A Second Post... delayed by work

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay. Life is just a little more hectic down here than I originally imagined.

I´ve started my work for my internship. I was originally placed at a foundation for children with nutritional problems, but the work was just a little bit too much like baby-sitting for my liking. I asked to be moved to a free health clinic on the north side of town. Some of the activities I´ve done there so far have included, taking basic information on patients (height, weight, blood pressure), interviewing people living around the clinic to get an idea of household composition, and doing educational programs in the local schools. They also give out a lot of free vaccinations at the clinic, but I have yet to work up the courage to stick a needle into someone´s arm.

I say all this as if I were doing it myself, but that´s far from the case. I´m almost always with a nurse or one of the other people working at the clinic. There are 3 volunteers that go everyday and 2 other people training to be physician´s assistants. Add those numbers to 6 or 7 nurses and doctors, at least 50 patients a day all within a building the size of a small house, and it makes for a crowded work day.

The rest of my day is filled with class and homework. We´re almost halfway through the month, so that means we´re all about to have our mid-semester tests. There are no more than 3 people in both of my classes. Such a small class is nice for asking questions and getting attention from the teacher, but it also puts a lot more pressure on you to answer more questions and constantly be paying attention.

Yesterday, as part of a class exercise, we had to go ask random people on the university campus what certain phrases meant. They were things like "The fruit never falls far from the tree," or "Every cloud has a silver lining." Things that don´t make sense literally, but have some larger meaning. Most of what I learned from the exercise is that people at the university are very friendly. Most of them don´t mind explaining something multiple times to the random foreign exchange student that approaches them. The campus is small, but all of the facilities are more or less new and are kept in good shape. It´s quite a change from the unpaved roads covered in trash that surround the clinic.

This weekend the exchange students are taking a trip to Quito. We´ll leave Friday by plane, and drive back Sunday by bus. Hopefully by then I´ll have figured out a good system for loading the pictures on my camera to the computer and will have some good photos to show from the trip.