My first leap to becoming a SCUBA diver

This weekend was awesome! I started my life as a scuba diver bright and early Saturday morning around 5:45am with reading my scuba book. Yes, it was unnecessary to get up that early but I’m already in the habit of doing it for work. I headed down to the dive shop a little before 9. Once there I did some of the knowledge reviews aka PADI’s idea of a study guide and then met up with another student- Verena from Germany- who was just starting that morning to watch the videos. As all instructional videos are, they were informative yet cheesy. All knowledge reviews complete, it was time for review with our awesome instructor Mags- she’s from Canada so go ahead and be proud JuJu. She has the flag on her BCD, do they hand those things out up there or what? Anywho, review, quizzes, break for lunch. I was expecting more class but was happy to learn that I would be doing the first set of skills in the water! Yay for actually getting geared up and wet on day one. They say it in the book, and on the video and your instructor and anyone else who’s ever scuba dived will tell you that its both freaky and awesome the first time you breathe underwater. They’re all 100% right but that didn’t mean I was any more prepared for how it actually felt. Because of this, I know nothing I say could prepare any of you all so I’ll just skip the details, just know that it’s cool. I watched Good Luck Chuck and went to bed pretty early.

Sunday

I rose and shined with the sun, again getting in my reading before being at the dive shop at 9:30. Verena and I watched the last 2 instructional videos, before knocking out our review and quizzes early. I had a nice jog back to the apartment for lunch before walking back for my first real dive! A little out of order but it’s a shallow reef- only about 30 feet where we were and we worked on some of the skills before we swam out and looked at all the pretty fishies- not quite as good lookin as you Becks but they were a little more colorful :P. I’m definitely excited to finish my skills dive on Tuesday and get back in the action. After scuba diving, I had a burger and watched a little of the U17 world cup final- go Mexico! (still not sure who won).

First Week in Honduras July 4-8

First Day at the hospital

The morning of our first work day went a little crazy. We were supposed to get a ride from someone at the hospital- I’m not quite sure how this was or could have been arranged with no cell phone or readily available internet access and less than 24hours to do it in. Nevertheless, our well stocked pre-brief gave us enough information for us to catch a bus and then some helpful passengers pointed us in the right direction for the 3 blocks remaining to get to the hospital. Once there, it was a little confusing where to go next. Everyone seemed to know a routine and protocol that we couldn’t place but we managed to find our way up to the administrative offices fairly quickly. There we met Mario, Thomas, Sherri and Chante who were all extremely helpful. Luis, the hospitals maintenance man came up and then we began! We toured the hospital with Luis, very swiftly and efficiently both introducing us and asking for any equipment that might need to be looked at. The staff in each department pointed out anything that might have been and most also explained the problem- in slow Spanish, which I greatly appreciated. We're lucky that quite a few people speak english so if we're really struggling with something, we can get help although again, the staff is patient and speaks to us slower than usual so we can understand. As we started getting more detailed information, Luis showed us the workshop where we could put our stuff and then we parted ways temporarily. Arielle and I spent the rest of the day working on our inventory and even poking around a few things. At the end of the day, we asked about where we could get cellphones unlocked and were extremely fortunate to receive a ride from Mario. It turns out the mall is very near where he used to live, so we also got a guided tour of the French Harbor before heading home to celebrate Independence Day.

Tues

We decided it would be best to continue our inventory and then prioritize the equipment that needed repair. We split our time between a few manual blood pressure cuffs and deciphering an autoclave. This involved cleaning and general maintenance as we diagnosed the problems with each. By the end of the day, we have gotten 4 pieces of equipment (1 autoclave and 3 blood pressure cuffs) repaired and ready for testing tomorrow after we do some research online to figure out more about the specific procedures the companies suggest. As we finish repairing things in our work area, we will probably start taking pictures (trophies!). Tomorrow should be good…

Wed

I knew this was going to be a good day when it started off with- pancakes! I’d only been craving them since the last time Zeidy made them for us for breakfast about 2 weeks ago. Needless to say, I enjoyed every bite I had. And the syrup is delicious. I’m guessing it may have something to do with the convenience of fresh sugar cane. We tested and returned 2 blood pressure cuffs and picked up a few more before lunch- which was still tasty but just not anticipated for 2 weeks, not their fault though. After lunch we focused on the autoclave and got that running with all of the translations of the full instructions as well as an illustrated quick start guide- yeah EWH loves us some quick starts. We were able to demonstrate how to use it to the staff and amend our instructions to make things easier for them to understand. Tommorow, they’ll demonstrate to us and have another autoclave working to speed things along!

