Choked down some vegetables...now can I eat some Mac&Cheese?

For me, the hardest thing lately has been eating VEGETABLES.  I never seem to want them, they look so unappetizing, and when I eat them, they make my tummy unhappy.  Yet, I'm supposed to be eating 9 servings of fruits and vegetables each day so that baby and I are healthy!  Even dipping veggies in hummus or ranch dressing does not appease me.  Cooked vegetables seem a little easier, but also take more time and lose nutrients.  To me, the things I really want to eat are bagels and cream cheese, macaroni and cheese, or even Ramen noodles!  I have little to no interest in healthy things, but I want to be healthy!

So, I do just choke down the veggies.  I don't like it, but it's not about me anymore! It's about this little baby, and doing whatever I can to help baby grow into a healthy, adorable little cutie-pie. I am anxiously waiting my next OB appointment, December 28th...it seems like the last 2.5 weeks have dragged by so slowly, and all I can think about is hearing the heartbeat again, reassuring me that little baby is doing just fine!

Let the new journey begin...

My good friend Beccah Ray, gave me this encouragement. She said "I know this isn't what you had planned for your life, but you're an adventurer, and this is your next journey".  That is a true statement, and anybody who knows me knows that I do like to make my own path, preferring to do things my own way.  My brother-in-law always jokes about a time during my teen angst years (which seemed to have followed me well into my 20s) when I responded to him, "well Josh, you know I'm not a conventional girl!" in a huffy, exasperated tone.  Deep down, I love the conventional.  I love houses with gray siding and white trim and porches and a garden.  I love fall traditions of pumpkin carving and apple picking and hay rides and campfires.  I love Christmas songs and movies and cookies; and making New Year's resolutions, and playing card games, and living in a suburban area that is quiet and safe.  I love the idea of family, although my family unit is going to be smaller than the norm.  I love many conventional ideas, but I don't discriminate against the creative, or against lives that are led in different ways.  Life can be lived a million ways, and each person's experience in life is unique, it is one of a kind, it is their own.  Life is as different as our fingerprint - to each their own.

And to me, this is now my life.  I have already felt myself being changed, doing things I previously wouldn't do or think - thinking more about someone else than myself, than my own feelings.  I have a little, tiny, living infant inside my belly, and it is time to think about them already.  I don't overdo my "work outs" because I know that I need to take it easy on myself so that the baby will be safe and sound, undisturbed in the little home they have.  As I am cleaning out the things I have kept over the years (because I am a packrat), I have found many things that are awakening my creative side once again, a side of me I lost many years ago.  A side that appreciates fiction novels, and idealism, and critical thinking about what is around us and presented to us each day.  I want to share one of, possibly my favorite, poem:

A Dream Within a Dream - Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep-while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

First Precious Moment

Today I had a life-changing moment while at my first appointment at the obstetrician's office.  Yes, you read correctly, I had an appointment with the obstetrician.  I am eleven weeks pregnant, with an "unplanned" child, and thus I have moved home to transition into a life of working as a nurse and becoming a single mother.  I have accepted a job to work in Labor and Delivery at St. Vincent Women's Hospital, which is my dream ideal job at this point in my life.  I will be in a warm, supportive environment, and learn so much in my first nursing job in the USA.  It's not something I, or anybody, expected at this point in my life, but this is the situation, and it cannot be changed.  I am so blessed, lucky, and fortunate to have a family and group of friends who are extremely supportive of me, and who will stand by my side through all of the rapid changes that are to come.  At this time next year, I will have a 5 month old to take care of! But back to the life-changing moment...

Today, at my first doctor's appointment, I was able to listen to the heartbeat of the baby.  That was the precious moment that stole my heart and filled me with such a joy unlike anything I have ever felt before.  To hear the heartbeat, beating so rapidly, so cutely, and know that there is a tiny little two-inch baby thriving inside of my tummy, was an amazing moment not to be forgotten. It affirmed and reaffirmed a million times over my belief that life is an absolute miracle, a gift, a gift which only God can provide. It honestly is an amazing thing.  I can now understand how people ooh and aah over those fuzzy ultrasound pictures that they get of their little babies!  I still will have to wait nearly two more months in order to get my first ultrasound picture, and to find out the gender of the baby. 

I will be updating this continually, documenting the ups and downs, surprises of both pregnancy and parenthood, as well as how to continue my love of Jesus Christ while struggling with the stigma of being a single mother.  I am a firm believer that I do not have to succumb to being a product of my past, but that today and each day forward can be a way of moving forward and growing closer to Christ, to becoming a brighter and brighter light despite a dim or dark past.   Life isn't just perfect, it takes the struggles and the failures to show us the strength of our own character, and to get back up and try again.  To admit our flaws, but not to be defeated by them.  There is nothing that can separate ourselves from God's love, not anything but our own pride, or the Devil whispering to us that God surely can't love us after we have sinned, or that we aren't good enough to be loved.  All that is sillyness, and it is a shame to waste the amazing, infinite love and mercy that Jesus wishes to share with all of us, solely if we do not believe that we are worth it.

All of that and more, coming soon! 

Bird-eating Plane

I am thankfully safe and sound back home in good old Indiana, but what a trip home it was!  I am not a great traveler; I hate flying, everything about it - from standing in the line to get my boarding pass, to taking my shoes off while going through security, to being overcharged for every food item available, to the crummy food that is served in-flight, to just everything about flying!   So I was not looking forward to my Quito-to-Panama City, Panama City-to-Newark, Newark-to-O'hare  flight schedule....three flights in one day is wayyyy too many. 

My flight to Panama City is on time, we land on time, and I am at my gate. I sneak a little nap in, and am feeling relatively positive about the day, even though it was going to be alot of flights, I was still just so happy to be going home.  We board our flight to Newark on time, and we take off.  I'm noticing how brand-new the plane is, and thinking to myself "Good, we took off okay, I feel safe" right at the same moment we start hearing a "Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!" coming from the left side of the plane, jerking the plane a bit with each noise and emitting a glowing yellow light.  I panic slightly, and start thinking really am I not going to make it home?! This thumping noise continues for about a good minute until the captain shuts down the left engine - we had sucked up a bird into our engine during take off, and I'm not just talking some dinky little pigeon...we had sucked up a huge vulture bird (the airport was constructed near the old land fill of Panama City, which they have now built multi-million dollar homes and condo buildings on top off, thus displacing all the vultures to live in the trees surrounding the airport). 

So, the staff informs us we have been cleared for an emergency landing back in Panama City, where we fly to and land with the one working engine.  We had all the weight of the plane (fuel, passengers, etc) and due to the amount of friction while using the brakes to land, the brakes melted into the wheels and fused them into a locked position.  Thus we could not get towed to the gate, but had to wait for stairs and buses to take us off the runway. After being brought up to a gate where the staff began to give us more information, we had to proceed downstairs, pick up our luggage, proceed through customs, and then stand in a very, very long line.  I just happened to be near the end, within the last 10 people of the end of the line.  I was in that line for 6 hours...and the only redeeming thing of all of this was that they gave me a night at the Marriott Hotel, with free dinner and breakfast, and it was SO NICE!  The room was so clean, the shower was so hot, the food was great...I was so relaxed!

