This morning, January 7, 2014, I woke up, got ready for school, and had toast with mora jam and coffee. Once at school we began our day by talking about healthcare in Ecuador and relating it to healthcare in the United States. At 10:30, we tried on rubber boots to wear to Cajas National Park on Thursday. After that, we listed to a group present their facilitation project on healthcare in Ecuador. I was surprised to learn Ecuador is raked in the 20s, I believe 24, for healthcare in the world. In addition, in the United States, there are 63% of people obese and in Ecuador, only 37.8% of people are obese. Ecuador’s number one death is cause by heart conditions / diseases. At 12:30, I had a cooking class. That was so much fun because I love to cook, it is a passion and hobby of mine. We cooked a soup called Lorco, beef, a salad with avocado, onion and tomato, made a drink with a sweet / sour fruit, a side dish with corn and scrambled eggs, and a desert with another kind of fruit. The food tasted excellent, I was impressed with our cooking skills! I will definitely make these dishes at home. Later in the day we went to visit Centro de Salud No4, which is a hospital located in Cuenca. I thought it was very creepy because I do not like hospitals since every time I have gone to one it has been for a bad reason. We toured multiple areas throughout the hospital including the emergency room, pharmacy, delivery room, surgery room, and dentist. I thought the surgery room was the creepiest because I took a peak into the room where the lights were off and I could feel a weird presence. I got the chills immediately as I walked into the room. Another room I thought was strange was the delivery room because in Cuenca the women are allowed to give birth how they want. One of the ways was they could stand up, spread their legs, and hold onto railings on the wall to give birth. I am not used to this because the healthcare system in the United States for giving birth is you are laying on a bed and a doctor is helping you push / grab the baby out. Unlike the United States, the hospital in Cuenca did not seem as sanitary as the ones at home. My whole group used hand sanitizer the second we walked out. This relates to what we talked about in class today about healthcare. However, it was interesting to be able to compare the hospital in Ecuador to ones at home in the United States. Once we got back to school, it was pouring rain so my roommate and I decided to walk home. Good thing we had umbrellas and raincoats. Once at home I wrote a script for a final video project, we have to give and then ate dinner. Dinner consisted on fried potatoes that tasted amazing, rice, and salad of avocado and tomato. I decided to give my host family their gift I brought for them. They absolutely loved the picture book with descriptions on Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and the jellybeans. They have never have jellybeans and they loved them. We spent almost two hours looking at the picture book while I explained everything to them. Today was a fun filled adventurous day! I look forward to seeing what the next days of my trip bring me!