Thursday

First order of business was wrapping up everything with the autoclave which I did while Arielle talked to some of the staff to gather information about potential new biomedical equipment ideas. We were stopped on our way back to the workshop and met the head nurse of the ER. She told us she had some things for us to look at and would get a list to us that afternoon. We noted the problems and locations of the equipment before following up in some of the other departments. Returned 2 more BP cuffs- we’re starting to get rather good at these if I say so myself. I’ll just pause here to say we had some really good beef soup for lunch, but it’s really hard to enjoy soup when you’re already sweating and the soup is hot enough to make your eating hand/arm sweat that much more. Just saying, not that it slowed me down any. We returned to the ER to get our list, and box of goodies. We had just enough time to enter these into our spreadsheets before heading home.

Today I finally decided I should check out some of the scuba shops by the beach. As a discerning customer, I glanced inside and read the signs in full before I got the strong urge to walk into one. I’m just gonna guess that God picked that one for me, which I appreciate because I couldn’t find the one Divemaster who was recommended to me. I met all the instructors and felt comfortable enough to pick up the papers to fill out and return on my way back from the internet café that has become a daily stop. And then I went home and watched Tangled while eating what tasted a lot like a Honduran version of funnel cake. It wasn’t funneled but fried, a little sweet and really good.

Friday

Today was about dividing and conquering. We flip flopped spending time working in the hospital and in the workshop. We tried to diagnose 2 incubators- unfortunately one was quite complicated and will require some research and talking with the manufacturer. We also looked at another autoclave and some of the machines in the goodie box. By the end of the day, we had a pretty good list of questions for manufacturer, users, and Google, ruled out problems, course of action for each one as we received more information. We also repaired another BP cuff. (I think they may actually be finding more BP cuffs from closets just to give to us.) But we appreciate their willingness to bring instruments that they’re not sure about the functionality of. We were prepared to have to go hunting for work but it’s cool that our staff is comfortable with just pulling us aside to point any problems out as they arise. And it’s kind of nice to have a piece of equipment that’s becoming second nature to diagnose, repair and calibrate.

After what felt like a very productive day and first week, I treated myself to a SALAD! Why because I very much miss my vegetables. Now in case you’re confused, central America is packed with delicious fresh fruit- we have four mango trees on 2 sides of our workshop. But vegetables, especially the green ones that my mommy makes me eat with lunch and dinner, are in short supply. And I’d really been missing them. So I thoroughly enjoyed my salad topped with grilled shrimp- come on, it’s me AND fishing is their second larget economic staple. I finished it off with a warm brownie and a pineapple-less colada from the apologetic bartender Alan. (I told him I wanted the brownie and ice cream when I ordered my salad and he failed to mention that they were out of ice cream). The creaminess was satisfactory to accompany a decent brownie. It might’ve been good but it reminded in ways of my mom’s except not enough. Again, not they’re fault. I’ve yet to find anyone else’s who are- myself included.

Side note, I believe Tigo- the cell phone provider I’m using here- wanted me to get a feel for the difficulties that trying to do something technical in a second language provides. All their service messages are sent in Spanish and I gathered that I can’t use all my services because of something but the messages don’t quite translate. So even though I have decent comfort with Spanish, I haven’t the slightest idea why when I buy 30minutes and text messages, I get one from Tigo telling me I’m out after a 5minute call and sending one text… The search for a bi-fluent, bilingual isn’t enough, person continues.

Adios Costa Rica, Buenos Honduras!