The next day, I returned to the Panama City airport, and we made it safely out of the bird danger zone.  Finally getting to Chicago was such a relief, and finally being back home has been a wonderful weight off my shoulders.  Just being back to life where things go correctly and where daily life isn't a struggle to get things done and where I don't stand out like a sore thumb, it makes me such a happier person.

So, I thank God for landing our plane safely, while at the same time giving me a little jolt and reminder that life's end is unpredictable - we are never promised tomorrow before it comes, so we must recognize the beauty and privilege of today!  Thank you, dear Lord Jesus Christ for getting me home!

Last Day In Quito

First of all, I am thankful for many things for this year, for this time that I have spent in Quito.  I am thankful that I was never robbed, that I was never harmed, that my security was never threatened.  I am thankful for the people that I worked with, for their kind hearts, for welcoming me so quickly into their lives, and for being there for me when I needed them.  I am thankful that I had the opportunity to live in another country, for a longer period of time than just visiting...to begin to understand daily life, and not just be in awe.  There are many underlying facets and faces of a city, it's people, and what daily life really is, that can often be missed by quick travels and trips.  Yes, even travels can open people's eyes and help people gain perspective on the world;  but I believe living somewhere affects things very deep in the heart and soul. It changes you to live outside of your norm, outside of the culture you have grown up in, outside of all that is comfortable and close to you.  Thus I am thankful to have the unique opportunity to do what people have assumed is taking a year off of "real life" and exploring something new (although I will argue this has been as real as life has ever been). 

I am sad too, to leave behind so many patients, and a job that I really enjoyed.  It is such meaningful work, helping to find patients who rarely get any healthcare, and typically really shoddy healthcare at that, and then connecting them with the resources and correct services to help give them life-changing treatments...surgeries, medicines, physical therapy, etc... the patients are so grateful, so loving, so happy with what we can do for them.  It's a beautiful job.  It's meaningful.  It's very real. It's very important... I will support Timmy Global Health's work all of my days!

Lastly, I am happy.  I am thrilled to return to comfort, to my family, to my friends, to people have known me for so long.  I am thrilled to share the memories of the holidays with loved ones, and not to be alone.  I am thrilled to start a new job, as a nurse in the US, and begin a new chapter in life.  I am excited to see what lies ahead, and to trust that God knows what He's doing.  Although it is always bittersweet to leave a place that I will remember fondly, it also is a great opportunity to embark on the new adventure with a fresh face forward.  Plus, not everything in Quito was sweet as roses...I had daily frustrations with being an object for those on the street or the bus, or anywhere I walked or went...it was something that got to me like nothing has ever gotten to me before.  It ate me up, and I started dreading leaving my apartment.  It was such a strange phenomenon that occured without me even realizing it - that I really avoided anything that made me leave my apartment!  It was so unlike me, a person who is typically ready to do anything and jumps at any chance to not experience FOMO (fear of missing out).  I became a "hogareña" or a homebody.  Not that I didn't enjoy my time reading great books, and listening to music, but at some point even that becomes unhealthy and you need some social interaction.

So, I am ready.  I'm ready to come back to an old but new environment.  New because I have changed.  I have grown older, gained more wrinkles, even had my first gray hair!  But I've also learned more my strengths and weaknesses... the feelings of solitude...the feelings of being an outsider... the extremes of my emotions... what true gratitude looks like....what life can be like in its simplest most pure form...and most of all, I have learned the love and mercy of Jesus, which is an infinite, never-ending and all consuming love...

So, here I come.  Back to the place I have known all my life.  Back to my roots, back to my family.  But also back to a new adventure, a big adventure, an endeavor unlike before.  Here we go!

Where the Sidewalk Ends
from the book "Where the Sidewalk Ends" (1974)

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
and before the street begins,
and there the grass grows soft and white,
and there the sun burns crimson bright,
and there the moon-bird rests from his flight
to cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
and the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
we shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow
and watch where the chalk-white arrows go
to the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
and we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
for the children, they mark, and the children, they know,
the place where the sidewalk ends.

Year 25 of life

Well, I have now completed 25 years of life on this lovely planet.  What have I learned and accomplished in this past year? I have learned more than ever in this past year of living in a different country, separated from how I grew up and my friends and family.  Gaining a new perspective on life, and the millions of ways in which lives are lived, has been very eye-opening to me.  I have learned so much about how far my comfort zone can be pushed, and have seen myself be changed over the course of a year.  I do not have any deep reflections about being twenty five, although I was joking about having my quarter-life crisis.  I actually think I'm beginning to gain more peace of mind, versus being in any state of crisis, as parts of whom I am become more solidified. 

"It would be better for me to have a musical instrument or a chorus which I was directing in discord and out of tune, better that the mass of mankind should disagree with me and contradict me than that I, a single individual, should be out of harmony with myself and contradict myself." Plato

I understand this fully.  For so many years I found this discord within myself; living one way, yet judging the same actions that I made.  Living one way, out of tune with what was going inside of my head and heart.  Living one way, a child of sin, while desperately trying to hold on to some inkling of innocence and wishing to be a better child of God instead.  The disconnect between thoughts, beliefs, and my actions, absolutely tore me apart.  What I feel now is a new revival of myself and my soul, that life can be lived the way that I had viewed it before, and that life does not have to be led in sin and personal destruction.

I am very thankful that through this all, God constantly called to me...constantly tugged at my heartstrings, however fragile they were.  He has never left my side, He has always been there.  I simply ignored or distorted the calls before.  I am so thankful that He has given me such good friends and family that are still here for me, supporting me, who also share the same beliefs.  I pray that other people that I know are also opened to His loving embrace and mercy, so that they may share in the joy and peace of the Lord.

Strong Enough

God typically only allows things that He thinks we will be strong enough to handle; or that, when we are made to see how weak we truly are, that we rejoice in the Lord and ask Him for his divine help.  My sister said to me, "Em, you must be pretty strong if God thinks you can handle this".  I know I am not strong enough myself; but I trust that God will see me through the future trials.  If I take each day just one at a time, I feel much more at peace. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8JsRxVczmQ

"Whatever did not fit in with my plan did lie within the plan of God. I have an ever deeper and firmer belief that nothing is merely an accident when seen in the light of God, that my whole life down to the smallest details has been marked out for me in the plan of Divine Providence and has a completely coherent meaning in God's all seeing eyes. And so I am beginning to rejoice in the light of glory wherein this meaning will be unveiled to me."

