First Week = Wow

This trip started our rather rough, as many others have said. With missed flights, difficulty in booking new ones, and some other long delays, we were somewhat worried as to how the trip was going to turn out. However, since we've gotten here, everything has been an amazing! We've done mostly tourist-type activities so far. We started out our week by visiting both the University of Panama and the Latina University. What a difference between the two! University of Panama is much larger and has many more students. UP has a very small and humble (but adequate) lab. On the other hand, the Latina University has very few students, but an outrageously extensive lab. The lab had the most high-tech components, separated into twelve different rooms. What I would give to spend a day in that lab for simulations; it would be awesome!

Among the other things we did were trips to the Panama Canal, a Panamanian dinner with traditional Panamanian dancers, and a four-hour visit to the mall (which I didn't mind at all, by the way). We ended the week with a day in the rainforest with the Embera tribe. We were picked up by members of the village and taken by canoes on the beautiful Chagres River . We then hiked through the rainforest to a waterfall where we got to swim and cool off for a while. We then headed back to their village which consisted of hand-made huts, dirt paths, and many more Embera members (including perhaps some of the cutest little kids ever). They fed us lunch and talked a little bit about their way of life and about their village. They then sang and danced for us before we ended our trip there. It was such an experience.

We leave in a few hours for Chitre, a very rural community, to spend the week there doing clinical hours. We will be assisting in clinics with the members of the community alongside University of Panama nursing students. I am excited about finally getting to do some hands-on nursing stuff! I will admit, however, that I'm a little apprehensive about the conditions of the town. Hopefully everything will run smoothly and we will all take great experiences, important lessons, and humbling values from it!