By Jason Sturek Pender Times Managing Editor


Pender Community Hospital's lab staff has a new medical technolgist, and he comes to Pender all the way from the Philippines.

Arneil Encarnacion, 26, joined PCH on Sept. 15 after arriving in the United States on Sept. 10. He spent the first few days with his aunt in California. Now that he's here, Arneil says he's happy to be in the Midwest where he said the values of the people more closely match his.

Arneil grew up in Iligan City, which is in the Lanao del Norte province in the Philippines. It's a thick urban area, but he said he made it to the countryside every now and then to visit his grandmother on a rice farm. That rural part of the Philippines has a lot in common with the wide open spaces of rural Nebraska, he said. That, and American movies, painted a picture of the United States for him before he got here.

Arneil received his education in the Philippines, where they take many of the exact same exams as medical students in the United States. He has a three-year working visa and was placed in Pender by an agency that specializes in helping people in his situation find work in the United States. According to Arneil, he has a girlfriend back home who is a nurse. She will also be trying to come to the U.S. for a shot at what Arneil calls "the American dream."

Arneil's job at PCH is to study blood samples in the lab where one part-time and four full-time employees work. "The doctors guess, and we confirm," Arneil said of his job. "They have the knowledge, and we have the tools."

Arneil is keeping in touch with friends and family back in the Philippines via the phone and through e-mail. Among the biggest adjustments to the area has been an 11-hour time difference, sudden changes in the weather and the food. In the Philippines, there are basically two seasons - wet and dry. "I notice that here people are constantly checking the weather," he said.

His diet usually consists of lots of rice, and the food he finds here isn't appetizing yet, with perhaps a couple of exceptions. "We have Subway back home, and I like pizza. Pizza is a universal food," Arneil said.

This story appeared in the Sept. 25, 2008 edition of The Pender Times.