Sunday- Funday

A tasty lunch prepared in the local style

After a refreshing lunch break, the team was back at it to wrap up our time at MPSC. We finalized testing on several instruments, including Ally, Anna and Miranda verifying blood-pressure measurement functionality on a couple patient monitors, Michael scouting out the necessary parts and contact information for getting a nice LigaSure vessel sealing system up and running, and Chris and Orlando verifying functionality of another patient monitor, among other projects. As we closed out the afternoon, each of the team members wrote out their final documentation of their work and translated their notes to Spanish to pass onto Cesár and Henri, our friendly on-site technicians. We then summarized our work for them in a final walk-through of the clinic, with the help of our translators, and we presented the two with some parting gifts of appreciation: rocking t-shirts from the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering! (Why didn’t I ever get one of those???)

Orlando debriefs technicians about the patient monitor he worked on Sunday afternoon

After we said our goodbyes at the Moore Pediatric Surgery Center, we headed back to the hotel for a little R&R, including some heated group card games. Before we knew it, we were off to dinner at the Vesuvio Pizzeria, located in the swankyyy Cayalá complex of east GC. This place looked like it would have been luxurious even for America, or the United States, whichever. Here we grabbed some meter-long (!) pizz



Anna, Jake, Mary Kate and Miranda
at our Sunday evening dinner location

Pizza for miles (... a meter, but still, a meter!)

as of various unique flavors, finding ourselves caught in the interesting situation of being an American group eating Italian food in Guatemala City listening to middle-eastern music in the background. Whoa. This was accompanied by some more memorable quotes from Orlando, Michael nearly falling off a 3-foot ledge and giving Dr. P a heart attack (it seemed more like it would’ve been a 20-foot drop, from the perspective of most of the dinner table), and an impromptu game of ‘telephone’ (in which Chris and Israel kept the game alive despite initial concerns ;) ).

The v iew from the second story window of Visuvio

We finished the outing with an enjoyable walk through the plaza in the cool evening breeze. As we stopped along the way to admire the local fare of sweets, cutely dressed dogs, and cutely swing dancing team members Chris and Anna, the excursion lacked neither sights nor serenity. The group avoided some close scrapes and managed to keep our tact intact, unhindered by quick comments confounded in translation (those involved know who they are and need not be named … Orlando). Humorous and memorable as ever, our return bus ride full of “Fortunately/Unfortunately” and “5 Questions” games may have drained our last ounces of energy through all the hearty laughs, but it nonetheless served as a perfect cap to a great first day jam-packed with irreplaceable experiences and memories.

The crew takes in the scenery of Cayalá on a beautiful Sunday evening in Guatemala City

The team will hit it off again tomorrow, bright and early, to head over to Juan Pablo II Hospital. After the success our team had today one can only imagine what is to come tomorrow.


Memorables of the day:

• Anna, Daniel, and Dr. P killed it with their enviable Spanish skills

• Miranda is the unsung hero thus far, she kept all of our tools in place and in order during the entire day while simultaneously working on her individual projects.

• Dr. Walker apparently acted at one point in his life as Morpheus in the Matrix trilogies starring Keanu Reeves. Maybe we will get to see him perform some martial arts. Hopefully we will have more to say about this later.

• Daniel ate an apple. Much to the chagrin of our health advisor, Anna.

• Israel, our driver, actually owns his own car company!