Quality AND Quantity

What better way to start the day than 5:30 AM cardio? You may come up with some good answers to this, but nothing can beat the view of a sunrise over THREE volcanoes. This was an amazing start to our second full day in Antigua. The sunrise perfectly illuminated the city as well as the green backdrop of three volcanoes.

After our short hike, we returned to the hotel to get ready for Obras Sociales del Hermano Pedro (OSHP). OSHP was nothing short of a dream for biomedical engineers. We entered a room filled with hundreds of medical devices needing our attention. Seiver and Anna explained their wonderful inventory process, and we got to work. By the end of day one of two, we had completely inventoried 172 devices! We have some short highlights from Anna and Seiver detailing their excitement about today's successes.

Anna and Seiver: Masters of Inventory
Today was the first day of the OSHP inventory project.  We would rate it as a success. We were able to accomplish much more than we originally anticipated because of the hard work of our fellow Vanderbilt and del Valle students as well as our wonderful translators Andres and Estuardo. The colored labels proved effective in easily identifying the state of the devices as we expected. We were exited to be able to easily update the excel sheet and print labels for the devices as we worked. We hope that OSHP will be able to continue using our organization system after we have left and that the del Valle students that we worked with will be able to return and continue their excellent work. We are looking forward to finishing the inventory tomorrow on our last day working in Guatemala.

We ended our day with a pleasant meal at a local Guatemalan restaurant recommended by Dr. P's longtime friend and Spanish teacher Clara. During the meal we were treated to a traditional Antiguan dance performance which integrated colorful masks and clothes, and maracas; they even recruited Anna and Tori to join in the production! Tomorrow is our final day of work and our last day with the del Valle students. It is not possible to put in words what an incredible experience this partnership has been. These dedicated and talented engineers have taught us so much and have been such an amazing asset to the program, we are truly honored to have worked alongside them. We'll stop their today before all of us get too teary-eyed, and also because we've been up for nearly 20 hours. Hasta mañana!