Tortuguero y Mas Escuela

Hola!

I've been one busy student here in Costa Rica. Last week was more schooling. In spanish, we spend 2 hours going through details of the language then we take another 2 hours talking about whatever we like. It's kind of nice just to talk to familiarize ourselves with the language through normal conversation. In medical instrumentation, we've learned about pulse oximeters, electrogardiographs, anesthesia machines, fluid pumps, and many more. On Friday, we travelled to a hospital here in Costa Rica (San Ramone) to get an idea of a hospital in Central America. Granted, these hospitals were far better off then the ones we were going to in Honduras and Nicaragua, but it's nice to get a hands on experience as well. We spent the day touring the hospital, seeing how things are setup, looking at different rooms, etc. We are returning again this Friday to begin repairing a few of there devices as well, which should be fun.

On Saturday, 20 of us went to Tortuguero. It's on the Caribbean coast and it is a national park dedicated to conservation. It is home to many animal and plants, especially turtles who migrate from all over the Caribbean to lay their eggs here each year. Unfortunately, two of our group members were mugged while waiting for the bus to get to the pickup point. Luckily, nothing valuable was taken, they only managed to take one of their bags (the other one grabbed hers back during the altercation) but the other bag only contained clothes and books while her Ipod and money and valuables were in the jacket she was wearing. Close call but everything turned out as best as it could have been. It took around 3 hours to get there from San Jose and on the way we stopped at a banana plantation as well. It was quite fascinating to see how they grow the bananas (the fields are huge!) and how they process them for exportation. While we were driving, our tour guide was giving us information about Costa Rica as well. As we listened, we began to doubt that his facts were accurate and by the end, we had a consensus he was completely wrong on most of his facts. After that, we had to take a water taxi into Tortuguerro (no cars are found in the area). We had a mini tour of the wildlife (we saw a camine, a few birds, and a monkey). We arrived our hotel which appeared to be like an exotic resort. We had our rooms which looked like mini huts with porches with rocking chairs, two pools, and this was all located in the middle of the jungle. It was gorgeous. Once settled in, we headed out to the village to learn about the turtles, the conservation efforts, and see the actual town. Once back, we hung out by the pool and sat on the porch, very relaxing, while some of the others went to do a night tour of the beach to see if they could spot turtles (unfortunately, they didn't see any). The following day, we had our canal tour, seeing even more wildlife, and then we went for a hike through the jungle (it was hot and humid but we were in the rain forest after all). After that, we headed back to San Jose. Once we were dropped off, a man began to yell at us at the bus stop for no apparent reason. He kept screaming "Gringos! Get out of this country!" along with other profain language. The man did not appear to be in his right mind so we thought nothing of it, but it's one of those things you don't want to happen to you.

Back to school on Monday of course, still not fully rested from all the travelling on the weekend. Later that night, we attended a dance class where we learned some Salsa and Merengue. It was seriously a lot of fun and it was a lot of work (within five minutes of starting we were all breaking out into a sweat). These dances are no slow pace easing going dances, they are upbeat and you have to move your feet constantly (don't forget that it's all in the hips).

We are in the process of planning another trip this weekend, possibly to the beach or to a volcano. Other than that, keeping up with school takes up a lot of time and it is definately keeping me busy. Only a couple weeks left in Costa Rica before we head out to work!















The living room to our house (the place isn't so bad, its quite nice)















The roommates and I celebrating Alex's birthday (the other Alex) with Mamacita(Angela, our host mom)















Trying to give you an idea of the landscape around me. A lot of forests, mountians, and rain.















At the banana plantation, it went on forever.















How they grow the bananas. They keep the bag around them to protect them from bruising.















On the water taxi around Tortuguerro (look at all that dense rain forest).




















The porch with rocking chairs at the hotel.















Un cocodrilo!

Rafting, Escuela, y Cervezas

Hola!

So this weekend, I was able to go white water rafting. It was an amazing time. The rapids began at class 2, but went up to class 4 for most of the trip (which lasted for about 4 hours). It was indescribable. Rafting through the jungle, with cliffs going up hundreds of feet, the rain pouring down, seeing mountains poke through the clouds above, absolutely incredible. At one point, we were even able to swim in the river while it rained, it was very serene, an incredible experience.

Besides the gorgeous scenery, rafting was a lot of fun. The trip was on a river somewhere near the city of Turrialba, (I can't remember the actual name of the river). We had these commands from our guide to let us know what to do while on the river. My favorite one was the "oh s***!" command, which meant sit in the boat so no one falls out. These guides were absolutely amazing, they knew exactly where the best rapids were, positioned the boat perfect, and made the trip amazing. We bought an album of pictures of the trip so I hope you get a sense of how great this trip was.

After the trip was over, we were able to drive through one of the national parks of Costa Rica, which so happened to be the rain forest where they are filming "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here." Once back, some of us decided to try out the nightlife (of course we asked where the safest place was for a bunch of gringos to hang out). We went to La Calle Almarguro, it had a couple of spots for us to get some cervezas and relax.