A friend of mine told me something. She said, "Em, I know this isn't what you had planned for your life, but you're an adventurer, and this is your next journey." This isn't at all what I had planned.  But perhaps the things that we plan so perfectly keep us from relying and trusting fully in God.  Perhaps when everything goes perfectly, we start to feel invincible, we start to feel so blessed that we forget whose grace is blessing us.

This wasn't in my plan...but now it is. And I will ask God for courage, patience, understanding and faith every day.  I, at this point, have to throw my hands up, and just trust. 

Nike We Run Quito 2011



Carissa, Emma and I, in front of Pizza Hut, after finishing the 10k race in Quito

 On Saturday, October 29th, I had the privilege to run a 10k (6+mile race), with my friends Emma and Carissa.  This picture was taken by Paco, our cheerleader and companion for the race.   He did not run the race, but he did meet us afterwards to see us finish down the homestretch and to join us for a celebration meal at Pizza Hut! Emma and I finished in one hour and thirteen minutes, and I was just happy to finish without ever walking at all! Carissa finished in a fast 58 minutes. 

It was so fun to see the crowd of over 7,000 runners, snaking through Quito, running a race!  It felt like such a great, happy environment..yes we were in Quito, but I was doing something that reminded me so much of being home! I loved the nostalgia of races at home, and realizing that I was doing the same thing but very far from home.  It just made me comforted, knowing that these races are becoming a global phenomenon and are such a uniting factor amongst strangers.

A big thanks to Paco for helping us navigate and traverse the lengths of the city in the PacoMovil, it helped immensely in our success of getting to the race and getting home safely afterwards! Thank you Paquito mi osito!!!

Grace

"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God." Ephesians 2:8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAPFU4TMlwI&feature=feedrec_grec_index

Somedays I just feel like I've had it with the things I have to deal with in this country.  Mostly, the looks, the stares, the catcalls from men, that are constant and so disrespectful to me and my humanity.  Its not like I am walking around in a short skirt and low shirt and high heels;  I typically am in jeans and tennis shoes, my fleece jacket and a scarf!  For crying out loud people, just leave me alone!  I feel like my apartment is sometimes my only sanctuary, my only escape from the daily hassle.  Riding the bus is like a nightmare, it is packed full to the brim you can't even breathe.  And the air you do breathe is full of fumes from the buses and broke down cars.  There are days that are just simply more than I can bear.  I don't think ever in my life I have had to bear so much harrassment and disrespect, it's outrageous.

The job, the people I work with, all that is fine. I have no complaints there.  But it's the harrassment from strangers, all the live long day, that make me want to go insane.  It just makes me wonder how can people be so sheltered from other races?  If you think rural Indiana is low on cultural diversity, you should try being the only white person in South Quito for awhile and you might change your mind.  The thing is, this is a capital city!  Think about how diverse New York City, or Chicago, or LA, or any other big city is.  For what it's worth, even Indianapolis is pretty diverse, although it might be sadly and disappointingly polarized in its diversity (as in rich vs poor, white vs black, not alot of mixing between suburbia and inner city).  But in Quito, you will find the only diversity in La Mariscal or Centro Histórico, typically in the form of tourists.  The city itself, the makeup of the city, has loads of Ecuadorian diversity - Spanish heritage, Mestizo, and pure Indigenous people - but unlike back home, you don't have a mix of Europeans, Afroamericans, Asians, and Indians who mix up the just standard North American culture. 

I also miss the seasons...every day passes here, much like the day before it.  There is very little difference between "summer" and "winter", and there are no real seasons.  The climate just IS in Quito, it just is.  Always cool, with some hot direct sunlight, and daily showers 3-4 times a week.  No changes.  I was describing to someone how you don't really have any picture in your mind for the month of October, that is any different in your mind from the month of April...it just is another day on the calendar.

Angel by Your Side

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDPOgwaPAQg

This song, by Francesca Battistelli, reminds us that we are never alone, that angels, Jesus, Mary, past loved ones, current loved ones, they are all by our side.  They pray for us, they are there for us, even though we seem relatively alone. If we seek refuge and strength in them, the courage we will receive will be overwhelming.

Today's first reading comes from Romans 8...

"What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?...What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecutino, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?...No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 8: 31, 35, 37-38

I love the encouragement, enthusiasm, and fearless trust that Paul places in the love Jesus Christ has for us!  Paul believes confidently that NOTHING can separate us from the love that Jesus has for us, that we will always conquer over our struggles so long as we do so in Jesus' name. Jesus' purpose was to life and die and life again for us and our sins, and if He can forgive us for our sins, then His love truly is beyond our comprehension.

Fear Nothing

If there is anyone who teaches us to trust
and not to fear, it is this woman,
Mother Teresa, who drew her strength
daily from the Lord.

Our faith in Jesus fully relies in our belief that He lived and died for our sins; that He died in atonement for our sins.  If we do not believe that He died for us, to save us, to give us eternal life, to come for us the sinners, than what do we even believe?  We believe in vain, if we do not believe that.  When we believe that, we have to believe in His limitless mercy, and His immense love for us.  He loves us, but only we can accept Him into our hearts.  We are not slaves to Him, He is not our master, but our friend (John 15).  Once we accept this relationship with Him, it makes it much harder to sin, because we think of His love for us, we think of how much our sin hurts and offends Him, and how it pulls us away from Him.  

If we truly commit ourselves to our beliefs, to our Love of Jesus, to our faith in His mercy and compassion for us, we begin to fear less.  Our anxieties will fall away, because we know He is always there.  We can't hide from Him if we fall to sin, instead we must run back to Him more rapidly than ever!  It is humiliating, it is, to show Him openly all our sins, but if we hide them away inside of ourselves they will get the best of us, they will tell us we aren't worth such love, that we aren't worth such joy, that we do not deserve to be children of God.  But God doesn't think that, He just wants us to remain in Him, as He remains in us. Once we let Jesus into our heart, once we let Him transform us, we can't fear the daily earthly troubles.  We die to Him, we recognize that we are not in control of the reigns, that He will calm the stormy waters while we await in the rocky boat, that He will keep us safe. Fear nothing, love Christ, live without fear...Christ will be our strength.

Never Alone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4yRsT_fPic

This is a song by Lady Antebellum, that I think will help me get through some tough times in Ecuador.  I think it is just such a true song, the Lord is always with us, He never leaves us alone.  We always must have the hope and faith that He is here with us, that He will direct us and guide us and calm us if we let Him into our hearts.  That is the hardest part, just letting Him into our hearts.  The world wants us to constantly be broken down, it will always find ways to do that.  But God always is compassionate, merciful and loving to those who love Him. We just need to love Him.

"Now hope that sees for itself is not HOPE.  For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance." Romans 8:24-25

Notre Dame and Internet

Plaza de los Ponchos, Otavalo Ecuador

Group learning about how the Equator and the earth's tilt/spin works

Celebrating my "handstand" on the equator with help from Morgan

The Notre Dame group was awesome!  Truly, this trip was such a blessing to me.  It was so great to have such a hardworking, punctual, fun group!  They were so friendly and inclusive, and it was really nice to know several of the tripgoers.  Thank you Notre Dame!

