![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/ambassador-rcsi-student-union-1.jpg\")
<\/h2>\n<\/h2>\nThe Summer kicked off with the celebration of both my cousin and brother graduating from RCSI Dublin \u2013 you can read my blog about it here<\/a>. The whole family came over and celebrations carried on for a full week.<\/p>\n After the RCSI Conferring, I went to London for a week. This was basically a foodie trip – we explored new and exciting food markets everyday, dined at different restaurants each night and really just sampled the culinary delights an international city such as London has to offer. By the end of the week, our bank accounts were crying but it was totally worth it!<\/p>\n Then, I went back to Saudi, which is where I consider my home. I had a wonderful time catching up with high school friends again and enjoying all the good home-cooked meals I used to enjoy growing up. There\u2019s nothing like food from home! However, as an RCSI student, it doesn\u2019t take long for the \u2018itch\u2019 to set in. A couple of weeks of downtime and I was looking for my next challenge \u2013 that hunger for work takes hold and you need to start doing something! So, I successfully applied for a 4 week internship in the International Medical Centre<\/a> in Jeddah.<\/p>\n During my internship, I had 10-hour shifts in the GP and Nursing departments, where I got to observe how things run in a busy hospital. I was also shown how to take the basic vitals needed for each patient. This experience was a great way to start transferring the theoretical knowledge I\u2019ve been learning in RCSI to a practical setting and it made me even more excited for the time I will get to do my first clinical placement. Although not completely medical related, one of the crucial lessons I learned was having your car parked under the sun of the Saudi Summer for 8 hours a day is not the smartest of decisions \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n Finally, it was off to Amman, Jordan – where a whole other part of my family awaits. I was tempted to do some internships in Amman to get more experience, but my cousins were having way too much fun for me to miss out! As I don\u2019t get to see my family that much, I felt it was better for me to make the most of it and spend as much time with them as possible. So, my visit in Amman was spent with family visits everyday \u2013 which, of course means food, food and even more food.<\/p>\n We even took time to do a full day hike in the Mujib Nature Reserve canyon, which lies just beside the dead sea. Those who know me well would understand that I am by no means a \u2018hiker\u2019 \u2013 I still can\u2019t work out how they convinced me to do it. However, it was absolutely amazing and I saw a side to Jordan that I had never seen before. Honestly, the amount of times we were close to a \u201cnear death experience\u201d was astonishing to a point where it actually became normal!<\/p>\n Although I was away from Ireland during the Summer, I was never too far away. There were weekly 3am Skype meetings with my friends as our team won the RCSI Student Union elections! As our team members came from all different countries, thus the timing of the Skype call at a rather unusual time. However, with these Skype calls we managed to plan out all we want to achieve in the new academic year for the Student Union \u2013 so exciting times ahead.<\/p>\n So now, it\u2019s reading week at RCSI. A little time to regroup on the classes over the past month and get ready for finals at this point as they are only a month away. A bit of travel wouldn\u2019t have been bad, but sometimes one has to stick around and sit down and do some good old studying while everyone is somewhere else. I have been fortunate enough to be in such a position in my life and one can only look forward. Progress is key.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n DIFC Student Ambassador <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, Summer is well and truly done now. It almost feels like a distant memory now that I\u2019m back in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_custom_body_class":"","_custom_post_class":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[79,29,99,124,77,85,32],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5591"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/rcsi-2017-ali-zeid-ahmad-1024x681.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/ambassador-summer-london-576x1024.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/ambassador-imc-jeddah-1024x768-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/ambassador-hike-jordan-1024x681.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.difc.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/ali-rifai-ln-150x150.jpg\")
Written by Ali Rifai<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nCurrently studying Medicine at Royal College of Surgeons Ireland<\/p>\n