métro Boulot Dodo which is Metro-Work-Sleep. That's it. That's your life. Oh, you know there's the weekend, or the occasional vacation getaway but that flies by and you're back to Monday, and it restarts just until Friday. That becomes the cycle in our lives, everyday blends into one and there's not much to do once you get home after work, except to eat dinner and go to sleep. And then wake and restart. I've added my own word to the sequence for the typical American schedule: Mérto-Boulot-McDo-Dodo. It's cute how the French call McDonald's McDo (like dough) while we name it Mickey-Ds.
Something adorable happens yesterday at work- I brought in little Hershey's Kisses that I received for Valentine's Day and sent them out on the table for everyone to try. Well they all looked at the little Kisses and looked at me and said, "What is it? Is it cheese? C'est du fromage?" But of course, they would think a tiny little kiss is a piece of cheese and not chocolate!

My internship so far is going super-well. It's fantastic and I love it, which makes it much easier to wake up every morning at 7h30. I can't imagine working at a job where you dread going to a job you hate, especially because it's not just one day out of the week but every day for the rest of your life. I actually look forward to work every day, for a new project and more lives of children to save. It's so inspiring to be here, seeing that people actually can make a difference and save a life that otherwise would be forgotten in the misery of the world. Take Afghanistan for example; La Chaîne has just build a brand new hospital in Kabul- literally the only functioning healthcare center in the entire country. Not surprising considering the country has been an open battlefield and ripped to shreds for the last 25 years. I really like this article by the way, by my hero Sarah Chayes (an American woman living in Kandahar, Afghanistan for the last 8 years)



Even (not) more shocking is that the sanitation conditions there are abominable and hard to look at - trust me, I just saw a photograph the other day of the Children's Hospital a few years ago that had the dirtiest operation table I've ever seen. And some disturbing pictures to go with it. Miraculously, La Chaîne has raised millions of dollars through promotions and private donations to build a state-of-the-art Children's Hospital where we send missions of a team of doctors , from cities such as Paris, Caen, Toulouse, Nantes, Lyon and Rennes to Kabul for a few weeks to operate and save as many children as possible, for surgeries such as open-heart and plastic surgery. It's remarkable the things people around here do and I'm very proud to be a part of it.