During our last week and a half, Melissa and I came across a super cute bar with a fantastic happy hour and volleyball court. We ended up spending almost every night from there on our playing volleyball with a bunch of the locals and some of our friends from the clinic. Here's the view from the court.
This is Dr. Raymond. He basically runs the clinic. He's born and bread on the rock, as they say, and his people love him.

Melissa and I were the only twovolunteers allowed to give our medications. It was mostly because of our knowledge of pharmocology and our ability to explain the medications to the patients in either english or spanish. Medication compliance is one of the biggest issues at the clinic because when people don't understand with their medication is for, or how important it actually is, they stop taking it and end up back at the clinic.

One of our favorite days/ nights on the island, we headed out to a hotel called Land's End. It has a sort of infinity pool and is surrounded by lava rock. We had some good sunset chats there.

Here's some pictures of the beautiful people we go to meet and squeeze and hug while we triaged patients last week. We spent a lot of time with the little kids cause we didn't want to let them leave. Some didn't want to leave while others, like the one Melissa is measuring, couldn't wait to get outa there.

This poor boy had a fever. It took all his strength to muster up a smile for the picture.

Since the last time I posted, weve experienced many new exciting adventures. Heres some pictures to help document our travels.

Heres a picture of Dr. Raphael seeing one of my favorite patients of the day. The little girl was seeing the doctor because of an infection she had on her knee. She also had a small rash and cough. Many of the pediatric patients here come in with a cough or cold but weve had some scabies, chicken pox and today we had a boy who got kicked in the face by a horse. He had to have a tooth extracted by the dentists who happened to get here today.
Heres the hall of the clinic. Once the patients walk in the go to the first room on the right so we can check all their vital signs. I was able to be in the triage room all last week and Im doing it again this week. This is probably my favorite place to be so far because you get to see every patient at least once and its been a great place to practice some nursing skills. I also love that i get to hold and snuggle with some of the babies. Today we had a 20 day old little boy who was a little jaundiced who I couldnt stop starting at. The first little girl we saw escaped from her mom after we sent them back into the waiting room and ran to me so I could hold her. She was incredible.

Heres Melissa in the pharmacy. Most of the medications here are donated by the volunteers that come. Some of them are bought from some European country. 50% of the people walking through the door are here for a simple medication refill but still wait for quite some time to see a doctor. High blood pressure and Diabetes are the two biggies with the middle aged population and if you{ve ever tasted the food on the island youd understand why. Theres a ton of salt and sugar in EVERYTHING. According to one of the doctors here, Honduras has claimed that Coke is one of the five essential foods to the Honduran diet along with rice, beans, wheat, and something else I cant rememeber. Crazy huh.

Here we are getting ready to zipline through the jungle. This was amazing! We all made it safely through the jungle, over the river twice and even ate some termites along the way. They taste like carrots. No lie.

The Lago de Yojoa is beautiful. We rented a boat to row along the river and we got a small boy and a boat. What a deal! He was about the size of my thigh and sweat the whole time. We gave him a big tip after we were all done and he just about lost it. I think he´s good to buy ice cream for the rest of his life.
Spelunking is one of my new favorite things. This journey was intense, dark, hot sweaty and amazing.
When we were in Copan, something bit me and I developed an allergic reaction to it. I was itchy and red for days. I tried going to a natural healer and all she gave me was soap so I ended up going to a dermatologist a few days later. I ended up spending $70 for a consult and six medications. An unexpected cost but well worth it in the end.
In Copan they have small Tuk Tuks. Same as the ones in Thailand. We fit all five of us plus the driver in one cramped space. We also almost tipped it over.
That´s mostly it. Hopefully soon I can post some pictures of our new place. It´s incredible with some good ocean views.

The political tensions are rising over here but the island seems safer than the mainland so they keep telling us not to worry. Keep praying for us though. I can´t seem to kick a cold I got while in the clinic and every few days we still feel like we ate something bad. We are finally setttling into a groove over here and know almost everyone on the island ... or so it seems.

Thank you for your prayers.

love.

Before Roatan...

We´ve finally arrived in Roatan after days in the crazy jungle. I mean really. The jungle has been kinda crazy.

I developed an alergic reaction to something that bit me in the Copan Ruins which has caused much chaos and thre different ¨doctors¨ to deal with. I´ll hopefully post pictures soon cause no words can explain the ugly that grew all over my body.


I´ll keep this short and besides the above, the last few days have been a blast!

We´ve
- spelunked 600 meters into a cave in pitch black with only baby flashlights guiding the way
- rowboated through lake yojoa´s via 12 year old super cute little boy
- intentionaly dehydrated ourselves to ride on a bus for hours and hours
- ziplined through jungle at possibly hundereds of feet in the air.
- eaten termites.... they taste frighteningly similar to carrots.
- found the most amazing 2 root apartment for the next couple of nights with an incredible view, kitchen, deck and hammock.

Wé´re basicaly living the dream right now wishing all our closest family and friends could join.
Hopefully some pictures are to come to document the beauty of this trip!

Until then...

honduras

We're here...ahhhhh.

So glad to finally be in Honduras after months of dreaming about it all. We met up with Bekah and Cynthia after waiting for a few hours at the airport in the hot hot heat. We took a 3 1/2 hour bus ride from San Pedro Sula to Copan earlier today and were able to spend all of today exploring this quaint beuatiful town. In the rain. We recently went on an exploratory walk and lost our way on the way back while trudging through muddy roads. A Tuk Tuk (famous in southeast asia and freaking awesome) came by and we got a ride back to town on their super dodgy streets.

Tomorrow we're headed to the runis early in the morning and then bussing it to Lago de Yojoa for a few days. There's a microbrewery there with supposed great burgers, unique beers and bird watching? It should make for some good relaxing time if I could get these damn mosquitos to stop biting me. Vitamin B1 and Lemon Eucalyptus oil are no match for the hungry mosquito. Bummer.

Love you all. I'll hopefully be back soon!