July 1-2 Transition from Costa Rica to Honduras

As usual, I didn’t pack the original time I intended so I woke up and packed my clothes. Our last day in San Pedro started off with gallo y pinto, fresh cheese and platanos. Delicious. Zeidy planned on going to work so the girls gave her gifts from home (Anjuli and I gave ours on the 1^st night). There were smiles and lots of pictures as we headed to the bus a little late and plus a few extra bags but feeling it was worth it. It turned out that it only took us 30mins to get to school so we actually ended up being early. Arielle and I finished packing up our tools before we met as a group. Having to come back Friday morning to pack and get our prebriefings definitely had its perks. We got dibs on all the extra tools so now each of us has a soldering iron, DMM and cell phone (HUGE plus). All of us bound for Honduras hung out and made plans for the day as others finished their prebriefs. Liz, Caitlin and I met Daisha and Anjuli at the market for some last minute souvenirs. We were successful (you didn’t think I was going to say what I got did you?) With the days rain clouds moving in, we made it to the restaurant Caitlin, Gavin, Clif and I ate at our first day. A delicious pork chop casado with a pineapple sauce was a great last meal in San Jose. The rain let up just in time for us to continue our walk to the internet café and Giacomin for one final time. Sadly, Giacomin was closed for lunch (12-2) so we passed the last half hour at the mall we’d learned navigate quite well. My last trip to Giacomin was as good as the first. I got a carchofo, coconada and Caitlins favorite truffle. All were as good as I remember. I shall miss you carchofo. Soon the world will be introduced to your nephew, a version of my own. Our luck with just missing the rain ran out as we walked to the bus stop. In the 15secs it took to run across the street to the overhang we got soaked. We hung out at home for a few hours and walked to WalMart for some travel snacks and last minute necessities before dinner. Zeidy’s presence for dinner was a pleasant surprise. After eating heaping plates, we presented Zeidy with our homemade card (beautiful job Anjuli). Poor Zeidy started crying but luckily Julie was able to read the card for her. Final goodbyes and our last bus ride later, we were the first to arrive at school for the marathon night. We looked at pictures poorly written signs and other comical sights from San Jose as others started to trickle in. Food, drinks and more was shared as groups formed for Taboo and Yuker (idk how they spell it). Yuker lasted literally all night, while Taboo held its own for at least 4hours and quite a few lineup changes. People started to drop, while others watched movies, played live music and just talked. The numbers doing each changed as the night continued.

…At some point we reach July 2…

At 3, we got our wakeup call and the cleanup began before we loaded the buses at 3:30. At the airport, I had a little trouble at check-in. When finally someone came to speak to me, I learned that I had to be downgraded from business class(had no idea I was there) for the second part of my flight. Due to this major inconvenience, I received a voucher. Nice. We made it through security with about 10mins until boarding when they announced our flight was 30 and the 50minutes delayed. This left plenty of time for Cinnabon and exploring the Britt stores to sample every kind of chocolate cover treat they offered. Once the plane arrived, I boarded my first plane as a business class passenger along with 7 other students. We were all extrememly happy with our fortune and the food. Who knew they actually served decent food on airplanes? We got gallo y pinto, scrambled eggs, sausage, tortillas con queso, AND a fruit plate. With real fresh fruit. That was probably living less than 24hours before. Craziness. Many of us didn’t finish since we didn’t realize that we would be in first class and ate before. Even those of us who did, barely did so before our 1hour flight ended. With the delay, we moved very quickly to our gate in San Salvador and thus missed the chance to say bye to the Duke kids + Siqi bound for Nicaragua. On this plane, we didn’t even take off before I was asleep. Unfortunately, a 33 minute flight doesn’t make for a long nap. We all woke up afterwards more tired than we were before. At the airport, most people’s rides were already waiting or arrived within about 20mins. This left Kathryn and Kara- bound for La Ceiba- Mindy and Anjuli- bound for Trujillo, and Arielle and I. After a lot of walking, talking, and organizing, Julien found out that the direct bus to a city nearby Trujillo wasn’t running so we got one more night with Mindy and Anjuli. The bus to the bus to La Ceiba didn’t come until 2:30 so we had about 2.5 hours to hang around and nap in the airport while waiting for the bus. Luckily there was wi-fi and nothing sounded as inviting as a nap. At the bus station after bus 1, we waited for another hour. Once we finally got to La Ceiba, we went to our hotel where Kara and Kathryn got picked up before the rest of us got dinner. For some reason, we made plans to watch a movie. As can be expected, all any of us watched was our own eyelids.

July 3

I slept straight through until 6! This was a breakthrough. We got breakfast at 7 at Dunkin Donuts because nothing else was open and planned our morning. I realized that I left our snack bag, with Arielle’s filtering water bottle, on the bus so calling and trying to retrieve it made the list. Flickering power in the hospital made this not happen. At about 8:25 Julien told us to just go to the station as quickly as possible before heading to the dock to catch the 9:30 ferry. Someone was clearly looking out for us because as I described our bag- I only got to “Tiene 2 botellas y” when he handed me our bag! Definitely a good start to the day. We had a relaxing and gorgeous ferry ride and met the son of one of the hospital workers in Roatan. Once we got to our hotel, we learned some of the logistics of the area before knocking out on our beds. We were awoken to lunch, fried chicken, rice and breadfruit. More napping before we caught a ride to West End to use internet and explore. I’m pretty sure that any attempt to describe the surreal feeling of walking around would be futile so I won’t. Just know that I’m staying a 12min walk- including a stop for water jugs- from the coast. After wandering and notifying everyone of our safe arrival, we walked home and had chicken tamales for dinner. Blogging was followed by a return trip to west end to enjoy some live music before bed time. Tomorrow- the hospital!

