I landed in Costa Rica at 5am on Monday May 23rd a full week before we started the biomedical bootcamp at UCIMED. I was in Heredía a province just north of San Jose practicing my spanish and getting familiar with the culture. It was a five day program and I had 5 hours of spanish class in the mornings and then the afternoon and evenings free to do whatever I wanted. I lived by myself in an apartment and it was a super valuable experience to have living autonomously in another country. I was responsible for breakfast lunch and dinner for everyday of the week. I went shopping at una supermercado close to me and went out by myself for other meals. It was a sink or swim situation where I had to quickly get comfortable speaking the spanish that I did know in public and in front of native speakers. After the week was over I took the bus to Montezuma where I got tacos and drinks on the beach. The next morning I woke up for sunrise over the ocean and went on a brief waterfall hike. Despite my escape into paradise it had to come to an end and I traveled back to San Jose that afternoon.
The following week we began our UCIMED biomedical bootcamp. The first day had a lot of confusion and miscommunication so everyone was a bit stressed before arriving at UCIMED. However, once we arrived and went straight into lectures and workshops about engineering design and the projects we were going to tackle during the 4 day program everything started to make sense. My group was diez calcetines and we were assigned the TENS project. Over the course of the four days we developed two low fidelity prototypes and a poster board for presenting to a panel of judges. Our team won the judges choice award given to the team with the best prototype. Our final design was a shoe and sock working in combination to provide TENS pain relief to the entire foot while also being comfortable to wear during the work day. (Pictures of our design below).
After UCIMED finished on Friday my room and I left for Jaco, a beachtown about an hour and a half from San Jose. Saturday we spent at the beach surfing and enjoying the warm water. For lunch we got burritos and these delicious brownies. The ocean was so beautiful it almost started glowing. Although I did get a pretty nasty burn it was well worth it. My experience so far has been phenomenal, both in the program and just around Costa Rica in general. Very excited to see what next week holds. Here are a few of the amazing pictures I’ve taken so far.
