A week of discovery

They say that the best way to live life is to seek discomfort. It’s experience’s that stretch our comfort zones, and make us try and experience new things that can end up being the most rewarding. Looking back at the end of the first week, I can assure you that my zone of comfort has expanded well past where I expected it might.

Like I said in my last post, this was my first international experience. Flying across most of Central America in itself was an exciting new experience. After landing I had a another slew of firsts– my first taxi, my first time dealing with new currency, my first time meeting a number of my new friends here on the trip with me. It was exciting, but also a little scary.

Academically, our first week was composed of participation in a Medical Innovation Bootcamp organized by Dr. Wettergreen in collaboration with a few local universities. We had four days to take a project from a project proposal through a low-fidelity prototype and poster presentation. Coming from semester long experiences in 120 and 200, the idea of conquering all of that in four days was intimidating. We were given lecture and worktime back to back everyday that week, and before long we arrived at our poster presentation on Friday afternoon.

Our project was a head stablization device for use in pediatric bronchoscopy procedures. I have little to no medical experience, and so learning about the background and context of this issue was a whole new world to me.

While our team didn’t win anything, the week taught me the value of making defensible decisions quickly, moving through processes, and taking advantage of the broad perspective of multidisciplinary teams.

We also discovered the kitchen at the hostel that we are staying at for the month, and explored cooking dinner after school each day. This week we made rice and chicken, tacos, assorted veggies, and failed at ever cooking dried beans (apparently soaking them is more than just a suggestion).

Other new things I tried this week: plantains, lychees, playing with a monkey, taking an Uber, and fresh coconut.

On Saturday we got a day off all to ourselves, and went to Jacó, a beach not far from San Jose. The bus ride down was beautiful:

and the beach itself was pretty solid.

We spent the day on the beach, got some yummy burritos for lunch, and a few of us (including me) got aggresively sunburned. We did almost miss the bus back but it worked out.

At the end of this first week, I feel so much more settled in than I did last Sunday. Nothing this week was overtly uncomfortable, but the combination of new experiences at times can be overwhelming. At this point while I’m certainly no local, I at least know my way to the grocery store and honestly what’s more important than that.

 

 

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