Week 2

June 13

And so begins another week of class. Today in Spanish we went over a lot of vocab and discussed how many of our favorite idioms in English don’t translate. I’ll spare the details but just know that all were amused by both question and answer. Lunch consisted of a favorite of Americans and Costa Ricans alike- KFC! I don’t know why but they’re everywhere down here. They easily outnumber McDonalds. Anjuli, Arielle, Liz, Caitlin, and I split an 8 piece bucket biscuits, corn on the cob and drinks for all for $4 each so about the same price as home. We returned to school for a review lecture on equipment we encountered in the hospitals during our visits on Friday. Rick went over ECGs, gastroscopes, laproscopes, portable x-rays and defibrillators before we went to lab to troubleshoot our power supplies. After spending about an hour trying to figure out why our capacitor kept heating up and almost all afternoon today, we discovered that our diodes were oriented in a way that had our negative and positive charges going opposite of how we designed our circuit. We maintained this reversed orientation all the way until the final capacitor which we placed in based on design instead of going off of the previous elements. Luckily, the capacitor only leaked a little before we realized instead of shooting off and exploding. And the fix only required us to switch our wires at one location. Once we finished- finally- we headed home to update our respective blogs, work on homework. Dinner consisted of barbecue drumsticks, salad, rice and beans with a fresh fruit juice whose name is lost on me… But now on to the homework I’ve put off! Adios America.

June 14

Staying up until 12 was a bad idea. The sun rises at 5am here and I struggle to convince myself to continue attempting sleep for even 1 extra hour. Spanish was a struggle today. It’s hard to try and grasp grammar rules when I barely understand them and the verb tenses in English. My head literally hurt from trying. Luckily Gladys is patient with us and our confusion since I was in good company. And then there was our discussion- today’s topic “what is the best way for EWH and America in general to help less developed countries”. It was a good discussion and on another day I would definitely have said more but after my struggle with grammar, all my energy went into just keeping up. For lunch I had, empanadas con carne y una banana- it cost $1.50. Engineering class at the siesta hour was difficult again but it went pretty well otherwise. Today we went over Anesthesia machines so their complexity offered plenty to think about and question. Lab today was more of a group discussion and activity as we discussed the potential difficulties and values of working in our hospitals. We also created quick start guides for various activities like how to braid, tie a bow line knot, make a fortune teller (a la 3^rd grade), and other fun things. Liz and I went to Giacomin for a chocolate fix and some time to do homework after lab. Of course I got a carchofo and also queque con crema de chocolate. Both were delicious. We made it home just in time to sit down to pork chops, gallo y pinto, and salad made by Julie. At dinner, we discussed the many ways to learn more Spanish, including reading a Spanish version of Cosmo; this should be interesting.

School and Salsa!

June 9 Thurs

At this point you know the drill so I’ll start summarizing the repetitive stuff.

Discussion topics in Spanish today were drunk driving and universal health care. We ended up tying healthcare to nutrition, nutrition education, and access to healthy food options and that led to a spirited debate about health versus wealth.

Today’s lecture was on ventilators. Both common and on the more complicated side. Should be interesting if I get to work on one. It's a good mix of mechanical- actual ventilation line and air pumps- and electrical- circuitry, control modes, pressure and volume regulation.

We finished building our power supply but for some reason we couldn’t test it. There was a good bit of frustration as we couldn’t find any problems with our circuit and neither could our staff. The lab became an irritating case of “it worked a second ago” and wishing it would either work completely or stop completely. After an additional 1.5hours of trouble shooting we called it a day. We met the rest of our house at Giacomin. I ordered a Coconada and carchofo J. Not exactly a mom-approved dinner but we were happy. But why not just go home for dinner? Because it was our first dance class! Everyone showed up to the nearby Italian restaurant’s banquet space to learn meringue, swing and off course salsa. With everyone in the right frame of mind, it was a lot fun. We learned the basic steps and a few steps for each style while constantly switching partners and receiving some coaching. I identified a few favorite partners… but everyone did well and enjoyed themselves. At the end, we were treated to a demonstration by our teacher and her husband. As a group, we have a little work to do.