Exciting news for the day is that I am currently sitting in my kitchen in my apartment, ON THE INTERNET!  I finally had Internet installed for my apartment, which is going to help me keep in touch much better.  It has been tough since I moved into this apartment to be able to call my family, since that would mean staying at the hospital until around 7 or 8 pm...now I will be able to communicate from the comfort of my very own home. 

Notre Dame Brigade

This Saturday, October 15th, a group of thirty people will be flying into Quito to form the Notre Dame Brigade.  This will be a special brigade for me, as it will be a "full-circle" type experience.  I was a part of the Notre Dame brigade last year, acting as a nurse, taking vitals and heights and weights, fumbling around with my Spanish, sitting in the back of the bus with the students, struggling with the fact that I was no longer a college student and I was in fact a "medical professional", a real Registered Nurse! It was maybe a little strange to the students that I wanted to sit in the back of the bus with them, but that was all I had ever known on the Timmy trips I had gone on before - as a Purdue student!

Now I will be leading their brigade, I will see many faces I remember from last year, but will be in a completely different role.  It will be comforting to know people, that not the entire group will be strangers to me.  It will be my second brigade to lead, and I am excited about seeing how it goes.  I feel more organized, but that could be just a trick of my mind!  I will have an update in another week!

One Year in Quito

Today marks my first full year in Quito, and it has been a tumultuous up and down experience, to say the least.  I offer this song as an explanation of what I want my next 9 months in country to be:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=NPoxM0D_0n8

I truly want to use the rest of my time here to remove from my heart all the bitterness and past hurts I have carried around with me now for years.  It has gone too long, I have made too many mistakes, and I have carried around pain for far too long;  I really want to be remade, recreated by the grace, love and mercy of Jesus's Sacred Heart, in order to become the person I want to be and have always wanted to be.  That person is not one of bitterness, but of forgiveness, not of frustration but of patience, not one of despair but of faithful obedience.  It is my hope that this time rejuvenates me from the heart, mind and soul to become an outward display of the love and mercy of Christ. It is a daunting task, but one that I do not do on my own; one that Christ does within me.  The Lord gives love to our hearts, and continually fills it; while the earth has no love to give us, and only takes away what love we have. 

I cry thinking of all the opportunities I have had, all the calls I have tried to follow from God, all the times where I felt I was doing well only to fall again, or to half follow what God really wanted me to do.  I have time after time tried to do it on my own! What a fool, everything we do and all that we are are given to us by God himself, the first thing we must do is surrender to Him, to His infinite wisdom and mercy, to allow Him into our lives...if we do not allow Him into our lives, we are trying to do things on our own, and we of course will fail.  We have to allow Him to penetrate the barriers of our hearts, our pride, our own thoughts, to just listen to Him, to listen to what He says to us, not to what we say to Him.  He knows what we say and think and what our heart truly desires, and He wants to grant us those things, but only if we allow Him to do so.  We work so hard trying on our own, and to what end? As Paul told the Romans in his greeting in Chapter 1, we are ALL called to belong to Christ, and we are ALL called to be holy. 

Back in Ecuador

Now being back in Quito, after my second short trip home for the annual Timmy college conference, life has changed quite a bit.  I am now officially settled into my apartment, and have started making changes to it to make it a more liveable, homey space.  It will be my little project for the next nine months that I have left in country, trying to make it seem like it is a more modern, more apartment-like space, versus just a converted empty space of a pretty old hospital building. I have already painted the previously peach-colored bathroom a nice gray with white trim.  That in itself was a struggle, due to the strong fumes and lack of ventilation system (aka, a fan).  But it looks MUCH better.  The next project is trying to get the shower that is in the apartment to work!

Other changes include me, being more alone.  I live alone, and have broken up with my Ecuadorian boyfriend José.  Now I do not really have any friends in south Quito; I have two girl friends who live up in northern Quito, and I try and see one of them once a week.  Beyond those two girls, I have Paco and Pablo from Quito Eterno and will probably try and hang out more with them and their friends.  In the south, I socialize with my co-workers, but what I was explaining to some people from a surgical group that was in Quito this week, it that the people who I do know from work do not need to be friends with me.  Everyone has their own families, their own friend groups;  I am just a little gringa who is living here for a short time, nobody needs or really has ever invited me to be real friends with them.  That makes me feel lonely, but what I said a year ago before I came was that I wasn´t going to look at loneliness, but a time to share my peace with Christ and really try to still and calm my often restless soul during these months.  So, that is what I am working on, becoming more comfortable with a quiet apartment, with down time, with self-reflection.

Every day, I have a routine.  I wake up between 5:30-6am, and read the daily readings.  I go and jog 2-3 miles, then go to daily mass at 7a.m.  I have made friends with the three nuns who live at the church next door, Sister Juanita, Sister Rosita and Sister Blanquita.  Father Graziano is the priest who most often celebrates mass; he is this funny, always joyful, always energetic Italian priest, now well into his 60s I would say, who knew and was good friends with Father Carollo, who started the organization Tierra Nueva.  Father Graziano has a unique way of giving sermon, of insisting participation from those in the congregation when offering prayer requests and also in what we give thanks to God for.  He is a very special priest, and it has been such a blessing to have the church right next door.  Plus, I feel so much healthier, having a routine and jogging nearly every day!

I jog on what I call the "excercise highway" and or the "Chicago's Lakeshore Drive" of Quito Sur.   It is a little path in El Parque Río Grande that stretches a little over a mile along a ravine that has some tall, pretty grasses planted.  At 6 in the morning, it is packed with local Ecuadorians in their "calentadoras" or warm-up jogging suits, all jogging, walking, or doing jazzercise classes which are offered along the length of the park.  Yes, full on jazzercise...blasting music, lead by an enthusiastic jazzercist (?) encouraging the 99% women in the class to give their all, to flail their arms this way and that way, and to really work it out!  It is quite entertaining : ) and I have often had the urge to go and join, although I am not sure if it costs money per session...

