Global Medical/Dental Brigade - Honduras: Honduras

Friday January 4, 2013 - Day Two

Today we woke up rested from travel and ready to conquer Honduras! For breakfast, we had egs, sausage, beans, and bananas. Bananas are in everything in Honduras! The food keeps getting better each meal. After breakfast, we continued to separate, organize, and pack medications. Today, we packed more childrens' vitamins, antacids, and visine eyes drops. There were at least 200 eye drop bottles that we had to individually label and pack! Not to mention, thousands of pills! I've been having a lot of fun talking and getting to know the other brigadiers. I've met a bunch of new and unique people including dancers, RAs, business majors, med students, and more. After all of our work, the pharmacy is slowly getting smaller and more organized. Soon after, we got ready for la playa (the beach)! We drove 40-60 minutes to the coast of Honduras through villages and farmlands. As we drive along, I was once again amazed by the amount wild dogs, pigs, chickens, cats, and cows roaming the land and the roads. We reached the coast and walked onto a pier where we took a boat to an island in the Pacific Ocean named "Tiger Island". We sailed to the island and on one side of us were the mountains of El Salvador and on the other side were the mountains of Nicaragua! It was so beautiful! We got off the boats and were greeted by the locals. Next, we hopped into little taxi cabs driven by the locals of the island. This is where my spanish really kicked in! We drove around the island to get to the beach on the other side, but we stopped and had lunch on a beautiful cliff overlooking a mountain of Nicaragua. The hotel provided us with a bologna and cheese sandwich with fries, oranges, and Gatorade. It was so hot, so we squeezed back into the taxi cabs and headed downhill to the beach. We pulled up to the beach only to see a beautiful view! The mountains of El Salvador! The landscape of Honduras continued to stun me with it's beauty. We got a complementary drink from the beach house so I got a Pepsi and for some reason, it tasted way better than a Pepsi from home. Pepsi in hand, I checked out the beach and went in the Pacific Ocean FOR THE FIRST TIME!! We all swam, played soccer, met locals, took pictures, played frisbee, found jellyfish and made memories. My roommate Jordyn and I walked with our new amigas, Clarisa and Seleme to a cavern full of bats and discussed la Navidad! After the beach, we stopped at a downtown area of the island to see another beautiful view of Honduras. We snapped a ton of photos including a huge group photo of the brigade. Then we jumped back on the boats and waved goodbye to Tiger Island. A quick 40 minutes later, we returned back to the hotel and finished packing meds for tomorrow. Dinner time! Steak and chicken shish kabobs, soup, plantains, cantaloupe, raspberry nice and rice and beans, so delicious!! After, we reviewed the dental procedures that we will perform throughout the brigade, extractions and fillings. We reviewed the five kinds of fillings, which was very interesting! I am so excited to work tomorrow! So, we showered up and got ready for the Friday Fiesta. Every Friday the hotel hosts a fiesta for the village people. It was so nice to see the people get together and welcome us with open arms. We all danced together and had a ball. And now I am falling asleep writing this so Adios! Tomorrow we travel to the village of Ojachal to begin the brigade!

Also, please watch my second daily journal on YouTube!