El Templo

I love to see the temple, no matter where you are around the world it is always beautiful and the spirit there is the same.

Wednesdays are great because we get to see this!

It is nice to take a moment from our busy schedules and do temple work. There is no feeling like being in the temple. I'm so grateful to be able to visit this one so often!




We had our last day in the community today! Stayed up all night doing los datos. Poor Cassidy in our group only got about an hour of sleep last night. We all sat in one hotel room last night with computers and sheets of papers in hand to enter and compute all the information we gathered from every school. It was a little painful, but important :)

Cassidy gave a great presentation today presenting the results from the schools we visited! That's when it isn't so bad that I can't speak Spanish - I can just enjoy watching :)

No more poking their fingers! Or teaching them to cepillar los dientes!

I will miss driving out to the community to see their smiling faces. It was always an adventure.

Today we got to visit several to hand out soy milk. It was fun to be there without making anyone cry! The kids are so happy, you can't help but smile when you are around them. I love working with them, even when I can't say much. I have gotten several more phrases down that help - and kids are the most forgiving with my terrible Spanish.

Only two more days in Guayaquil..

Building a House!

We built a whole house on Friday! Here is the story..

We met up at Hogar de Cristo's Warehouse of house parts - wood, walls, floors, nails

Drove on a long bumpy road out of the city to a piece of open land. Tight space for the drive..

We had to move all of this wood about 100 meters (my muscles are still a little sore)

We were met with scorpions, frogs, dragonfly's, and lots of spiders!

8 holes were dug in the thick clay and we stuck the big wood beams deep. The girls could only help pat the mud back into place - and that was tough. We were sweaty.

Next came the floor! We had to monkey our way up onto the beams making for some scratched legs. Used a hammer and nails to place the wood planks.

Took a PB & J lunch break. The walls were already put together at the warehouse so we just had to lift them up above our heads and nail them to the floor. It started to rain and that felt amazing being out in the heat!

The roof was after that and we could really only stand and watch our two hired workers.

Beth and I got distracted with the neighbor - he was really fun to play with :)

We all pitched money in to help the family pay for their new home. Our volunteer labor for building helped them save on paying workers to come and build the home. Their father worked with us for a majority of the day and was grateful for the help. The simple one room home lasts several years for these families! Kitchen on one side, bed on the other. Most families have between 3-6 kids. Some take pride in their humble homes and decorate with plants or other small items - others do not. We see a lot of hammocks hanging from the bottom.

I drank 4 water bottles that morning. Didn't need to go to the bathroom once. I was sweating a lot.

It was hard work but also very fun to see a whole home get put together for the family!

Oh baby

This week has been SO busy. I was at Vernaza hospital in the ER/ICU on Monday, Community on Tuesday and Wednesday, helping to teach CPR on Tuesday, home visits on Wednesday. Went to visit the temple last night.

I'm not tired until we come back to the hotel. Waking up at 6 in the morning every day is hard. But then I'm ok when we are out and going.

Today I was at the children's hospital with cute cute babies like these

This picture is actually from maternity hospital though. We couldn't take any pictures where I was.

I was in the UNIC today, or the NICU in English. Every baby was on a ventilator. The hospital was pretty nice. They did things different there than a lot of what we are taught in nursing school. I really liked working with the nurses there.

There was panic this morning around 10 when all of a sudden the oxygen for the whole unit completely shut off. That's a problem when every baby is on a ventilator with oxygen supplementation. I have never experienced adrenaline like that before as I was in a small isolation room and five baby's sats all began to drop. Using a face mask to pump in some room air, I prayed that the baby I was with would hold out until the oxygen came back on. Every person in the room was bagging a different baby. I didn't feel like it could do much, but room air was better than nothing. The minutes that passed felt like eternity for me as I stood there pulsing breath into the newborn. Everyone was calm - we were all doing what we could.

I took a deep breath myself when the oxygen finally came back on after about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, they had tried opening up some oxygen tanks which didn't work. I don't understand how the oxygen can just go off on a whole unit like that. It scared me. But my baby was ok.

That was an experience I won't forget anytime soon.

Weekend of FUN!!

