Heading to Central America...

Hello all!

As some of you might not know, I will be traveling to Central America this summer to participate in the EWH-Duke Summer Institute.  Basically, this program gives ~25 students an opportunity to travel to developing parts of the world and volunteer at local hospitals.  At the hospitals, our primary responsibilities are focused around installing and repairing equipment and training the host staff on the best ways to use and maintain that equipment.

The program is about 2 months long, and I will be flying into San Jose, Costa Rica on June 17th.  For the first month of the summer, we will be attending Spanish classes and engineering/equipment training.  After that, we will be paired up and head to a host hospital in a developing part of Central America (specifically, I have been assigned to the hospital in El Progreso, Honduras).  We have gotten status reports from our host hospitals, which details some specific areas where they need the most help... it will be challenging, but I think it is going to be a lot of fun!

Anyways, thats about all I've got for now.  I plan on updating this blog at least once a week while I am in Central America, but hope to be able to do more than that.  I want to try to give you an idea about the cities that I am living in, the work that is going on, food/music/travel, and maybe a little bit about how a student might spend some free time during a summer in Latin America :)

Adios!