Happy thoughts about new changes to life include that I no longer am attacked by the several dogs that lived in the parking lot (a fence gate has been put up, which dramatically increased my standard of living), I will likely have Internet in my apartment by this time next week, and I have been learning so much about the love and relationship that Jesus our Savior would like to have for me.  His Mercy is limitless, and the treasury of His Compassion is inexhuastible.  He came not to condemn us, but to save us; to draw us closer, rebuild us, to envelop us with love.  What I have realized is that to become that woman who I have always wanted to become, a loving mother and wife, a patient and kind nurse, a woman with shinings eyes and a radiating smile, always willing to empathize with others, to share in their suffering and joys, to put others first, a woman who is mature and confident in her own experiences and knowledge, but also humble and generous, a woman who inspires others to do good, to give of their time, to believe in realistic optimism...if I ever want to have a chance to become that woman, I must repent, allow Jesus to truly enter my life, and to recognize that regardless of the many past mistakes I have made in my life, Jesus wants to offer me his love and mercy; the more I believe that I am not worth His Mercy or Love, the more I will reject the flood of Divine Mercy and Love in my life, and the more I will fall away from ever becoming the vision of that woman that has led me to come to Ecuador...If I want to radiate love and compassion to others, I first have to allow such love and compassion into my life.  By constantly degrating myself, I allow the Devil and sin to win, I allow darkness to fill me, I lose respect for my own self, for the Holy Spirit that was sent to me through baptism, I reject the light by believing I am not worth it.  And living in despair is letting sin win.  More than anything, I must allow Jesus to fill me, to flood me, to remove the bitterness from my heart and replace it with love. Believing that He wants to do that, believing that He was sent to live and die and rise again in atonement for our sins, that is a truly joyful thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef9jKHwHueQ&feature=related

What I love about Ecuador

In keeping with the theme of trying to convince (and guilt) my parents into coming to visit, I felt like maybe I should go at it from a different angle.  I will now try to convince my parents (and everyone else) into visiting by describing all the things I love and will miss about this country (although I have plenty of time to enjoy these things right now!).  So here goes (although this just scratches the surface):

1. Tiendas!  I love walking down the street and passing by a variety of tiendas: shoe shops, plastics stores, bakeries, variety stores, school supplies stores, internet places, clothes shops, fruit/legume stores and restaurants serving hot dogs, shwarmas, fritadas, empanadas and morocho, ceviches, secos, etc.  My favorite place to walk is in La Jota, a street filled with tiendas. 

This is a picture of my favorite empanada place called "Empanadas y Morocho de La Jota" right next to a clothes tienda, during the reconstruction of the sidewalk

2.  Fresh fruit juices - the fresh juice that we have almost every day at El Centro is something I will miss dearly.  I love the Mora, Piña, Maracuya and Naranjilla juices that we get to drink every week - fresh fruit juice is definitely not something that we do in America, and I will miss it!!

3.  Bus rides on Juan Pablo II - this is the bus I most often take in the city, and I love it because typically it is blasting the latina music and the little window curtain shades are blowing happily in the wind - I just love that it's like a little party on the bus!

4. The fresh beautiful rose bouquets that I can buy for a dollar, that I will truly miss.

5. Buying fresh bread every morning for breakfast with my coffee...mmm, fresh bread.

6. Rejoicing when I find a tienda that sells Coca Cola Light, because that was quite a task when I first started trying to find it here in the south...now I have a regular tienda that I go to in La Jota, but it still is a nice treat!

7. $2 haircuts...that is something I will really miss when I get back to the US!

8. The endless mountains that surround Quito, and are found all through the Sierra...the mountains are just beautiful, and depending on where you are in the city gives you a thousand different perspectives and views of them.

Quilotoa, volcanic lake in the Sierran mountain range

9. The amazing churches and history of the city...it is a very rich history and I love Centro Histórico!

Inside San Agustín

A sanctuary to the sacred heart of Jesus, in San Agustín church

10.  The beaches, it sure is nice to be able to go to the beach every once in a while!

There are many, many other things I love about Ecuador and Quito, however they seem to be things you just can't appreciate unless you come visit!! I will definitely miss a ton of other things, such as how greatful I feel when I recieve relatively ordinary objects with the brigades (ex: Ranch Dressing), watching and sitting with the kitchen ladies as they cook and talk about their lives all day, telling myself "you go girl" in my head for running with shorts on, the lack of obesity, some of the food such as fritadas, choclo con queso, sopa de fideos, fresh ice cream popsicles, etc...

I do really love this country, and am so happy that I have the privilege of living here for at least another year. That makes me really excited, because I get to enjoy all these things a little longer, and continue to experience new things!

Mingo Gets a Bath

Mingo is "my" dog here in Ecuador.  Truly, Mingo belongs to José, however I love to walk Mingo around and pamper Mingo so that Mingo isn't so crazy all the time.  When Mingo is let out of his backyard area, he runs around wildly and happily - I like to make sure Mingo gets alot of playtime, and is always fed. Last week I took a video of José giving Mingo a bath, because it was the first time I have seen Mingo just stand still, without even trying to fight it; it was like Mingo was a commpletely different dog. It was also quite cute. I will add the video later (the Internet at the hospital won't let me access what I need to insert the video on the blog), but here are some pictures:

More Carrie Underwood...

And she's done it again! I cannot get enough of Carrie Underwood's songs, her voice is beautiful.  This is her singing "How Great Thou Art" at the Grand Ole Opry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhvaDJTUmrU

Thank you Carrie Underwood for being not only a talented and successful singer, but also a grounded and faith-filled person. Truly inspirational!

Exciting April Update : )

Well, I am finally starting to live how I will be living the next year + of my life here in Ecuador.  I will continue living at the Centro de Formación (Casa del Monseñor Proaño), which is within walking distance of the hospital. Although I am no longer working in the Emergency Room at the hospital, I still plan on putting in a lot of time in the hospital, working side by side the two nurses Marielena and Vicky who run the Salud Comunitaria department, or the Community Health department of Tierra Nueva. I am very excited with the change of pace that my life will now have. The shift to the brigades is awesome because this was my whole point/goal for coming to Ecuador. I truly have always wanted to work with the communities themselves, with the individuals that make up the communities, etc. That is where I've wanted to be since day 1, and now it will be my reality.

April has been a great month, and has gone by very quickly! I had the amazing opportunity to join a brigade for 10 days working as an interpreter. This brigade was organized with the foundation Shoulder to Shoulder, which is based out of University of Kentucky, collaborating with the University of Cincinnati family medicine residency program.  The group consisted of five bright-eyed senior nursing students and their instructor Tina, a well-seasoned veteran of brigades; alongside 6 family medicine residents/students and their two preceptors, Maria and Christy.  It was an amazing group of people, and interpreting went really well. I felt like it helped me gain confidence in how much I have learned and how much I can communicate now, although there were still some questionable terms that didn't quite directly translate like "me inca" and such.  But over all, it went really well.

Santo Domingo, 4th largest Ecuadorian city, where we worked at Centro Medico Hombro a Hombro,
aka the Medical Center Shoulder to Shoulder

During this brigade, the group decided to go to Canoa for the weekend, which is a beach about 4 hours from Santo Domingo, where we were working. I wasn't doing anything, and I had agreed to come back and help them translate for the first two days of the second week, so I went along to the beach! I hadn't been to Canoa, but it's a cute little beach town and there are waves big enough to do some surfing also. I didn't surf, but it'd be on my list of things to do if I ever get a chance to go back there.