Salsa Dancing= Awesome but doing homework right after when you’re exhausted and tired- not so much. We actually learned merengue, swing- Costa Rican style, and salsa. The boys were comical, and everyone enjoyed themselves.

June 10 Fri

Today we had our first hospital visit. Arielle and I went to San Ramon. It’s one of the larger non specialized hospitals in the country. It has 102 beds and treats thousands of out patients per day. It also has the only milk bank in the country. Touring the hospital with the biomedical staff, who are all really cool, gave us a chance to practice our Spanish while the technicians who knew English practiced with us. We visited the mariposeria, took apart, inspected and repaired medical equipment. Unfortunately for us, repairing for hours doesn’t work when the staff is really on top of things and there’s very little lying around broken. They were really eager to help us learn how the equipment they had set aside worked and to hear our assessments of what was wrong. We got back to school around 4 and headed home. After homework and dinner, our house went out to Longhorns for Emily and Roberts last night. As usual, we enjoyed ourselves.

June 11

Monteverde!

Up at 4:50 to make the 5:30 bus. Our outing to celebrate with Emily and Rob before there departure greatly complicated this whole getting up process but alas we made it! After $1 breakfast of tortilla and eggs was a delicious breakfast. Chivalrous boys stood in pairs monitoring the bus terminal and watching out for us girls- very nice gentleman, tan caballeroso. 4 hour ride to Monteverde. We almost fell of the mountain. Luckily prayers went up and the bus didn’t go down. Lunch. Casado de cerdo. We hung out then bus to the Reserve. 2 hours of hiking and picture taking before busing back to the hotel for hanging out, movie watching, card games, post card writing (there was quite a bit of this) and general group bonding. I struggled to stay up until 9:30

Back to Class

June 6-Mon

Today marked the first full day of class. Luckily, I only graduated a week ago so the struggles of school remain fresh in my mind. My first formal Spanish class in 3 years put me on what the Duke kids call the struggle bus. All of my fellow engineers, and other esteemed majors, know this place well as it is their term for that time when the lab becomes workplace, dinner/breakfast table and bed and the light of knowledge is drowned by fatigue, frustration, and “why am I in this major?” Unfortunately, with about 9 years of Spanish somewhere in my brain, I’m not allowed to move down a class so I stumbled through things I never properly learned the first 4 times- when to use ser vs estar and the passive voice. Good news is I made it through.

I had fresh veggies and fruits to look forward to at lunch as my reward. We forgot a knife but as a group of engineers away from the comforts and confusion of our own tool sets, about 50% of the EWH students have leatherman’s(I have my Snap On) or pocket knives so that’s really not a problem.

In engineering lecture, JJ (our on the ground coordinator) introduced us to electrosurgery units- the machines doctors use to cut and cauterize in place of scalpels and ties. I look forward to being able to fix one so I can test an ESU on a steak and electroshock my name into it. Lab was an introduction to soldering and desoldering.

After class, Caitlin and I walked down Avenida Central to run errands. Somehow, I got myself back to Giacomin and found out that the chocolate deliciousness=carchofos. I have a feeling Giacomin and I will become very close over the next month…

June 7-Tues

Spanish went a little better today but a lot of conversation. Once again, I’m more than a little rusty with my skills especially speaking and speaking about topics of consequence and national relevance. Today our debate themes were legalization of medical marijuana and lowering the drinking age. I got to learn a lot of vocabulary in context and realized how poor my verb usage in English is so translating into Spanish sounds even worse.

James gave a lecture today about trouble shooting that reminded of some of the things I learned while playing biomedical engineer over the course of my medical careers internship. It was good information about a logical hierarchy of things to check based on our abilities and resources that will be most available. We made flashlights in lab. Arielle and I dressed ours in all black and added a handle J

June 8 Wed

Gladys covered a lot of material today in Spanish but I actually understood most of it! Talking to my host family, vendors, and taxi drivers seems to be paying off. As a group, we decided to go to Monteverde this weekend to hike and zipline through the rainforest there. Gladys made most of our reservations but the bus tickets have to be picked up in person so we sent Cliff and Gavin. Interestingly, they didn’t make it back until 2.5 hours later. (It was a longer walk than they realized)

Today was our first lecture by Rick after he finally made it. He wasn’t allowed to travel through the US and lost his luggage but made it. It was really, really hot and stuffy and thus hard to concentrate but overall a good lecture on pulse oximeters. They’re the instruments with the red light that nurses put on your finger while they take your pulse and blood pressure. Lab we began building a variable power supply that we use to test and troubleshoot in our hospitals next month.