Well on Their Way to Being Good Missionaries

It's been a month of interesting happenings around here to say the least. But our students are doing great, working on being flexible and making do with what they have. They have now lived in three very different cultures in Guatemala--urban Xela, rural Highlands and urban/rural Coastal Plains. It's a lot to take in but they are rolling with the punches.
After the Volcano Fuego erupted and we began to see what kind of damage was done, we began getting messages from worried family members. When you live here and know how far away things are you don't realize how worried people back home can be when they hear of disasters.  We are grateful for social media and email and phone service to be able to communicate easily with family at home--unlike the previous generations of missionaries that had very little access to real-time communications media.
If that wasn't enough excitement, we had one of our students get sick on us.  Now sickness among the students isn't uncommon.  But this students continued to worsen and we realized she probably had appendicitis and had to take her in to a local hospital for evaluation and then surgery.  Thankfully she is recovering well and again, we are thankful for the ability to communicate back home and let family know how things were progressing.
Whew!  It's been a crazy month, but we have a great team of MET students.  They always have funny family life stories to tell and are quick to get involved in clinic work.
A few more tales from the field:

Payton:  "My host family asked if I wanted to sleep in or go to culto today.  I looked up "culto" and it said cult.  I wasn't sure how to answer."  ("Culto" also means worship here)

Anonymous:  "Some of us don't like using the latrines.  Sometimes we just pee outside in the grass at night.  We were talking about how we get the patients to give us urine samples in bags.  My friend said that was brilliant! Now we are thinking about using a little bag in our rooms and just dumping it in the latrine later! (these are not guys talking here.)

Call from a student: "I am coming down with the following symptoms..." Call back a couple of minutes later from the host family:"Can you tell us what she has?  She says she is sick, but we can't understand her Spanish or her English!"

Talking to our post-op student via internet

Together again before trading out work sites.  Lots of nervous smiles here!

Chase and Shelbi killing it on the tie down.

Payton working on her ophthalmology skills. 

Chase looking for an eardrum.

Jon practicing his fetoscope skills--he might be there a while trying to find a fetal heart beat!

Shelbi is a good sport!

Shelbi working on her deep tendon reflex skills.

Cross Cultural Glitches

I'm not a very good selfie taker.  But I learned today that you can use the volume button to take the pic.  Welcome to the 21st century, Dra. Lisa!

We get such a kick out of listening to the students tell us about their adventures living with host families.  Most of the best ones center around language miscommunications and food and bathrooms, haha! 

Lori: "My family serves me Pepsi every night with my dinner because they asked me if I liked Pepsi, and I didn't understand what they were saying, so I just said, 'yes'.  I don't really like Pepsi."

Lori: "I think I may have told my host family that my dad had died. (He hasn't)."

Ian: "Every night, my host mom serves me 5 tamalitos with my meal.  But I can only eat one. Last night she served me 4 tamalitos.  After I ate one she walked by and said, 'just eat one more'."

Sam: "I was offered a mango but my host dad told me not to eat the side that was too soft.  After cutting around it and eating some, I noticed that is had some little worms moving around in it.  I showed it to him and he said, 'that might possibly be a worm'."

Lori, Brandt and Sam getting ready to dive into a delicious bowl of caldo de gallina criolla (patio-raised chicken soup) and tamalitos wrapped in corn leaves.

Bethany: "My host sisters wait for me to eat then accompany me out to the outhouse with their little flashlight.  When I'm inside they turn it off and they wait in the dark.  Then they flip it back on when I'm done to walk me back to my room."

Brandt: "Last night I had to make a bathroom run and after getting to the outhouse my phone battery (ie. flashlight) died.  I had to make it back up the hill in the dark and I dropped my toilet paper and had to fetch it as it unrolled its way down the hill."

We challenged everyone to eat all of their chicken down to the bone.  Everyone did great!  So proud of these guys!