first ten hours... no salsa yet!
and still not a single starbucks in sight! in fact, there's no sign of corporate america, except for the occasional 21st century real estate sign. the first ten hours have been amazing. the flight was pretty painful - red-eye that transferred, and i only got like 4 bad hours of sleep total. i got to the airport, and waited 20 minutes for the people who were supposed to pick me up, only to run into them randomly at a coffee stand. apparently, my flight was too small so they didn't see us all come out. oh well.
the peds hospital i'm working at is run by an org called Global Healing. i'm staying with one of the nurses from the organization named peggy, and it's great. i have my own downstairs apartment (kitchen, living room, bedroom, plus cable TV all to myself) so i have some privacy if i want. she lives upstairs with one of the other nurses. the whole house itself is pretty quaint. it's built out of wood, and all the walls/floor are built of 2x4's and 2x6's. so that means that only one layer of 2x4's separates me from upstairs, which means i can look up in between the cracks and see people, hear everything they're saying, etc. not very much privacy at all. not only that, the windows here don't actually have glass; they're just screens with metal bars over them, and no blinds. so i really don't feel safe leaving anything here, b/c anybody can look in and see everything.
otherwise, the apartment is amazing. i'm literally 10 feet away from the water - there's a short stretch of sand where we keep extra kayaks, and most of the other global healing volunteers make it a habit of taking the kayaks out for some exercise, or taking them to a nearby island to go snorkeling through the reefs. there's also a dock nearby that overlooks the water - which by the way is sparkling blue and like 80 degrees. all in all, it's a pretty good spot, and you can see the sun set from my porch.
i'm definitely gonna get scuba-diving certified here. almost all of the other volunteers have done it and say it's a relatively quick/easy/cheap process - just 4 lessons at a nearby school.
today, we went on a 6-hour grand tour of the island. we drove some 1 hour down this unpaved bumpy dirt road, and came across this hotel-resort. we snuck onto their private beach. it was just us, under some coconut trees, with the waves gently lapping. it was seriously like one of those corona commercials. paradise:
must sleep. apparently, after the sun rises at 6am, it gets to hot to sleep. oh goody. btw, when i was told that i'd have "broadband wireless" it was grossly misstated. it's wireless, but the speed ranges anywhere from 0 to 6 kbps, so it takes me like half an hour to check email, and i can't view really big webpages. all for the better, i suppose, but it also means it takes me forever and a half to upload pictures.
the peds hospital i'm working at is run by an org called Global Healing. i'm staying with one of the nurses from the organization named peggy, and it's great. i have my own downstairs apartment (kitchen, living room, bedroom, plus cable TV all to myself) so i have some privacy if i want. she lives upstairs with one of the other nurses. the whole house itself is pretty quaint. it's built out of wood, and all the walls/floor are built of 2x4's and 2x6's. so that means that only one layer of 2x4's separates me from upstairs, which means i can look up in between the cracks and see people, hear everything they're saying, etc. not very much privacy at all. not only that, the windows here don't actually have glass; they're just screens with metal bars over them, and no blinds. so i really don't feel safe leaving anything here, b/c anybody can look in and see everything.
otherwise, the apartment is amazing. i'm literally 10 feet away from the water - there's a short stretch of sand where we keep extra kayaks, and most of the other global healing volunteers make it a habit of taking the kayaks out for some exercise, or taking them to a nearby island to go snorkeling through the reefs. there's also a dock nearby that overlooks the water - which by the way is sparkling blue and like 80 degrees. all in all, it's a pretty good spot, and you can see the sun set from my porch.
i'm definitely gonna get scuba-diving certified here. almost all of the other volunteers have done it and say it's a relatively quick/easy/cheap process - just 4 lessons at a nearby school.
today, we went on a 6-hour grand tour of the island. we drove some 1 hour down this unpaved bumpy dirt road, and came across this hotel-resort. we snuck onto their private beach. it was just us, under some coconut trees, with the waves gently lapping. it was seriously like one of those corona commercials. paradise:
must sleep. apparently, after the sun rises at 6am, it gets to hot to sleep. oh goody. btw, when i was told that i'd have "broadband wireless" it was grossly misstated. it's wireless, but the speed ranges anywhere from 0 to 6 kbps, so it takes me like half an hour to check email, and i can't view really big webpages. all for the better, i suppose, but it also means it takes me forever and a half to upload pictures.