Took a break from going going this weekend in Salina! The beach was beautiful, it felt like I was actually on a vacation. Go figure.

Even though it was pretty overcast I got burned. With double coating of sunscreen. Gotta love the Equator in Ecuador.

We built Y mountain - yeah

Then a real sand castle!

I'm on a boat!

It was a fun boat too :)

Back to work this week

p.s. Beth and I look super short in this picture because she wouldn't touch the ocean floor. We saw a water snake/eel spotted scary looking creature wiggling in the water. And she was afraid. Plus we are just a wee bit short

Escuela!

Mornings in the community begins with a long commute. Our driver Louis takes us to the bus stop.

We board a yellow bus to the Hogar de Cristo offices and pick up a few people = 1 hour

Get on a city bus with the locals to the main road = 25 minutes

Get on another city bus to a little town away from the main road = 30 minutes

Waiting time for people at the offices or the right city bus to come = 15-30 minutes

Walking to the school = 15 minutes

It is a lot! I wish I could read but it makes me sick. Speed up, slow down, breaks, speed again. It's a good thing I don't get car sick easily or I would be in trouble. At least I have time to learn some spanish, but there is so much to look at!

My group of 4 students and 2 leaders plus 2 Hogar de Cristo volunteers made the trip to a small escuela for the last two days for measurements. Yesterday we measured height against the cement pillar, weight on a scale we brought. Hearing was check by snapping and they point to the ear they can hear it. They open their mouths wide so we can check for rotten teeth.

Beth and I took control of the eyesight station either pointing to the Snellen chart or standing by the child. The 4-6 year olds were really hard to get talking! They were really shy, not used to gringos. Luckily the teachers helped. I learned how to say boat, circle, heart, star, and cross from 150 kids, it was great!

Yesterday we made them smile! But today we made them cry. Really hard

Time for hemoglobin checks! It was hot hot hot! We had the youngest group all bawling by the second kid to get a poke.

It's hard to get a little blood when the kids would clench their fists or wouldn't hold out their hand. The teachers were a great help!

I was exhausted by the end, but we got it all done quickly considering how many kids there were! We will be doing these checks at several schools over the next few weeks - but with different BYU students so I will be at the hospital some days.

The poking stations just outside the school

Glad I had some help!!

At least they look happy now :)

The village that we walked through to get to the school. The kids were walking home

The school is gray metal paneled with the bricks just outside the door

Do you really have to poke me?

Teaching me Spanish, teaching them English

I slipped into the mud on the way back. My whole shoe. No bueno.
Who knows what was in that mud.
the stuff around sure didn't look sanitary

Escuela de Enfermeria

Today was an introduction to the community. After a short ride to the outskirts of the city we loaded onto a big yellow school bus. It looked a little different than our school buses - more like a charter bus but yellow. A 40 minute drive took us from paved to dirt road passing by shops covered by tin & rocks. Raw meat hung from wooden shacks on rusty hooks - from fish to big cow feet. The cement painted stores were stuck close together and people lined the road walking around.

The scenery was beautiful there! Rolling hills of greenery surrounded the area. We pulled into a cemented school building that was big and were welcomed by some volunteers there who spoke English! Yay! Hogar de Cristo is a great organization that has done a lot of work to build bamboo houses for the poor in Ecuador.

Like this!

They work to empower the people with the resources they have. Micro-loans are a program they've started for the women there giving small amounts of money to help them begin their own small business in a skill such as sewing. The women are very good at paying the money back and it has helped thousands start a productive life.

BYU Nurses have been working with this organization for the last 5 years as they've worked with the children to help improve their nutrition. A study done last year on several schools showed Anemia in 30% of the kids. That's a lot. And it's pretty much all related to nutrition.

To help change this Soy Milk has been created for the kids to buy and shown to the communities. Our job this year is to test the kids again - age, height, weight, and a little finger prick for blood - to see how things have been improving. We will also visit the homes of those who haven't been improving to see if their are other factors going on that effect their nutrition.

I tasted a vanilla flavored soy milk today - and it was actually good. Better than at home!

I will be there tomorrow. And Viernes y Jueves.
This is meeting some of the kids after they got out of school. We sang some songs with them.

