Updates and Pictures

Sorry its taken so long since the last post. I've been waiting til I had a decision from EWH as to whether we were still going to go to Honduras or not. Since we don't have any groups of students going to Tegucigalpa, and the situation is somewhat under control, they have decided to let us go. They made this decision with the help from all of our hospitals, a few of their reps in Honduras, and from our spanish teachers here in CR. That means we leave on Saturday morning!!!! We've already been here for 3 and a half weeks... crazy.

So to catch you up on whats been going on here:

My Spanish is rapidly improving. For example, last week my class went to an art museum in San Jose and were lucky enough to be there the same time as the artist of one of the exhibits. He gave us a little tour of his art and told us all about it... all in Spanish. I understood almost everything. (I also bought a children's book in Spanish and read little red riding hood last night to practice... its definitely helping)

Last weekend, I went to Cahuita, a tiny Caribbean beach town. It was amazing... check out these pictures:

















The hotel we stayed at was right on the beach, with hammocks out on the palm trees... pretty nice for $10 a night, huh?


















The beach we went to at the national park... we tried to go surfing and lets just say it didnt go so well




I know it might be hard to believe, but we do actually work during the week. At this point, Fernando and I have used and taken apart an Electrosurgery Unit, Aspirator, Blood Pressure monitor, an EKG, a Defibrillator, a Pulse Oximeter, a Centrifuge, and a few other things. For a few of them we have also written "quick start guides" in Spanish so that we could tell a nurse or doctor how to properly use them if we need to. Here's some proof:

















Using the automated BP machine to take my blood pressure and pulse with the top of the machine off so we could see how it works.



While we've been here, I also mentioned that we did some salsa dancing... last week we had a second lesson. As much as I hate doing this, I feel like i should post some pictures of this as well:






















This is me dancing with the teacher; she was a little bit intense...



Last Friday, our groups also switched and we got to go to a different hospital. For me it was a hospital in San Ramon. It was a hospital definitely up to american standards... the machines were all new and under contract, everything was clean, and was even separated and setup like an american hospital would be (they even had a butterfly garden for the patients to walk around in...). We got to work on some equipment... but it was all working before we took it apart. Here are some pictures from the hospital:



















This is one of the engineers, Susana, talking to us about the mammography machine they have in the hospital


















Here is another one of the engineers, Alex, showing us the different parts of the oxygen concentrator they have at the hospital.


In addition to that, here are some pictures of this last weekend at the Arenal Volcano. I ended up going zip lining, hanging out in the hot springs, and hiking to a waterfall and swimming underneath (I dont have the swimming pictures right now cause i was in the water... but one of my friends took some, I just gotta get them from her).






















This is Fernando zip lining... I was the designated picture taker, so there are none of me.























After going down a couple lines, we had mud sprayed all over us from the rain on the wires...

















Our hotel was pretty nice I'd say... the view was pretty decent too...


















Here's the waterfall we hiked down to and swam in its pool and river...

















Fernando and I ate at a local soda (their lunch cafe kinda things) for lunch on Sunday. Here's the casado (traditional plate) that I got; it included rice, beans, plantains, fish, salad, something else i dont know the name of, tortillas, and fresca - all for under 3 dollars. This is something we would get for lunch every day during the week.

















This is the best view of the volcano we got all weekend, while we were waiting at the bus stop. It was too cloudy to see the lava the night we were there... Que Mal (bummer...)























Costa Rican sunset from the bus... A nice way to end the weekend...

If you made it this far, congrats. Sorry for such a long post!