Thursday, December 31, 2009

Sitting at home...

Right now I'm counting down the days till I leave for Nicaragua and I'm down to less than two weeks. I've already started my course of typhoid vaccine. Looking outside, the gray and rainy day reminds me of the season I'll be skipping. Its only recently that I've started to look forward to this trip as this last semester has been pretty busy. Studying for Mammalian Physiology didn't really leave me time to dwell on the upcoming semester. This spring in Central America will be my last as an undergraduate student, I've already finished my normal, on-campus classes and taken my last normal on-campus finals. Its a weird feeling to say the least.

On Sunday I'll be heading back to Nebraska where we will spend about a week at Union before heading south. I think it'll mainly be focused on crash course in conversational Spanish and finishing up whatever logistical stuff there is to finish.

When we leave we will fly from Lincoln to Houston, and from there to Managua, Nicaragua. After that I'm not entirely sure what will happen. I think we will be spending one day there and then travelling to the mission compound near Puerto Cabezas. From there I don't really have any expectations. The word is that we will be spending two days a week doing clinics, another two in class and one day doing infrastructure type work. I'm really looking forward to the clinic work. From what I understand the area we will be working in has little or no health care providers and it will be interesting to see exactly how much we get to do. But as my previous experiences south of the border has shown me that expecting the unexpected is often the best plan.

We will also be spending about two weeks in the Corn Islands doing ocean and jungle survival as well as spending a week of R & R. The Corn Islands are a big scuba destination so there should be some good opportunities for diving during that week. In addition to those weeks I believe there is also some kind of river trip planned into a more remote area, but I really don't know very many specifics.

I don't really know what the internet situation will be down there either but I hope to be updating this site as regularly as possible.