Adios y Hola
It is a transition weekend- leaving Costa Rica and coming into Nicaragua. I think most of us are really sad to leave our families here in Costa Rica. The country of Costa Rica is wonderful too! SOOOOO beautiful. San Jose is in a valley, so everywhere you look there are these bright, colorful houses against the green landscape. Gorgeous! The people are generally friendly too. The food was also good- lots of pineapple, mango, and papaya. Nos gustan! We definitely lived in the capital city, which was a pretty big city and similar to other American cities in terms of lots of young people, very international, pretty dirty, crowded, lively. It was interesting living and studying here in this city and then travelling to the smaller towns on the weekends. We all took amazing weekend trips though! I think my favorite was Volcano Arenal and the crater lake.
Classes here have been good but we will see how much we really learned next month in the hospitals. Spanish definitely, medical instruments, we will see! We are all without a doubt much better prepared than when we left, so that is really all we can ask for! We all really look forward to hopefully giving back and helping people though! I think this last month we gained a lot more than we gave, so we hope this month we will be able to give more.
The hospitals that we visited here in Costa Rica were really nice. They were very equipped in terms of medical equipment with X-rays, ECGs, ORs, ERs. We went to one hospital in San Ramon and another in Tirialba. All of the staff that we met (mostly technicians, mechanics) were very knowledge and took great pride in their hospital. The one in San Ramon even had a butterfly garden and made their own compost! The staff gave us tours of the hospital and even explained the medical system in Costa Rica as it is mostly public and government controlled under the social security system. I am glad that we visited though so we could see what some hospitals looked like in different countries. It will be interesting how different Nicaragua is from this too.
The other students on this trip have been absolutely amazing! Everyone is so incredible- interesting, intelligent and so caring! We will miss the other EWH students that will be in Honduras and I hope that they will be safe. I look forward to Diriamba and seeing another place, another culture, another family, and another hospital. I’ll write soon!