What a place to be . . .

(Note: I tried to publish this a few weeks ago but accidentally saved it as a draft!!!! So a bit late, here you go . . .)

So I will sum up the past 9 days with the following words:

• 16 hours of meetings
• Only fully understanding 10% of said meetings
  
• Occupational health
  
• Translating documents
• A lot of Swedes
• Victoria and Toña beer
  
• "Jungle" farm with crocodiles, strange squirrel-marsupial-rodent-ish animals, and poisonous flying bugs
• Beach & Boogie boarding
• All-inclusive resort (food, booze, etc.)
• Doing a strip-tease dance and then dressing up like a woman in front of 100 people
  
• An embarrassing video
  
• My first Nica GI bug

Suffice it to say, I've had a great though interesting time! The volunteer work is great, and I am keeping busy. The center where I work (El Centro de Investigaciónes de Salud, Trabajo y Ambiente or "The Research Center for Health, Work and Environment") is a part of the national Nicaraguan university and is staffed by an amazing group of dedicated, brilliant people. The center focuses on occupational health issues, i.e. work related risks and dangers to health. It is a very interesting field that I feel I could easily end up in. But either way, I have no doubt that I will learn quite a lot about public health and development while here in Nicaragua!

For my part at the center, I am doing a lot of translating of documents from Spanish to English and also am editing documents in English (their English website is . . . let us say grammatically deficient http://www.cista-unan.net/ingles/index.htm). This experience should help me work on improving my Spanish somewhat!

The city of León is amazing. The food is cheap and the beer good! I am liking the lifestyle: taking it easy after work and going to the beach on the weekends (below is a picture from a resort called Barcelo Montelimar on the Pacific coast).



PS: If you want to hear the story about the strip dance and being in drag, you might just have to contact me directly . . . lol. I don't know if I would want to post the whole thing here; a little embarrassing! (and by the way, "strip dance" means I took off my shirt . . . not actually stripping nude!)

Med School PS: Stilling waiting to hear from the University of Utah on my application. They have not received the "official" copy from the application service . . . meanwhile I am writing away for my second personal statement, ug