Mi Primer Día

Today was my first day of the actual clinical work. The weekend was great. The bonfire never happened but we had a great time going to a couple of the places to hang out in the area including Casa Babylon where we played Jenga and Barfly where we made animal shadows on the wall of the dance floor with the projector ^^

Yesterday: The morning kind of stunk because I mostly worked on homework for my online classes in the morning, but after I had enough I went to the beach Carazalillo where I happened to meet up with Becky and Chris who were on the program last month. After, got ready to go to a beach with my host family, but for some reason this didn't happen. The great thing was the that this didn't bother me at all because we had all been invited to a BBQ at el Restaurante de Liza where we've been playing volleyball for the past couple of days. The dinner was AMAZING! After, we enjoyed live music on the beach relaxing and meeting some new people at a place called Bar Aquí (quite literal ^^)

Today as I said before was my first day of clínica. Our first week is in the only hospital for kilometers in a town called Pochutla. To get there, it's a 1 ½ hour bus ride. The way there it was not air-conditioned, but luckily it was morning so the sun wasn't very strong yet. We waited around a bit because the doctor was doing rounds, but afterwards, we went to the cunero pathólogo which is where the newborn babies that have to stay longer in the hospital are kept. She told us about each of the babies and then split us up to go to different areas of the hospital.

I went to labor and delivery. There were quite a few women there, but none went into labor the hour that I was there. One thing that was different was the privacy of the patients. For example, there was a woman that was in labor in the hallway and they removed the covers to check the size of her cervix in the middle of the hallway with anyone able to see. (I got to do that which was cool for the first time!) It is definitely hard though to keep things private when you have four patients in the same room and one right outside the door in the hallway. Another thing that was kind of cool was listening to fetal heartbeats with a kind of cup thing instead of using an ultrasound like they have in more developed hospitals. On the way back we were able to catch an air-conditioned bus that was definitely worth the 5 extra pesos for the reclining seats!

We had our first day of medical Spanish class from 3 - 5. Our teacher's name is "Cron"-well at least that's his nickname, but I don't remember his real name. We went over some names of body parts and basic ways to ask certain questions. It was good overall. I have learned a lot of body parts in the past, but it has been a while and I didn't remember quite a few of the more detailed ones.

There was a volleyball tournament that some of the other students played in so I hung out there with them and took some photos and enjoyed the sunset in the area. It was really relaxing on the beach. Our host family had "una fiesta de despedidas" (goodbye party) for the students of the other party that are leaving this week and the grilled fish was amazing with super fresh vegetables. We hung out and chatted in Spanish with our host family and played with my little host sister Pachi. (That's her nickname. Her real name is María Paz, and Pachi comes from her middle name).

We went out to pretty much the only place open on Monday nights and danced a bit and enjoyed ourselves, but Becky and I decided to leave pretty soon because we had to wake up super early to leave for the clinic in the morning. But I couldn't sleep which is why I'm posting now!