"Que Gara": Cuencan for "That's Cool"

Every day seems long but every day brings some good along the way! It's fun working with fellow students that are as anxious to be pushing forward as much as I am. The medical students we are working with are actually in the middle of finals, which makes coordination difficult, but they have been very willing to be involved and extremely helpful. The biggest success of the day was when we found that one of the three legs of communication we would be studying, the ambulances to the hospital, actually keeps a database of everything we were thinking we would have to listen in on. So after using my utmost verbal skills with Latino women and a Twix bar to obtain the excel sheet, one of the three legs will just be transferring data. Check. We did find, however, that waiting for ambulances midday is...fairly useless. After collecting data from one ambulance in 2.5 hours, we decided to move shifts to the evenings, especially on the weekends, when there is a lot more traffic. The LATE students are on board and things are looking great.

Paper used by ECU911 at the hospital to organize information of an incoming ambulance.

Speaking of LATE, we were privileged to go to their annual review and election meeting and learn of the incredible things they are doing. They are a student organization of trauma and emergency medical students that are doing amazing educational things in the community while becoming skilled acute physicians already. We were thoroughly impressed, and are not alone, as they have been recognized internationally as well with Dr. Juan Carlos Salamea, chief surgeon of Ecuador and one of our research mentors, at the head. Sandro, our host, actually became one of four presidents for the next year at the meeting, and we met some of the students there.

Otherwise we are throughly enjoying Cuenca and the its people, culture, food, and beauty. An accidental long bus ride home was actually very fortunate as we got up above the city and were able to take in some breathtaking views of the homes and many many churches. Elissa and Jeremy are coming along very quickly with Spanish comprehension, and my tongue is getting back to rolling the r's and hitting the accents slowly but surely. What an incredible opportunity.

It's not bad getting stuck on a bus (only a 25 cent tour) when it includes beautiful scenes like this. 

- Mark