Canoa beach

Beautiful sunset picture, taken from my balcony at the hotel in Canoa

Not only was the brigade great and we all got along very well, I also met some new people who were really great. I roomed with Sarah, coordinator for the Shoulder to Shoulder brigades, and Carissa, a fellow interpreter who is living here in Quito working for Partners Worldwide, a Christian-based business partnership organization. They are a very impressive organizaton and do some really great things in and around Quito! It was really great getting to know both Sarah and Carissa, and luckily Carissa will be around for another year as well!

I was sad to see that brigade go. Everyone was so friendly, and I loved chatting/running with the nursing students - that's my people! I tried to teach the Ecuadorian cardgame Cuarenta, but that game didn't catch on with too much enthusiasm except for med student Emily, she loved that game!!

When we got back into Quito we went to an artesenal market, where I met up with José (who had brought me a gorgeous bouquet of  orange/pinkish roses, my favorite color) and I decided to get my ears double pierced (because it was super cheap).  It didn't hurt as bad as I remembered, and my ears are not infected or anything. Everything was clean/sterile/etc. I had had my ears double pierced ears ago, but the holes had gotten infected/closed up. I do not think that will  be the case with these, so I am very happy!

Half of my flower bouquet (a week old) in the beautiful vase gifted to me by the awesome UC nursing students, Lexi, Molly, Ashleigh, Maggie and Kasha with their instructor Tina. Thank you!!

After that brigade, I had one day at home to get organized before José and I left for the beach! José was on vacations, so we decided to take advantage of his time off and go visit a priest friend, Father Colin MacInnes.  He lives in a small coastal town called Aconcito, which is super close to one of the nicest beaches called Salinas.  So, we were able to board for free at the youth center in Aconcito, and every day we took a bus to Salinas and spent the day there - no rain, all sunshine, beautiful water, I swam like a fish! I loved that beach.  It took us 12 hours to get there by bus, and mind you it's a little farther than the distance from Indianapolis to Chicago (welcome to Ecuador). We opted to take a night bus home, and it turned out very well as we had chosen a very reputable company. This time we didn't have to make stops in three other cities, or make stops all along the road picking up random travelers along the way. It was such a relief!

Part of Salinas beach, the most modern beach I've been to yet in Ecuador

Salinas...I loved it!

Teaching José that even in the USA we use porta-potties, and yes,
they are exactly the same...just large pots that hold feces and urine....how lovely.

I now am back in Quito, and will be a homebody for the following three + months. Katie and Josh have bought their tickets to Quito, and we are planning their trip for August 26th to September 5th to include a trip to the Galapagos Islands!!!! Although this is amazing and will be a once in a lifetime trip, it is very financially straining for me on my limited income and I am now on a mission to save every penny I've got!! I'm going to try to be as financially frugal as I can, which is kind of a fun little challenge to see how well I do.  I cannot wait to welcome in my first visitors to this country!!

As far as Easter went, José and I went to mass on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  We participated in a procession around the Solanda neighborhood with the Holy Eucharist, singing and praying for an hour in the rain on Thursday night. I really love my church, San Ignacio. It is so great!

The inside of San Ignacio, my church (iglesia)

The priest leaving with the Holy Eucharist to begin our procession around the neighborhood of Solanda, singing, blessing houses, and saying prayers along the hour long procession

The next couple of weeks I will be doing some things I haven't gotten a chance to do yet, i.e. find the nearest post office to send post cards, organize my room and life a little better, start running again, get better connected with activities in my church, San Ignacio, beyond just going to mass...

All in all, I'm extremely pleased with my new Ecuadorian lifestyle and can't wait for the Timmy brigades in May!

Los Pollitos Dicen...

Boy, what a couple of weeks I have had! Being on back-to-back medical brigades with the Timmy Foundation for two weeks makes time fly by so fast. It is now the end of March and I have only a few months left before getting to come home and visit in July. So here's what the last two weeks have been like in my Ecuador lifestyle...

Right before the first medical brigade which traveled to the Napo province of Ecuador from March 6th-12th, I got my first taste of the Latin American celebration of Carneval, which is the equivalent of Mardi Gras. Carneval boils down to a big food/water fight, whenever, wherever you are during the two or three days before Ash Wednesday.  I "played Carneval" on Saturday in Quito with José, a group of people who work with the Centro where I live, and two German girls who happened to be staying here for a few weeks.  It started with the German girls and I leaving to go eat lunch, being assaulted by paint/water upon leaving the Centro, and returning with cans of foam and confetti - which started the larger, Round 2 of Carneval.  After using anything we could get our hands on (sugar, avocado, soup, coca cola, buckets of water, etc), I was soaked from head to toe, my hair was a mess, and I had an egg smashed on my head. See photos below:

After my intro to Carneval, I joined the Ball State University Timmy chapter to the Napo province of Ecuador, which is a far east province of Ecuador and is considered to be a boundary of the Amazon. As our tour bus entered the towns (and throughout the first two days of clinic) our bus was sprayed with hoses and the target of water balloons as we passed by Carneval players. It was always very funny, as our windows were open due to the hotter climate in that region,  when unsuspecting trip goers would get a quick splash in the face.

The Ball State brigade was a fantastic success. The group of students was really great, and everyone got along really well.  We had a good team of professionals, and we saw four new communities which we will likely now start going to every two months come May.   One morning I woke up first, went into our bathroom, undressed to take a shower and hopped in the shower. Upon turning around (now facing the rest of the bathroom), I noticed a rather large mouse running freely in the bathroom, attempting to escape, and very afraid of me. I didn't quite scream, but I did say "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!" a couple of times, turned off the water, and tried to figure out my next move (as the mouse was at the door attempting to escape through my only escape route!). Luckily and unfortunately, I had placed my clothes in a pile on the floor. The mouse (again, a rather large mouse), spotted my pile and burrowed himself in it.  Knowing that he was afraid of me and wasn't going to come out of the clothes pile that he had now made his home, I turned the water on and continued to shower.  After I got out, four more women used the same bathroom to get ready (all were aware about our little mouse friend), and he never came out.  Thinking the people in charge of the hostal would have the mouse out when we got home from clinic, we came home and opened the bathroom door, then letting the mouse loose in our room. Luckily, within only a few more minutes a boy tripgoer and the guy in charge of the hostal coaxed (scared) the mouse out of our room and we were finally mouse free!!

I absolutely loved the Napo communites that we went to. I loved the climate (which is much hotter and humid than Quito), the air is cleaner and the altitude isn't a factor. I was even able to run for 45 minutes straight, which I do not think I have done that since I arrived in Ecuador!! Our partner organization (which is actually the local Napo province government and a hospital started/run by nuns called Archidona) is fabulous and very easy to work with.  I absolutely fell in love. Its just the whole thing that I'm not a city person, and technically I am living in a large, sprawling city right now. .I also started learning some Kichwa while I was in Tena. That's the indigenous language. So far I've only gotten a few phrases down, which are "Ima shuti kangi?"(what is your name), "Nuca shuti Emily" (my name is emily), "Imazna watara charingi?" (how old are you?), "kaima shami" (come here), and the easy ones "alli punja, alli chishi, and alli tuta"(good morning, good afternoon, good night).  Of course, the problem is I can ask questions but I have no idea what the response is.

