La Semana Pasada

So it turns out everything has been quite busy here. The last week has flown by! Last weekend, we went white water rafting, which was a lot of fun. It was a 4 hour bus ride but well worth it.  We had 6 people in each raft and the rapids ranged up to level 4. 

Our raft was doing pretty well through all of it until we got stuck on a rock and our raft completely flipped.

Here we are going down.... everybody fell off and another raft had to come rescue us before we hit more rapids. After our tumble, we had a nice lunch on the shore before finishing our trip.  We returned from the trip ready for our first day of Spanish class.

I was placed in the advanced class which so far has been going well.  I needed a little bit of a grammar review but the class is interesting because it focuses on many topics which I haven't ever learned in class.  In our lab we made a flashlight as well as a power supply and some variations on this circuit.

Thursday we had dance lessons which were a blast, we learned the Salsa, Merengue, and Swing. The dancing was a lot of fun but I didn't expect it to last as long as it did. It was a great experience though. On Wedneday, I started feeling sick so the end of the week was difficult but after sleeping excessively over the weekend I started to feel better finally.

Friday instead having class, we went on our first hospital visit. The hospital was over an hour away and was quite different from hospitals at home.  When we arrived, the staff gave us a presentation about how the health system in Costa Rica functions. All residents can receive treatment no matter what their financial situation is as long as they go to a public hospital (private ones are still expensive). The hospital had a nice butterfly garden that gave us all some energy in the morning, we were able to go in and many of the butterflies would land on you if you were still.  Many of the machines were similar to those that I've seen such as the x-ray machines but we also were able to see some behind the scenes equipment such as everything in the laundromat.  The washing machines and dryers were very large and there was an entirely separate room to load or unload the washer.  There was also a machine that could fold the sheets which was fun to see.  After a tour of the hospital we were able to look at some of the equipment which was not working.  Daisha and I looked at a heater for an incubator but we were not able to fix it because we didn't have a proper temperature probe.  The staff at the hospital was very knowledgeable and were able to explain the equipment to us as we worked.

On Saturday morning, we went downtown to catch the bus to Monteverde. The bus ride was almost 5 hours.  Upon arriving, we all split up and went on a two hour hike through the cloud forest. It was beautiful, the plants, the views, everything was incredible. The weather was great the whole time we were there and

Sunday morning, we went back to the forest for ziplining.  It was an unforgettable experience, certainly not something I would have ever tried on my own. The views we were able to see while gliding through the canopy were so breathtaking, I'd definitely recommend it to everyone to try.  This week we will be talking with a biomedical engineer and visiting another hospital on Friday.