Coopesalud

So this is going to be a quick update - that means no pictures for now. I'm almost three weeks behind my ideal schedule for this, so I'll do two now, then there'll be one later on this week, I hope.

Well, I'm now working in a place called Clínica Coopesalud. What does that mean? It means that I've got an internship in a public hospital; sweet. I'm working with David and David right now. Every day we go into a neighborhood in Pavas - Finca San Juan. Then, we visit eight families and do a census. What that translates into is the following - we knock on some doors, then go in. Following that, there's an entrevista, or interview, that covers everything from "Where do you put your trash? A) dump B) street C) river D) ocean E) burn everything" to "How many kids do you have?". It's simply amazing how many people live in one house, though. Today we visited a three family, four room house; about 13 people living in an area I'd estimate to be about 75 sq feet.

The other main function we have is immunizations and public awareness. We carry small pamphlets on some of the more common virulent things that live here, like dengue, diaria, etc. When people live so close together, these diseases spread like.. erm.. hotcakes. Poisoned hotcakes.

One of the nicest things is that everyone in Costa Rica has a very strong sense of courtesy - there's very little sense that we're unwanted, even though we kind of intrude in the middle of their day. Oh, hours! I get up at 6am to catch busses to get me to work at 8. Then I work till 430, catch busses back to Zapotec, where I live, for around 6pm. I've got from 6 till 7ish for internet access, which is why this is going to be so short.

Today I got to work in the emergency room; it was awesome. We got to repair a cut artery (spurting blood), fix an ear (6 year old girl got her earing caught on something), and then lots of mundane things - stomach aches, asma attacks, etc. Theoretically I'll be doing this tomorrow, too.

Buses here are amazingly cheap - I pay about a dollar each way, per day. Sometimes less. Taxis are also cheap, but not quite that cheap.

So, it turns out that real-people spanish is quite a bit faster than classroom spanish (go figure). There are some things I'm getting to be quite attached to, though. Male friends call each other maje (I think that's spelled right), pronounced Ma-hay according to a teacher, but it's more like the Finding Nemo seagull's "mine" in real life. Also, the entire emergency room staff calls the patients mi amor, literally "my love", but it's more like "dear".

What else.. oh, if you leave the country and bring a phone card, remember to make sure it's a real one, not a track-phone recharger. That's what I did, and it is an incredibly worthless piece of plastic. Catch you later! My internet time is up!