Day 2

Today we awoke at an early hour (1:45!) to an alarm clock that had somehow managed to end up at the very bottom of a suitcase.  We fell back to sleep, only to hear yet another alarm at 5:00 for the first person to start her shower. After getting dressed and brushing our somewhat unmanageable hair, we again tried our luck at fusebol.  This attempt ended in another loss; however, where there is a will, there is a way, and Mandie and I plan on winning before we leave.  You may want to say a prayer.

After our stomachs were full of pancakes, we headed to church.  All 17 of us piled into a 10 passenger bus (true Honduran style) and began the trek.  Church was wonderful.  It was even better since I had Mandie to whisper/translate the words (being the entire service) into my ear.  Haha – I really am trying to learn.

[Mandie here – Courtney is doing such an amazing job at learning Spanish. I’m quite impressed at how motivated she is to ask “how do I say this?” for almost everything and then how she remembers it and uses the phrase with our next patient!]

After church, we again piled into the bus and headed to lunch.  Today we experienced a true Honduran meal…Pizza Hut…with no electricity. 

At 1:00 we were back at Mision Caribe ready to open our first clinic.  We quickly changed clothes, and began setting up stations.  Triage, doctors, pharmacy, dentist, eyeglasses, nail painting, bubbles…it was exciting.  Mandie and I had three jobs: triage the patients, photograph anything and everything, and finally, never let the supplies in the various stations run out.  After triaging 100 patients, we went about other various activities before shutting the gate at 7.

We then ate dinner, met, and prepared for our early rise in the morning.  We will be in clinic from 8-7 tomorrow with cheese & mustard sandwiches for lunch.

Several great things happened today.  I learned quite a bit of Spanish (and a patient actually made me count to one hundred in espanol before she let me paint her nails), tasted an interesting Honduran drink, and Mandie and I were both promised by the dentist to have extracted teeth before we depart.  Yay!  Haha…if not someone elses, we are each going to extract the  each other’s wisdom teeth.  :)