And so it begins...

I´ve now been in El Salvador for 3 days and I´m already tired. The days are definitely busy, but I love the work that I am doing. I am living in a house with 13 youth from El Salvador, one staff person, and 3 other interns. Spanish has definitely been helpful here in trying to get to know the boys. I have met all of them and have begun to build some relationships with them, but it has been a little difficult with the language and the busy schedules. Every day, I have been waking upt 5 or 530 when the boys are getting ready for school. I then go to a meeting with all of the youth of the house and then with all of the staff. After this I have been teaching English or going to their soccer practice. In the afternoon, I have been going to CISNA and am currently working in the medical clinic. That has been quite interesting.
I am working with another one of the interns named Lauren in the clinic. She is in nursing school and already has some clinical practice so she´s been very helpful. We were set up the first day to go around assessing all of the facilities to observe any health risks and places where infection and contamination can come in. It was quite overwhelming because many of the most basic needs were not met. There were open food containers everywhere, standing water, mold, dirt, not even chlorox was used to clean the tables but only dirty water from the faucets. Tomorrow we are suppose to go over our findings with 2 of the directors of the center so that will be a task. Additionally, today we got to use some skills in caring for a boy with an infected leg. A glass bottle fell and cut him. Thanks to previous experience (an ingrown toenail) we knew to use betadine and hot water. It´s been a little awkward trying to tell the nurses and doctors there what to do because we don´t want to come off as arrogant Americans, but some of the practices that they do here are not the best haha.

Other than that, a lot of rice and beans and mosquitos. Alright, gotta run. See you in a few days.