Taxi Drivers and Cookies

Friday, October 3, 2008

Hi everyone! I´m heading to Baños in an hour, should be a good time. Think I´m going to get a massage there this time around, they´re supposed to be pretty good. Today was my last day at CEMOPLAF. Sad day, it was such a good experience. Today there was this adorable little boy that I played with for a while, totally made my day. And I even got all of my interviews done there, which was quite the endeavor. The clinic director didn´t initially give me permission to talk to the patients because she didn´t like that my questions implicated the quality of care CEMOPLAF provided. Olguita was really really nice and convinced the director to let me do the questions, which was amazing. The women at CEMOPLAF were younger on average than I´ve seen at the other clinics, and a lot of them were there solely to get contraceptives for the first time. As part of my survey I ask women if they´re using any kind of family planning, and today quite a few said no. I asked them afterwards why they weren´t using it, and all of them said it was because their husbands didn´t want them to. There were a few women getting birth control and just not telling their partners. How sad.

What else...Well, the quest for a reasonably priced trip to the Galapagos continues. Thought I had one lined up but it fell through. Drat. I think I´m just going to keep checking and hope that some good last minute deals pop up.

Last night our group had our welcome supper. Went to a Canadian themed buffet that was really really good. I ate so much. They even had calamari, which was probably some of the best I´ve ever had. And flan, so my happiness was pretty much complete. The day was genereally pretty crazy beforehand though. It´s a good story...(imagine that there is faraway music starting and the picture is fading out). I got a notice on Wednesday that I had a package to pick up at the post office. So after clinic on Thursday I decided to take a taxi to the office, cause I didn´t know where it was and I was in a rush (only 1.5 hours till my class, but you´d think that would be enough time to run to the post office...). My taxi driver was a very inappropriate 60 something man, who at one point told me that nights here are really cold, and he should probably come over and warm up my bed for me. Wow. Seriously. Wow. It was one of the most interesting taxi rides I´ve ever had, and I spent most of it trying to decide if he really was saying what I thought he was, or if my Spanish was just way worse than I thought. Sadly, I think I understood everything correctly. So anyway, get to the post office finally and escape the lude comments. I head on in, and wait in line. Then I pay $1. Why? I have no idea. Then I wait in another line, for a man who then takes me into the package room, finds my package and cuts it open to inspect the contents. Then I wait in another line. Why? I have no idea. A woman tells me I need to pay $9. Why? I tell her that I don´t have that much on me, I didn´t expect to have to pay that much. Okay, Okay, she says, $5.77, but that´s as low as she can go. Seriously, I was haggling over prices in a national post office. I still didn´t have it, so I had to run home and get more money. Grr. Returned 30 minutes later to wait again in line to pay the 5.77. The woman gave me a form, which I took to another line. The man there tells me I have to go make a copy of the form. So I run down the street to a copy place. Then I wait in another line with a stack of forms, sign a book, and FINALLY get my package. Only 2 hours later. It was so ridiculous! I did meet a nice guy from the states while I was waiting, peace corp volunteer in a nearby town. Anyway, the suspense definitely was getting to me, I really wanted to open my package!, but I had to go to class and then dinner, and only got to open it at 9 pm yesterday. Thanks so much Laura, you´re the best! The kids really loved the crayons and paper you sent, it thoroughly distracted them from their homework. I´m taking the oreos to Baños, good bus snack.

Alright, that´s about all I´ve got. I´ll post some pics when I get back from Baños, I have lots now of cute little kids. Thanks for reading!

New Word of the Day: wawa (kid, in Quichua)

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Not really too much to report since my last update. I have a little bit of a cold, I suppose that’s something new. All that time with coughing children has finally caught up with me apparently. Speaking of coughing children, I am loving working at my clinic this week. It’s a CEMOPLAF clinic, which is a private clinic that mainly focuses on reproductive health and family planning, but also offers other services to subsidize costs. I’m following a pediatrician there. Her name is Olga, and true to Ecuadorian style (everything gets ita/ito added to the end here…) people call her “Olgita”. Classic. The kids there are so adorable. There have been lots with “el gripe” (colds), a little boy with pneumonia, a few kids with chicken pox, and one unexplained case of vomiting. Oh, and my personal favorite, a 2 month old boy with uneven legs who the doctor thought might have hip dysplasia. I got to see what the exam they do for that looks like, which was pretty cool. It was so weird to be on the other side of a hip dysplasia discussion. Tomorrow Olga is going to let me do the height and weight measurements for all the kiddies. I’m pretty pumped. It’s so hard to think in metric, though!

Other than the awesome time at the clinic, not much is new. I’ve been looking into trips to the Galapagos. Pretty pricey, but it’s one of those once in a lifetime opportunity things I suppose, and while I’m here I figure I can’t pass it up. The other travel option is Machu Picchu in Peru. Such a tough call! But I figured that the natural wonder wins out. Machu Picchu probably has a better chance of lasting in the long haul. This weekend I’m heading back to Banos with the new group. I think this time I’m going to do white water rafting and a massage, just to mix it up a little. And the next weekend is a jungle trip! I’m so excited! We’re actually going into hard core jungle, where you have to use a machete to cut through the forest and everything. Apparently there will be piranha fishing. How cool!

New Word of the Day: recoger (to pick up)