Big news today.... in a few minutes I'm heading into West End to complete the paperwork for our apartment! After quite a bit of searching we found something that we think is within our budget and is in a nice, safe location. We will also get to stay in the West End area which we are really excited about. The commute to Sandy Bay - where the clinic is - is only about 15-20 minutes, which we think is easy and pretty much what we were used to in Iowa City. Also, riding the bus gives us a chance to be around the locals which is kind of fun!
Eric is enjoying himself at Clinica Esperanza. He said that it is run similarly to the Free Medical Clinic in Iowa City, the main difference being that everyone speaks Spanish here :) He has been able to use some translators and has also put himself on an intense regiment to learn medical Spanish as quickly as possible. We are going to start taking Spanish classes at the Caribbean Spanish School as well, so that will be helpful once it gets going. It will be 2 hours a day, every other day for a month. Intense but worthwhile I hope! I am not sure yet what public health initiative I will be working on, but I am meeting today with an Emergency Doctor from Arizona who volunteers here 6 months out of the year. He told Eric he has some big plans, so we'll see what unfolds.
We went out for dinner last night in an effort to try to see the NBA Finals game. There are 2 bars in West End that have TVs, though one of them appears to show nothing but soccer games at any give time. The other restaurant with a TV just opened this week and is run by an American. It seems here that anything run by Americans is also staffed mostly be Americans and draws a mostly American crowd. I think Eric and I will try to avoid those places somewhat as it's mostly just tourists we would be meeting rather than the local people.
This weekend we are going to be moving into our new apartment and are also signed up to go on a catamaran boat ride. The volunteer coordinator tries to schedule regular events for the volunteers to go on so we can get to know one another outside of the the clinic. We get amazing discounts since we are volunteers with Miss Peggy (the nurse who started and runs the clinic). We get some pretty amazing street cred just being associated with her :)
Sorry we haven't posted any pictures yet - we do have a few to put up but just haven't had the time yet to download everything. The power outages have also been pretty bad lately which sucks up a lot of time - the internet doesn't work when there isn't any power. Yesterday the whole island lost power for 5 hours and the day before it was about 2.5 hours. Next week once we have settled into our new place I will be sure to get some posted.
Talk to you all soon!
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