la segunda semana

The beach is great. I love the water.
As we walked around town trying to pick someplace to eat, which is difficult with 6 people, we developed a strategy to overcome unassertive group tendencies: we would pick one person to make all decisions. This works quite well. Except when you pick somebody only interested in ice cream to find a dinner place for everybody else wanting a meal. Then it's difficult again. But we managed well, got our dinner, and ended the night with a friendly game of spoons.
It's a card game.
I think I was already beyond the plural of 'spoon' when we gave up, but it was a great day.

And my back felt well enough to start jogging again.
Shoes can occupy half of my backpack, so if I bring them, I feel obligated to use them, which is good. So after we got situated, I read some and went to bed.
The next day was more of the same.
After a jog, we were on the beach. I spent nearly the entire day in the water, unlike my sunbathing counterparts, but I was careful to slather sunlotion over my lumenescent body at each break, to avoid the fate I felt my comparably white companions doomed to endure.

But, by the end of the day, the water had been unkind to me, and in the close equatorian coastal sun, I was red from neck to ankle, save the short line.
Back in Cuenca, Monday marked the 454th anniversary of its Spanish colonial founding and was a holiday. We took an early bus back to enjoy some of the festivities. It turned out they didn't actually take place until Tuesday, but it would be an early day at a new hospital, so I would have a nice night of sleep in the mancave- the affectionate name of my back apartment where I stayed separate from the Sonias, the FL girls, and J2, a girl from WA who was just starting, all staying on the second floor of the main house.

VCM was a lot different from Del Rio. The largest public hospital for the city of 300,000, most of the patients were uninsured and could pay very little. Their affiliation was with the University of Cuenca which is three times the size of U of Azuay and it was difficult to track somebody down to work with. Most of the time was independent, although if I found a resident early enough I could scrub a case as the tech, which is something not done in the US.
After the OR, the ER had a surgical area where the interns performed procedures in the afternoons, which is good suture practice and some difficult Spanish. A lot of the practices here made me think of a poor public hospital in the US maybe 20 years ago. Or more. Sutures, sponges, saline - all were used very sparingly. Gowns were reusable after sterilization and instruments that weren't used were retained. The halls were hauntingly crowded with people waiting. Rooms had no curtains or dividers so patients were four to six in a room appearing like a dorm. There was very little equipment in the rooms, and most what did exist appeared very old. Paint peeled from the ceilings. Patients were transferred from hospital to OR cart by changing beds over a four foot wall. It was difficult to obtain supplies, like gowns, gloves, boots, masks, suture kits - and some of these required an order. But it was busy, there were a lot of cases, and I met some helpful residents and attendings.
Tuesday night after class I saw giant firework towers assembled in front of la catedral vieja and so the three of us from 1-55 went out to see the celebration. It was J1's birthday the next day too, which made it even more fun.

T

These candy apples are awesome. There's a piece of bubblegum at the bottom so that you can work the candy out of your teeth!
I kept seeing these cones on piles of ice-creamy stuff on carts around town and wondered how it didn't melt. It is some type of flavored foam, almost like marshmallow, almost like meringue, but less tasty than either.

The next night we went to a restaurant on the far south of town on the side of Turi mountain. We all met there, and as most places in the city there is no address, just the name of the restaurant and the abutting mountain, which makes for interesting navigating. It is on the fourth floor of a complex housing a spa and gym, so I was a little surprised cabbies did not know it, and many of the students recommended it as a classy, healthy and reasonably priced hip place.

It had great views of the city, too.