Staying Busy!

Today was a full day for most of us here! A clinical day at the hospitals, teaching CPR to the traffic controllers, and then going to the temple!

Sotomayor, the maternity hospital, was busy with babies this morning! In the first hour of us being there, there were three babies born! The labor support given was much appreciated by the new mothers. It's amazing how grateful a person can be to have a blanket, a wet towel on their head, or someone pushing on their knees through contractions. We got to help a mother breastfeed her first baby ever. We also got to hold the babies in the nursery. Sarah, with her excellent Spanish skills, interviewed women in the postpartum room about their birth experience for a research project.

The hotel we're at has been so kind to us, and today they gave us little "Happy Nursing Day" cream puffs. YUM. Last night we had a pizza party, headed up by Allie, and they helped us order the pizza too. They have been good friends to us here...and we all LOVE the chocolates they give us on our beds.

We got to go to the temple again tonight, and it was great as expected! We all can agree that we love love love the temple workers here and their Spanglish! :) The Guayaquil Ecuador Temple has been very busy...70,000 baptisms so far this year! We left around 9 at night, and it was still busy in baptistry.

Everything is going pretty well here! We're sad that Debbie went home today, but we're glad she got to come!

Happy Nurses Day!

Today we got to go to La Veranza and participate in the celebration of nurses with the people of Guayaquil. There were several booths including people who took blood pressures, our own CPR lessons, and other nursing students from the nearby university. It's great to see how much nurses are appreciated, they even had a special mass in the honor of nurses which we were able to attend. At the end of the day we were treated to a yummy lunch and we were also given very nice planners as a way of saying thanks for our help! We had plenty of photo ops with the heads of hospital and later that night Debbie received a "special award" for all the PR encounters she had. Everyone needs a little fun now and then, and we decided to have a little fiesta with pizza and a movie. After we got all the kinks worked out it was a nice relaxing night. We are looking forward to going back to our various locations and continuing to serve to people of Ecuador!!

Week 2: Switching it up a bit!

Today we began our second week in Ecuador and thus our second clinical rotation. Our particular group migrated to the maternity hospital to lend a hand in labor support…literally! Much of the time was spent bent over talking calmly to the laboring women, telling them to breathe deeply, holding their hands during excruciating contractions, applying counter-pressure by pushing on their knees or backs (as Ryan is demonstrating so spectacularly in this photo to the right) and basically acting like big teddy bears for them to hug and cling to. I think I speak for everyone, and yes including the boys, when I say that we never want to have a c-section after witnessing a few.

The interesting thing is there is usually a lot of waiting around that just inherently comes when participating in big group activities, and as we all have had a taste of this, I thought I would add a few pictures to show that side of things.

Below is the group at the maternity

hospital patiently waiting for the vans to arrive,
catching a cat nap...showing off some sexy legs...

To the right is the community group also patiently waiting after a long day's work, but they instigated a valiant team effort in order to work in a little shut eye.

And opposed to popular belief, nursing students do need to eat sometimes! In fact, we quite like to eat and we like to eat very often, as portrayed in this very becoming snap shot!

This evening we also had a great FHE where we practiced our muscial number for church on Sunday in which we are going to blow their socks off, and had an uplifting and enlightening discussion about what it is that we know because we have the gospel.

Altogether things are going well...we are experiencing, growing, learning, caring and having a blast here in Ecuador.