We visted the Guayaquil University this afternoon and went to the escuela de enfermeria - or the School of Nursing! It was really fun to meet the students there. We share a lot in common. They thought nursing school was rough too.

Beth and Kirsten talked to them as well as alumni and did a great job! I got to pass out BYU pens and say hello :) These are examples of their uniforms. They had mini style on the wall - I think it looks like American Doll clothes.



The nurses dress really nice here - the women in the hospital often wear skirts and we see the nurses cap. The colored are for the students and the year in school wears a certain color of scrubs. It's always all white uniforms for the certified nurses. I like it - it looks very professional.

But probably not as comfortable as our scrubs :)

My shirts are all wrinkly. We don't have an iron.

At least the humidity helps :)

Oh! And we went to Cafe Rio today!

ok, not quite the same as home. But still good. I ate fish.


And Beth ate pollo. And papas fritas and rice and frijoles

Time & Tasks

We had a rude awakening this morning, Beth and I. Apparently I don't know how to set the alarm clock in our hotel and we woke up 5 minutes after we should have been in the car to go. Muy Mal.

Didn't get a shower - a little gross in the humidity. Didn't get the delicious hotel breakfast that is freely provided every morning - disappointing, but an orange sufficed. Didn't remember my spanish/english dictionary - at least I had people to translate everything for me.

We went to 3 hospitals today. 4 hours of scheduled touring turned into 7 hours of touring, but I really didn't mind.

I have learned that Time varies throughout the world. Yes it is the same everywhere, but people treat the allotment of time very different. Just like home, Ecuadorians have been on time here. What I have noticed is the gracious amount of time given to us as visitors at the hospitals we saw. The nurse administrators or directors of the whole hospital spent time showing us their work. I was really impressed by how welcoming the people were. Unlike Beth and I who were Not on time this morning to leave :)

The first hospital was Vernaza, a local community hospital here in Guayaquil. It doesn't receive the funding that the state hospital receives so the nursing is very short staffed. These women on the floor can have between 30-38 patients. That means they can give meds. That's it. No time for anything else. We saw the ICU as well as a little class of nursing students who were learning above everything. The middle section of the hospital was an open court that was beautifully landscaped including a water fountain. I'm sure the patients like to be able to get out there and enjoy the sunlight. They had very similar equipment to home that I've seen so far, but we weren't actually working with anything.

Biggest difference in all the hospitals is no separation of rooms. Not even in the ICU - unless they were on isolation. As a nurse, at least you can visually see all the patients at once. But I think it would be difficult as a patient - no privacy. But you can make friends with those around you.

The second was a children's hospital. This was the nicest place - it was very similar to Primary Children's (minus the private rooms). The children were adorable. Nurses were very welcoming. They had separate areas based on diagnosis and age range. This hospital has been funded by people worldwide, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They take good care of the children there. But there are A LOT that go through the clinic there - we were told around 900-1000 kids on one side of the hospital who come in for things such as the common cold. The children's hospital serves the whole country of Ecuador, so people will travel far to get there.

The final hospital was maternity which is located in a poorer area of the city. A large crowd of people were waiting outside the emergency pull in. Mostly fathers. I will be able to describe this hospital with more detail when I get there, but it was VERY different from home. The women all labor in the same room. Unless they are at a higher risk, such as anemia. Or if they have enough money to pay for a private room - they even get their infants in a different area after delivery if this is the case. The most shocking was all the women postpartum who had infections in the same room. They don't even give antibiotics. Rest, ice it, and send them home. At least the infection doesn't become systemic in their case.

The NICU did not have enough nurses, and note even enough bili beds for the infants. So many are born premature - they were so tiny crying in their little boxes. The people love their children so much and care about their health - but the majority of the women just don't get prenatal care. Many don't have the education. I will go to work there in two weeks.

Ecuador is very family oriented.

I had a delicious rice and bean meal for late lunch. Con Pollo

Ice cream for dinner. Very melty, but very yummy.

Here is my Iguana from yesterday.
Notice the stiff hand. I didn't like touching it very much :)
His name is Pedro


And the whole group of students! + Sherri y Stephen y Suzy y Chris