Pictures... and a flooded apartment

At long last, a few pictures for you! Above is a picture we took looking down the street at West End.
On the right is the beach, and on the left are some shops and restaurants.And below is a pictures of the front of our apartment building. We are living on the eastern side of West End, just a short walk away from the picture you see above.

Below is a picture of Eric and I in West End. We had just finished snorkeling! The beach is relatively small and not usually very crowded unless the cruise ships are in. It's a good area for snorkeling, kayaking, and paddle boarding. There are also always a lot of street vendors selling food and guys cracking fresh coconuts. Local artists are always selling their artwork on the beach as well.

Above is a picture of Eric in the pediatrics room. He wears a name tag everyday that just says "Dr. Eric." :)

So, there are some initial pictures for you! Things are going well at the clinic still - Eric is seeing more and more patients on his own and is taking on a bigger role at the Clinic. Next week he will have a nursing assistant who wants to go to PA school following him when he sees patients. They've also asked him (we think... it was a confusing conversation) to lead the morning class, which is when all the med students and residents meet in the morning to discuss a specific case or have someone present on a topic.

This week we have a big fundraiser for the clinic on Sunday called Sundae by the Sea. It's at Gumbalina Gardens in West Bay. There is a silent auction as well as a live auction, and plenty of food and drink. We have volunteered to help out the whole day and are hoping to meet a lot of new people! There were 8 new first-year medical students that arrived today, so hopefully they will be volunteering as well. The clinic will be very busy and full for the next few weeks!

I started working today on an educational program to teach adolescents here about reproductive health. It will be difficult because it's a very conservative culture so we have to tread lightly. I'm also trying to translate everything into Spanish which will be an interesting challenge. Another med student is going to work on it with me, and I think we have a good start.They don't teach any health classes in the schools here, and even if they did, only 36% of children who are school-aged actually attend school. According to the doctors here, if all of the kids who were school-aged were able to go to school, they would have to build over 50 new schools to accommodate everyone. The problem is, they have teenage girls coming to the clinic who are pregnant but don't know how they became pregnant because none of this is taught in the schools due to the conservative culture. So they literally do not understand what happened to have made them become pregnant. It's mind blowing, but hopefully this will be one small thing we can do to start the wheels of change.

So, our interesting story for the week... our apartment flooded. Well, flooded may be a strong word. Tuesday morning Eric woke up at 5:30am and stepped onto the bedroom floor. He then realized that he stepped into water. We both simultaneously then heard running water, and realized a pipe had burst underneath our bathroom sink. The water had been culminating for hours during the night while we slept, and had spread throughout the ENTIRE apartment. We had an inch of water (not exaggerating here!) in the bathroom, bedroom, living room, and kitchen. The bad thing was we didn't have a phone number for our landlord and his office didn't open until 8. I was of course waiting outside his door at 8am, and came charging in thinking that everyone would be falling over themselves to help me and my flooding apartment. Alas... I was wrong. The woman looked at me and asked what was wrong. I told her my apartment had flooded and had an inch of water. She told me to hold on, and then proceeded to make a 20 minute phone call related to an island tour she was setting up for later that day. After she had everything organized, she hangs up and says, "Ok, so what's wrong honey?" We did eventually get everything resolved, even though it took the plumber an additional 3 hours to get to our apartment. Ahhh island time :)

And fear not.... we have located a bar that will be showing game 7 tonight of the Heat vs. Spurs and we will be in attendance. GO SPURS GO!