December 13th: Week 7
On Thursday a hospital nurse came in and gave us free H1N1 vaccines. I gladly accepted because the vaccine was not ready in Oregon when I left. I suppose it is a good precaution, although it’s a little late in the season. Mario said there were only a few H1N1 cases this fall at the hospital anyway. However, I thought it was nice the hospital gave free vaccines to their workers.
It is interesting how the load of patients flows with cruise ship days. Fewer mothers bring their children in when the cruise ships are here because they need to work and try to profit off the tourism. Cruise ship days are pretty entertaining around West End as it is very obvious which confused Americans found themselves here for the day.
On our busier days I do not have time to do much other than paperwork for the charts, weighing and measuring. It is getting a little redundant and I prefer when I have a little time to shadow the doctors. Also the range of Spanish I get to use is pretty limited to repeating phrases like “put the baby here for the weight.” There is not much time or opportunity for more conversation. I am also a little disappointed by the lack of Spanish speaking in my life outside of clinic. Everyone in West End speaks English. I thought I would be speaking Spanish all the time here, but it is not the case. Even about a third of our patients speak English primarily.
My parents are visiting and over the weekend we took a catamaran to Utila. It was a 4-hour sail each way. We had great weather and I enjoyed sitting on the boat in the sun and watching Roatán disappear then the little island of Utila appear to the West. We could clearly see the silhouette of the mainland from the boat, especially the peak of Pico Bonito. Utila is a really neat island. It is small, about the size of West End to West Bay, and much less developed. It has a nice neighborhood feel and is kept very clean. Because there is only one town, the ex-pats and the locals seem more intermixed than here on Roatán. The cost of living is much lower, which attracts many young backpackers. It seemed like a nice place to live, although Roatán has better beaches.
