Back from a Project

I just have arrived home from a two-week project. The first week was in a beach town called Playas the second week was in the Galapagos on the Island of Santa Cruz. This project has probably been one of the best that I’ve been involved in. We had a team of 20 volunteers; one from Canada and the rest from the states and the team dynamics were great. Everyone got along really well together, which can seriously improve the quality of a clinic. We were actually separated in two groups, one at the hospital doing surgeries; we had 2 general surgeons and 2 surgical specialties, as well as an Ecuadorian surgical team that was volunteering with two Ecuadorian med students assisting on surgeries. The other group was running clinic in town.

For me there were a couple of really great perks to this project. First, we had a photojournalist volunteering, he works freelance with lots of newspaper experience, shooting for the New York Times and other large news agencies. We had some really great conversations, and I got a break from translating twice to be on full picture duty with him, which was extremely fun. Second, Matt and Emily my really good friends from home where volunteering on this project.

There are many more stories to come with this project, but I will have to fill them in one step at a time.