Sorry for the delay, we are now in Puerto Escondido and the internet access is very slow, making it really difficult to upload all of these pictures. Anyway, here is a picture of our 9 hour trip in a charter but through the mountains in order to get to the coast. This is a picture in the morning when we were all really excited. After 9 hours we were all wiped and motion sick haha.
The 9 hour trip was worth it because here is where we stopped and will be staying for the next three weeks. Paradise right??? There is a huge common room on the third floor with hammocks and a ping pong table, and a pool with lawn chairs and grass hut cabanas. I don't know how we are going to get any work done here haha. Oh and I also forgot to mention that the beach is a block and a half away. :)
The next day, after we arrived, we went to one of the popular beaches called Playa Carrazalillo. Being away from the beach for so long, I forgot how much I enjoyed it. You can see me in my bright shorts charging the wave, which is one of my favorite things to do. The wave always won the battle, but crashing and burning into the water was half the fun.
Later that day they gave us free surfing lessons. I spent most of the time helping others, because I have gone surfing several times, but then I caught some good rides at the end. Puerto Escondido is world know for its surfing and it will even be hosting an international surf competition in two weeks.
We had a great day at the beach and stayed all the way till sundown. The first picture is one of the entire group as the sun sets behind us. The second picture is right before we left. The sunset was amazing!
We are very fortunate to have a group that enjoys exercising so we would meet everyday and organize group exercising sessions. This session was on the beach and this picture was taking ten minutes after the workout, when everyone was excited to be done and go eat haha.
Here is another one of our group workouts, but this one is located in our common room on the third floor. I'm in the second row of people on the right. You can see me in my bandana haha. These workout were organized by my friend Jonji and myself and they are a lot more fun and entertaining when everyone participates.
During the each week we focus on one health topic. We spend monday and tuesday learning everything about that topic and then go on field trips, called brigades, to experience what we have been learning in the community. This first week was all about Family Planning. We learned about all the different types of contraceptives and other parts of family planning. Here we are at a midwife's house. She told us how she became a midwife after she delivered her first child all by herself. She also told us that, back in the day, boys would cost more te deliver because they were considered more valuable in society. Don't worry, this trend is pretty much extinct now.
The next day we went to another traditional midwife's house. She taught us the process of having a baby at her house. First, they receive a limpia to relieve them of all evil spirits and thoughts. Next, they give them a tea that is supposed to speed the birthing process along. We were given the unfortunate opportunity to try this tea. It was horrible!!! It tasted like someone soaked shoes in hot water. My theory was that it sped up the birthing process because it would make them gag, which caused them to tighten their stomach and squeeze the baby out haha.
On Friday, after spending the entire week learning and preparing, we went to a middle school and gave a contraception talk to all the classrooms. Here is a picture if my group outside of the middle school.
Here we are giving our presentation. The kids were aged 13-16 and they were all actually very mature and involved with the presentation. These kind of talks are important in these communities because young pregnancies are very very common and it was a big majority of what we all saw in our clinical observations. I talked about injections, which is a very common choice of contraception in Mexico because women don't want to worry about taking a pill everyday.
On Sunday we went to a local lake to see some of the coastal birds that are indigenous to the area. The lake was beautiful with vegetation and coconut trees surrounding most of its edges. Also, this lake is one of two lakes in the world that has a bacteria in it allowing it to glow at night under the moonlight. Unfortunately, we were there in the morning but maybe we'll return another night to witness this first hand.
Here are some of the birds we saw while on the boat. I didn't note what they were called but they were very big and looked like small pterodactyls when they flew.
Although the birds were very cool, the best part about this lake was that it was only separated from the ocean by a chunk of sand. Transitioning from a lake, where people water ski and wake board often, to a beach where you can surf anytime was the coolest thing ever. It was an extreme water sportsman's paradise. That concludes my first week in Puerto. The trip is rapidly coming to a close. Stay tuned as there is more to come and, as always, please comment.
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