One of the BSU students with kids from the site San Miguel de Palmeras

El río Talag, a very clean river that feeds into the Napo river. It was beautiful. I took some time in the afternoon (since this was Friday, our hottest/stickiest clinic day), to kick off my shoes, roll up my pants and soak my feet in the water for 10 minutes. Que fresco!



A little girl at our site on Wednesday. It was actually very cold that day, so I can't believe she was standing there in a tank top and without shoes on! You can see the fog in the background (we were pretty much in a cloud).

Other highlights from the Tena brigade included tubing down the Napo river (starting from the river beach in Misahualli, the town where we stayed), riding in the back of truck beds to one of our sites because the tour bus couldnt reach the town, going across some sketchy bridges that sank and creaked under the weight of the bus/trucks, going to a zoo and seeing some Amazon animals such as a Capybara (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capybara ), riding in motor canoes, and just being warm all day long for the first time since I've been in this country!

We returned from the Napo province on Saturday, the 12th, which is when the Purdue brigade was supposed to fly in. The BSU group was going to be flying out on the same Delta plane that brought in the Purdue-Quito brigade. However, they missed their connecting flight in Atlanta and weren't going to come until Sunday. This is where things got tricky!

I wake up Sunday morning to come to realize that Alana has got a really bad stomach bug from eating a frozen fruit pop in our last community in Napo.  She is down for the count. I am in charge, with Pablo, of leading around the three medical professionals who did make it to Quito on Saturday - it was actually quite a lovely day. We went to La Ronda for lunch, toured a church I had never been in before which was absolutely beautiful  http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iglesia_de_la_Compa%C3%B1%C3%ADa_(Quito)
then went to the basilica to climb the top of the tower. We got coffee and dinner in La Mariscal (gringolandia), and then after dropping off the three of them back at El Centro, I went to Alana's apartment, got a 30 minute crash course in how to pick the group up from the airport/how to pack for the first day of clinic/how to run the first clinic day.

I went to the airport and was super nervous. I was very unsure of what I was doing and out of my element. Pablo was there with me and sort of helped me feel a little calmer. After we were waiting for everyone to come out of customs for awhile, he told me I needed to use my "gringo power" and bust through security to find out what was taking the group so long to leave (only four people had made it out).  I decided I like the term "gringo charm" much better than gringo power, so that's what I used.  I got through and found the group, and saw that they were all filling out customs forms - their bags had been left in Atlanta.  TWENTY-ONE of 29 suitcases had gotten left behind. Uh-Oh. These suitcases had all of our medicines and supplies that we would need for the brigade, and only 8 suitcases had made it through. I was a little flustered/stressed.  Luckily I've been living here for nearly 6 months and my Spanish is good - if I had had to do this when I just arrived I wouldn't have had any clue what was going on!
We all hop on the bus, and I go through the intro/welcome spiel. I was still super nervous. We are getting into Quito Sur, when the bus gets pulled over. It is 12:30am, the middle of the night. I am very unsure of what to do. Luckily, it was just something silly that the police said (buses can't be on this road past 8 pm...as we were stopped, at least 2 other buses passed us), and we didn't get ticketed, although Don Alberto,  our driver, was really flustered for a while. We get to the Centro, and we have to start getting everything organized for the next day, our first clinic day. We are in a cramped space (we didn't have our normal med packing room which is about 4 times the size of the room we were in), and everything was relative chaos. Most people started getting to bed around 3, I got to bed at 4pm and woke up at 6 to shower for the first clinic day. I'm still on my own for the first clinic day, which is always typically the slowest day, and we only had three doctors instead of four.

And as it turns out, it was a very slow day indeed. We were scheduled to eat dinner around 630 pm, and we did not sit down to eat unil 8:15pm.  Luckily Alana was there to help me out Monday night when we got back from clinic. Plus, I had to go to the airport with Pablo to pick up all the suitcases. After dinner I started talking to Marco and José, and started bawling. It was a lot of stress that first 24 hours, everything that could've gone wrong went wrong! José offered to come with me to the airport, and I willingly accepted his offer. It was a good thing too; Pablo and I really needed a third person! I was able to use my gringo charm once again, and everything went really well picking up the suitcases. I even got the head customs officer to make 18 copies of passports for me! He said I owed him an ice cream to cover the costs. I got home at around 1:30am, and almost all of the Purdue students were up waiting for me to help get the suitcases into our make shift bodega.  That was so incredibly nice! From there, the rest of the brigade started going smoother each day.  Unfortunately Alana got sick again at the end of the week (Friday and Saturday), but by then I was much more comfortable leading the group. I also got to put an IV in her, which was fun. It was my second of the week, on Timmy trip goers. 

After the Purdue group was sadly back on the plane, I returned home to get some rest as I was back to work at the hospital on Sunday afternoon.  That shift went fine, crazy busy as always. We have been seeing on average 80-100 patients these days.  Monday night I had a night shift, so it was this morning I was leaving my shift when they placed the last straw on the camel's back (they being my boss, and the boss of all the nurses).  When my boss, Sandra, came into work this morning I mentioned something like I was so happy the schedule was changed back to how it should be (having three days off, three days on). She said something, kind of with glee in her voice, that she was still changing the schedule and that I needed to go talk to Lic Benavides, the boss of all the nurses. I was leaving work after breakfast and I ran into Benavides, so we went up to her office to talk. We sat down, small chatted for 30 seconds about how it was going to Tena, and then she told me that I was only going to be working until the end of March and that I was not being put on the schedule for April (hello, April is next week).  I had told her and my boss several times I was planning to work until the end of April (my Timmy job doesnt start until May), and they knew that. They agreed to that. They told me "al partir del Mayo...." I would work as a replacement. I know that they knew and agreed to have me work through the end of April, or else why would they be calling me into Benavides' office on March 22nd to tell me I was only working for one more week???? I instantly started crying, mostly because I felt betrayed, but also because I still have rent to pay (and I have enough in my bank account here to pay for at least two months rent, but it's still the principal that they are telling me a week before the end of the month that I would no longer be working there), and because they were lieing to me.  That bothered me; it's not right, it's not professional.

So I was crying, and telling Benavides she knew the whole time. She calls up my boss, who couldn't even lie about the fact that she knew the whole time I was planning on working through April and we had agreed on that.  I just felt betrayed. Even typing it right now I want to cry. I've done so much to be here. Everything I have left at home to come down here, my best friends in the world, my family who loves me so much, a good job as a nurse in the States, having convenience and hot water and an income that allows me opportunity, just in general leaving a multitud of opportunities for how my life could be right now...I left all of that to come work here, and they have been disrespectful. They didn't even try to understand what I'm going through at all.

