A Quick Update

In my hurry to get to bed last night, I forgot to mention our plans for today (Tuesday the 28th, day 3). We are headed out early this morning to make the looong trek (about 6 hours by bus) down South where I will be spending most of my time for the next 4 weeks. I will be staying in a cabana in the Amupakin clinic in the town of Archidona (which is located in the Napo region of Ecuador in the Amazon basin). This isn´t one of the clinics we will be working in, but there are midwives who live there -- they will be preparing our breakfasts and dinners (yum!). Archidona is very near the larger town of Tena. After dropping off our bags, we are going to head to Tena this afternoon to get an introduction from the Direccion de Salud Area 1, which I believe is sort of like the local ministry of health in charge of all the clinics in the area (Subcentros). We will start working in a clinic in Tena the following morning, and then rotate through several others, as well as the local hospital, over the course of the next few days/weeks. I´m very excited for what´s to come, a little apprehensive, but mostly just thrilled to be down here.

The internet won´t be as readily accessible once I move down South, so I´ll likely be updating much less frequently, and when I do, much more briefly. Nevertheless, I hope you will continue to check back for some more wild stories. At the very least, I´ll try to make periodic updates to Facebook to let you all know how I am doing.