New Leaf

August is off to a great start.

I woke up with a little trepidation today because all of the issues we’ve been having with food, money, punctuality and communication in the house finally came to a pretty emotional culminating point yesterday; I was worried that sorting out the administrative problems might come at the expense of our friendships with José, Marguí and Inès, but we had a great chat today and things are going to be just fine. There was a lot of tension in the house and in my shoulders that has completely dissolved. (This photo seems unrelated but it's not - the anklets are to remind me that I've turned over a new leaf and the Birkenstock tan is proof that I really live here.)

This morning, the sun was shining on our walk to el Colegio San José, where we talked to Señor Henry about the health lessons Brianne and I are going to be doing. We want to talk about disease prevention – including STIs – as well as nutrition and exercise. The fact that it’s a very Catholic school where we aren’t allowed to mention condoms or contraception at all is a huge challenge, but we’re ready for it. We were only planning to start with the basic STI-free version for elementary students this week, so we were a little worried when Señor Henry said we could start with both elementary and secondary students – tomorrow. At seven in the morning! We were about ready to balk and ask to do it next week instead, but Jason gave us a ten-second pep talk and convinced us to just go for it.

We had originally intended to go to our respective clinics this afternoon, but we realized that if we did, we simply wouldn’t have enough time to prepare quality 30-minute presentations in Spanish with props and activities for students aged five to fifteen. While I’m kind of sad that I didn’t get to start at the clinic today, I’m glad we decided to stay. This project is a chance to really have a positive impact on a lot of peoples’ health, so I want to do it right. After our initial research, we headed up to Café Aroma y Sabor with our notebooks and dictionaries to hammer out the English text. The delicious oreoccino we split the work a little easier, but it was still pretty difficult to write out two half-hour lessons knowing that we’d have to translate every word later on anyway. We spent most of the afternoon and evening researching, writing and translating. José is checking it over now and then all that’s left is the practising. I’m really nervous and I know that we’re going to make mistakes. I hope that the students still get something out of it, though. We’ll get better as we go!

We took a break to go get food with José, who does all the grocery shopping for the house. Because we’re going to miss out on our hot breakfast at eight tomorrow morning, we bought cereal and yogurt to eat before leaving for school. Standing in Palí looking at the cereal selection, I couldn’t help but think of the times years ago when my brother and I would do the same thing, deliberating agonizingly slowly over our choice of “junk food cereal” to enjoy on Saturday mornings. I’ve learned a lot since those days of Saturday afternoon sugar crashes, though, so we opted for some kind of crunchy granola-raisin thing despite the obvious appeal of Trix and chocolate pop things. (I realize that this paragraph was all about cereal. If you hadn’t eaten cereal for this long, you might treasure such a choice too!) This photo is of the incredible cereal selection at La Unión in León.

Upon leaving Palí, we went adventuring through the supermarket, which only solidified my decision to start buying all my snacks and Sunday meals from street vendors. Everything looks delicious, and it’s the perfect way to really experience the culture while saving money. I’ll have photos and names with which to make you jealous soon enough.

Tomorrow, the real fun beings: teaching from seven to nine-thirty, hospital from ten to noon and clinic from one to whenever nobody’s left! I’m still not sure what I’m going to do while I’m in the hospital – I know the lab but it gets lonely and boring; I like emerge but John wants to be there too; I’m interested in maternity but I don’t know how to go about getting involved there. This week, I’ll only be there for about two hours a day anyway, but we’ll be done the early morning lessons by next Tuesday and I’ll be able to watch surgeries at seven instead. In any case, it’ll take a while before I figure where I can find the best balance of learning and helping – I’m sure I’ll jump around a bit.

After everything that’s happened in the past month, I feel like I’m really, truly settled. I’ve turned some kind of corner and I have so much hope for the next four weeks!