It’s been 2 weeks since I’ve landed in Costa Rica. From non-stop bootcamps and trips to being in a different country, it has been a trial by fire to just get settled in. So much has occurred, but I suppose its best start with the heavy hitter: McDonalds. Leaving the United States for the first time I prepared myself to face a lot of change, but I expected McDonalds to be the same no matter where I was. For the better, I was wrong. I discovered McDonalds to be far better here with a larger menu as well. The chicken nuggets were a crispy golden brown with a nice crunch that made me forget that it was processed soylent green. There is a McDonalds signature menu with burgers that looked like the picture and came out with little flags on them. The sides consisted of onion rings, potato wedges, or fries and an apple pie for dessert that was warm, flaky and exquisite. This helped to remind me that all too often we are afraid of different and seek out normalcy even if different often means better.
Beyond McDonalds, I got to explore the exciting world of innovation and design in medical devices at the intel innovation center. We were submerged headfirst in a rapid design course that condensed the first semester and a half of my senior design into one week. Here I had my first meeting with the local Costa Rican students, and it was wonderful. My group of Rice, UCR, and TEC students came together to design a propeller syringe pump that looked feasible and possibly applicable. This was proposed in as effort to prevent the separation of fat from milk will feeding breastmilk to neonatal infants in the neonatal ICU. We unfortunately were only able to secure ourselves second place out of six teams at the end of the bootcamp since only some of the judges took our bribes. Heading into the second week we again crammed about a week or two worth of material into a two-day bootcamp, led by Paul Fearis, on clinical observations and need finding. We also got to go to the hospitals and put our newfound clinical observation skills into practice. My team got to speak with the chief of surgery at Hospital Nacional de Niños for about four hours. While I didn’t get to observe treatments, I got some great insight into the difficulties of the hospital and great connections so I can go back and observe operations at a later date.
When we weren’t head deep in learning we were having a nice respite at one of Costa Rica’s beautiful national parks. The first weekend GMI took us to Manuel Antonio to enjoy the beautiful beaches and vibrant wildlife. Our guide helped us spot all the different animals from sloths/monkeys to mantises/grasshoppers and were kindly treated to a wonderful dinner by our director, Dr. Clifton. We got to stay at a wonderful hotel where we heard great stories about the owner’s colorful life and got to play with his akita puppy. For the Second week, we planned the trip ourselves and it was to La Fortuna where we got to soak our stress away in the local hot springs. After the hot springs we went to visit Arenal National park to see the volcano and natural wildlife on a 5km trek through the woods.
From here out I will be putting my skills to use working with ICU medical and doing needs finding at the public hospitals around Costa Rica. As well as working in as much trips and McDonalds as I can.
Hasta luego mis amigos!