Hello from Slovenia! I have safely arrived in a fairytale... a snowcovered Ljubljana!
Many people will be familiar with the name Erasmus because of the Erasmus exchange scholarships. I too have embarked on this adventure and have headed for Ljubljana to do a 3 months internship midwifery nursing in the capital of Slovenia. In doing so I sort of follow in the footsteps of the man who gave these scholarships, as well as my own Erasmus University College, their name, the great Dutch humanist thinker, writer and priest Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536). He spent a lifetime traveling through Europe, studying and working, thirsty for knowledge. And so am I ... hungry for new experiences, new knowledge, new skills, new wisdom, new challenges, new friends!
During the first weekend, I visited the world famous and controversial exhibition "Our body". For this exhibition, preserved human bodies have been dissected in different ways, thus displaying the different bodily systems. A local medical student was available to give us some explanation. This visit proved a good repetition of my anatomy classes.
However, walking along the bodies, lined up in real life poses, gave a mixture of feelings and thoughts, ranging from ethical concerns to fascination, sensation, and sometimes a feeling of disgust when observing how much the human flesh looks like the meat in the butcher's shopping window. In the end, I think my medical interest won, after seeing the placental vascularisation and being able to look into the female pelvis. It was an impressive experience and a good kick off of my midwifery nursing internship that will start this week.
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