Day 11, Day 12

Hello Everyone,

If you are just reading this in your e-mail or whatnot, you are going to realize that I have been home from the beautiful Rich Coast for about 2 weeks now. However, internet was not really working the last couple days that I was there, and we were very busy so I am adding what you guys missed of my adventure. Day 11 and Day 12 kind of go together so I put them in the same blog. You have seen me do this before!

Day 11:

Today was very interesting. We went to one of the Elementary Schools. I wish that I had my camera so that I took a picture of the school because to cross from one side of the school to another you had to go outside. It was basically like and open outdoor school, which makes it horribly uncomfortable when it is raining. However, it is their dry season, so it really does not rain much down there this time of the year. We went to a school that roughly translated as "the heart of Jesus school". The class was split up into 2 groups and one group (the one I was in) went to this school and then the other half of us went to another school. The second day we switched!
So on this day, the nurses gave us the job of education. As always we know that it is the nurses job to educate the patients. However, the community health nurse also goes into schools to educate the kids on good healthy habits. The ones that we educated on today were hand washing, healthy foods to eat and good teeth brushing. We did this for every group of kids before they went in with the nurses to get their hearing, vision and immunizations checked. We also learned how to make really cool paper boxes that the nurses use as little garbage boxes. I also fell at the school today in front of about 40 kids, that was embarrassing, but nothing stops me from getting back on my feet again. Haha. It was soooo funny now that I look back on it, and I didn't even cry! hahaha. The most amazing part of the day is that we were viewed as being famous to the kids. It was so interesting. I don't know what it was about us, but we were swarmed at recess and afterschool with kids coming up to us with pens and notebooks asking us for our autographs. I must have signed 100 books, and the kids wanted us to sign their arms. It was so interesting. I had some of them sign my book too. It was so much fun. They were taking pictures of us on their cell phones, and writing down our names, and getting our signatures. It was great! I am not sure why there was this reaction, but if I had to guess, I would say that it was because we were different, older than they were, all dressed the same in our uniforms, and from another country to which most of them have never been. We did find a couple of students at the school that had been to the U.S to visit family members.
Courtney and I also got to give a small lecture on the pulmonary system during their class. It was so hard because we had to do the whole presentation without preparation (on our feet) in Spanish! ahhhhh. Talk about ultimate confusion and boy was I embarrassed because I was clearly not pronouncing things correctly and I don't even think that I was making sense at some times. However, we did get to teach them the head, shoulders, knees and toes song in English and we sang it with them in Spanish. It was a bigger task than I had planned, however it was so fun and the kids were amazing!
After our day at the school, we went back to the hostel for dinner and shopping in downtown Desamparados.

Day 12

Today was the day that my group got to go to the other school! This school was very different in the way that it was structured and still, it was like going to class outside. Today my group was responsible for doing all the tests. We got to do the vision and hearing tests, height and weight, and organized immunization papers (this was my job). So let me tell you a little bit about how each test worked.

Vision test: You know when you go to the doctors and they make you read all the funny little shapes or read the letters off of a chart while covering one eye? Yep, that is the Vision test here too. However when working with the really little kids who dont know all their letters yet, they use shapes (stars, hearts ...etc.). It was really interesting to see how many of the children really did need eyeglasses, but did not even know it!

Hearing Test: Most of you probably remember the hearing test when you were small. The nurse gave you the giant head phones to wear while she  pressed buttons on an old machine. She/he would instruct you to raise your hand when you heard the beep in each ear and so on... However, different story down here in Costa Rica. It was our job to put cotton in the child's ears (one at a time) and stand about 2 feet behind the child and whisper a word in the child's ear the did not have the cotton ball in it. They were then told to point to a picture of the word on the desk in front of them. The "game" went like this ... Courtney would whisper (for example)"Mariposa" which means butterfly in the child's ear from about 2 feet away and if the child heard it, he would point to the picture of a butterfly (among many other pictures) on the desk. Court would continue this with different words 3 times in each ear.

Height and weight were basically the same except the scales were in kilograms and not in lbs, and height was measured in meters or cm ...not inches and feet.

Then there was my task. Each child was told that the nurses were coming to the school to visit and they needed to bring their immunization booklets (we have them in the US too.... I just found mine). It is usually kept by the parents and all immunization records are kept in this child's book. However, not all children remembered their books. It was my job to erase (in all the books) their age next to the immunization in the book, put today's date in pen and then in pencil write 20 anos next to it. Which means they get the next vaccine at 20 years old. For those with no book, I had to write their names on a small card and do the same thing. However, I also had to keep track in the nurses roster (which I wrote out all by hand) what kids were getting their DT shot today. This became very Chaotic when some of the children had the same names or same first and middle name but different last name, or didn't have their name on their book... etc. I was exhausted by the end of the night. A special thanks to Victor for all the help he gave me at the school.  We celebrated Katies birthday when we got home by having a surprise party for her, we had all kinds of stuff on the grill ( Thanks Danny :) ) and ended the trip right in Costa Rica :)