Luckily, I'm getting pretty fluent in Spanish. That's one of the main things I have gained from working at the hospital. Clearly there's a ton of vocab I don't know.  And I still have to clean up my Spanish, and learn to properly use subjunctive phrases, and properly put my "lo, la, le, se" in the correct place, but for the most part it's much easier for me to communicate than when I got here, and is continually getting better. Sometimes though the very few "highs" I have had here do not make my very low "lows" any easier. It's been a tough, tough 5 months, and I will be completely honest about that.

I miss home.

Timmy video!

http://vimeo.com/19580126

Carrie Underwood Obsession

I have realized since arriving in Ecuador that Carrie Underwood is the best singer in the WORLD!!! I love every song she has ever created. Then I went back and watched her American Idol audition, and she was amazing and it made me even more in love with her music. She is incredible!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-w-5J_TUD0

Yo les invito a todos, pero cada uno se mata su toro

That translates to "I'm inviting all of you, but each one kills their bull" . That is a phrase used here when you are talking about going out to a dinner, going out for drinks, or just in general if you are the one talking about going/doing something and are inviting other people. It's to say, I am inviting you, but you gotta cover your own bill.

Today was the hardest day of work I have had so far in my three + months of actually functioning in the role of a nurse.  It was actually a night shift from 1930pm-0730am, but the nightshift was pretty calm (we had about 38 people in our ER during the night). We didn't have any true emergencies, but we did have alot of belly aches and urinary tract infections. Literally at about 07:33 am, in came the only emergency we had; unfortunately it was already too late. In the relative calm of the morning came running in a grandmother and mother combo (the mother in her teens), the grandmother holding a baby wrapped in a fleece blanket crying saying "our baby is dead, our baby is dead".  I was the first to come to the patient, grabbed the baby who was flaccid, pallid, not breathing, cold, had a bit of milky whitish secretion coming from one nostril, and as we came to see once we removed the blank, had cyanotic streaks forming along the left side of the body around the pelvic/lower abdominal area. We ran into the Unidad de Críticos, our critical unit where the crash cart is and where supposedly all of the supplies we would need for an emergency are.

This baby, of three months, was realistically already dead and we didn't know for how long, but we began efforts to resuscitate. I grabbed the pediatric ambu bag, and the doctors began CPR. Margarita, the other nurse, and I tried to look for peripheral IV sites but were unsuccessful. By this point, the doctors/nurse from upstairs in Neo (NICU) had been called down. We probably had 10 or so people in the room by that point. I prepared a syringe of Epi diluted, and efforts to put in an IntraOsseous iv were started by one physician by using our #18 gauge introcath needles, which were too delicate to puncture the calf bone, and the efforts (4-5) were nil. #18gauge is the largest needle we use; we don't have #16 or #14 gauge needles readily available from our locked stockroom (that only 2 people have a key to). The baby had no saturation, at this point was intubated but without any IV site we couldn't pass any Epi. It was, even though probably hopeless from the start, one of the the worst codes I have seen. Very disorganized, and like always, we were running around for supplies that we just didn't have enough of in our "Critical Unit". The boss of all nurses, Lcda Maria Teresa Benavides was there to witness it all.

The saddest part about all of this, is that this same baby of three months, was in our ER the day before, and had been discharged at about 10pm with a diagnosis of pneumonia.  It had literally left our ER at 10pm alive, and returned at 0730am, dead.  Due to the state of the baby upon arrival, and the milk that was escaping from the nose and the whitish secretions that we removed from the lungs via suction during the code, it was evident that the baby had aspirated on his mother's milk, most likely from spitting up after feeding and breathing in the liquid without the mother knowing, and thus went into respiratory distress, respiratory arrest, to cardiac arrest. It likely had little to do with the pneumonia diagnosis, but clearly that baby was already in a compromised state of health, and who knows where the blame lies. Should that baby have been hospitalized the night before? I do not know; although I did see that baby the night before, I didn't attend to it or the family in anyway whatsoever, so I didn't know the story of the baby at all until the morning. I do know however, had that baby been hospitalized, it would be alive right now. Was it just poor timing that the baby was sick and just so happened to aspirate the morning after a hospital visit? Were they interrelated incidents? Was there something we could have done in the morning or was it really a hopeless effort?

When the young grandmother entered crying, she started saying the story how they had been there last night and he had recieved an IV and oxygen and all this treatment and now he was dead...she even pointed to me, and said "you were here last night, you know what they did to him last night!" which was true, I had been there the night before (I stood out as the gringo in a pink uniform, so clearly she recognized me), and that was when I connected the stories. It was very tough. What made it worse was after the code, we had a "meeting" with all the personnel (minus the doctors) who were there at that moment, and with Lcda Benavides, to discuss how we didn't have the supplies, we were disorganized, how everything went bad. Well Lcda Benavides, sorry to say it but this is how every code is. We are always leaving the "Critical Unit" to get other supplies. It was a blessing that she at least saw the disorganization, because at least now she knows. But, like always, that "meeting" was a circle of blame, with the subject of conversation centering back to the SAME dumb topic that we have talked about for the last three months: that we are billing patients incorrectly and therefore not having enough supplies.
Now that I am much more fluent in Spanish and have observed enough of our department and how it works, I think I have the ability to finally make my case heard. My Spanish, I believe has been accelerated by times when I am all worked up like today, after bawling in the supply closet, I went to breakfast with Margarita, the other nurse, and Diana, the technologist who I had worked that shift with. At breakfast, we discussed what happened, among other topics, and I didn't hold back anything on what I was saying; I was capable enough to express all of my thoughts without being frustrated. It was kind of like our debriefing session that we probably should have had in the ER with the rest of our employees, but I don't think the "debriefing" idea has really hit Ecuador yet. What I've realized today is that I can't continue to sit back and have problems with my boss; if she, Sandra, doesn't want to change anything then I am going to have to go above her, to Lcda Benavides directly. We are dealing with people's lives, y punto.
Three months.
The amount of time I have worked in this ER; the same amount of time that baby lived.
Two totally different perspectives on an equal amount of time.

Quilotoa Hike

Hiking 7.5miles around Quilotoa lake/volcano. This is located about 4 hours south of Quito.

I went on the hike with Alana, current Medical Brigade Coordinator for the Timmy Foundation, and a group of "montañeros" or people interested in mountaineering, called Zona Verde.

Just a beautiful photo

This photo was taken upon arriving at the top of the highest point during the hike, and after finishing the hardest part of the hike, go Team America, we were the first people up!

This was not a friendly hike like I had been on before with pretty switchbacks, wide paths, and steps cut into the path to make it easier...this was a legit just worn down path, that was very steep and rugged!

Quilotoa was the hardest hike I have ever done in my life! It took us 4.5 hours to walk around the 7.5 mile loop, and then we also hiked down to the lake and back up (25 min down, 50 min back up), which was sooooo hard because our legs were so sore already! I likened it to how I felt after running the marathon, that is how sore I was! I also am out of shape right now, so that certainly didn't help. I desperately need to start working out again!