Sunday was a day to catch up on schoolwork. I finished my homework and kept studying spanish (my spanish instructor told us that even though we were in the advanced class, the liklihood of us becoming fluent was slim to none). I've been improving on the language, mostly with being able to understand with what others are saying and I hope to increase my engineering vocabulary mostly.

Overall, class has been going well but it tends to be a very long day. We've learned about ECG, pulse oximeters, defibrilators, and batteries. It's definately a lot of information, but it will definatelly be useful once were on our own in the hospital. On Friday, we are going to a local hospital in San Jose to get an idea of what we will encounter. It will be nice to get out of the classroom and be able to apply what we know in a real life setting.

This weekend, most of us are going to La Tortugero. It's a big nature spot in the east coast of Costa Rica. There are a lot of animals; birds, monkeys, reptiles, and of course turtles. We are leaving on Saturday morning at 6am, going on a bunch of hikes and seeing the sea turtles at night. This should be a lot of fun. I should be uploading more pictures shortly so check back often!

Hasta luego!

Estoy en Costa Rica finalmente!

Hola!

What a whirlwind it has been. Where to start. I was able to find the EWH group at the airport quite easily due to the fact that we were all wearing bright pink shirts. I got to know a lot of them and I found out that 3 other Michigan students were actually going on this trip. We managed to get to San Jose by 9, however, it was completely dark (a little unnerving for the first time to a foreign country). However, we manged to find the director at the airport who shuttled us into a bus to head to our school where we would drop off the medical equipment that we had brought up and to meet our homestay family.

The ride to our homestay was different, especially in the dark. There was a lot of turning down small streets, houses are everywhere, but luckily it was not raining. We managed to converse with both our house mom and her son (Angela and Alex) even though they both speak only spanish. We found our way to our rooms, took showers, and went to bed since we had to get up in the morning. Unfortunately, I have not uploaded picture yet but I will soon so everyone can see the house. It's quite nice, we have our own beds, running water, food, and even wireless internet (internet is hard to come by at the house so to have wireless is absolutely amazing).

The past two days has shown me what to expect from the training; 4 hours of spanish in the morning, hour break, 4 hours of medical intrumentation training and lab. I was able to be placed in the advanced spanish course, only spanish is spoken and so far we have reviewed in incredibly detail half of the verb tenses. Now I feel a bit overwhelmed with all the knowledge I have to know, but I think I can manage. This is definately not a vacation. In order to get to our school, we must take a bus, but it is very difficult to figure out where they stop or where we are since I can see no sign for stops and most streets don't have names (really, no number or anything, they go based on location to landmarks, try navigating through that).

So far, the weather isn't as hot as I thought. It's been about 70 in the morning and getting to about 85 during the day, still humid of course. However, they are in the rainy season so at around 1 o clock in the afternoon, it downpours. Since the place is mountainous, the roads seem to become raging rapids, which is why they have deep trenches next to the streets (around 2 feet deep or more). And, I have not seen any large bugs or anything to that nature yet, but I'm waiting to find a tarantula in the shower.

Tomorrow, we are going white water rafting! I here this is one of the best locations in the world to do it so this should be really exciting. Please post comments or any questions you may have! I promise to upload pictures soon.

Hasta luego!

T Minus 16 Hours Before Take Off

Hey all.

I made it to DC and I have been touring the city for the past couple of days with my family. I was able to see the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the White House, the Washington Monument, Arlington National Cemetery, basically all the landmarks of DC. The weather here has been hot and humid, about 90 degrees. I just view this as a way to prepare myself for the weather near the equator!

So I have less than 24 hours in America and thoughts have been whirling in my head the past several days; did I pack everything, is there anything I forgot, should I bring this, what if I don't like it, what if they people don't like me, what if they can't understand my spanish, etc. I've been making myself nervous and having to calm myself down a couple times of day. The more I think about it, it's the actually first day I'm dreading. The fact that I don't know anyone going or who I'm staying with has me most concerned, followed shortly by the fear of intense scorching weather and giant bugs.

I've been able to print off my boarding pass and I've found out the name of the family I will be living with in Costa Rica. I've had my bag packed since Saturday, however, just today did I realize that it was quite heavy. I decided to weigh it here in the hotel (luckily they had a scale) and it came out overweight, by 5 lbs. Thank goodness I checked now. So for the past hour I've been repacking my two bags (the one bag is full of the equipment I'm supposed to bring down, I'm allowed to put some personal items in there but they don't recommend it since that bag is going to be seperated from me for the first night in Costa Rica). Luckily, I managed to get both bags less than 50 lbs, I'm fairly impressed with myself.

By 3:30 pm tomorrow, I'll be on my way. I have a layover in Miami and then on to San Jose, landing at 8:50 local time. Even though I'm nervous, I'm way more excited than anything else. I definitely think this will be an experience of a lifetime and I can't wait for it to start. The next time I write, I'll be there, hopefully having a great time!

And because the Wings lost, I don't know how I will be able to watch the final game. Way to go Wings, had to make the series suspenseful!