Roatan - Day 9

Not until this morning when I tromped through a whole field of grass at 7:30 am to drop off a load of laundry did I realize just how hostile of a climate it is here.  NO DEW ON THE GRASS?!  Maybe it wasn’t early enough, but the morning sure dawned way too early in my book.  J and I were up an hour prior to that so we’d be ready for pickup at 7:30 am.  We were to be judges at a science fair competition.  Little did I know I’d be riding 20-25 min in the back of a truck both ways (most likely getting fried by the sun), or eating less than satisfactory fast food pizza for lunch, or working the afternoon shift at the clinic as well.  A day full of surprises.  I like surprises, mostly, but today J and I got the life blood sucked out of us by those kids at the science fair, or something.  We just didn’t have the energy to keep us going at the clinic.  All I wanted was a big fat nap.  That, or a large Coca-Cola filled with sugar cane to pump through my veins.  At least I got to translate for J during one patient visit.  I LOVE IT.

The science fair was actually pretty fun.  About 10 of us from the clinic were paired up with other local Hondureños to judge projects, grades 3-10 at a bilingual school.  Everything was expected to be presented in English: poster, project, paper, AND presentation (love the alliteration).  I was assigned to the 3^rd and 4^th graders.  It was the first year their projects were being judged so they were a bit timid (and when I say a bit, I mean A LOT).  They were just the cutest things.  When I expressed to the lady I was working with that I hoped I wasn’t being too harsh, she assured me I wasn’t and that SHE is the one who usually grades hard.  Ha, little did she know I taught high school for 4.5 years.  After spending a good 20 minutes with each group (five total), we compared our scores to rank the winners.  Turns out I was much more harsh.  Oops.  Poor little things. 

One group made a model of the solar system (what would a science fair be without at least ten of these?!  You know you made when you were a young innocent kid…) and was explaining how Pluto is no longer a planet.  We asked what happened to it and one girl’s response, “It disappeared.”  Another girl’s response, “It exploded.”  Bahahaha, almost cracked up right then and there.  Dead giveaway on the amount of research they did.

I triaged a lady today who said she had been punched in the ear.  She was having pain, dizziness, and couldn’t hear.  Dr. Molina walked in an hour or so later asking me if I wanted to see something I probably wouldn’t normally get to see.  Jumped at the chance!  When I looked into her left ear, I was looking directly into her inner ear.  Found out later from J that her husband had slapped her and the air/pressure acted as a knife, rupturing her eardrum.  SO SAD.  I can’t believe so many people suffer from abuse, let alone other types of abuse.  I’m sure it’s fairly common on the island too…

After 9 days on the island, J and I YET to have a true beach day.  We are kind of dying inside.  Tomorrow morning we WILL be at the beach to actually start on our rockin’ tans we are about to get.  I think we’re the whitest ones on the whole island, cruise ship tourists included.