Who would have thought that the hardest part of my summer so far was actually getting to Costa Rica. Between canceled transfer flights and lost baggage, I arrived at the Selina in San Jose more than 25 hours after I left home in Vancouver. Despite last minute bookings and spending a night at the airport in Mexico City, I think the overall experience wasn’t too bad (i wouldn’t say it was enjoyable though…).
Although I had a bumpy start, things have definitely smoothened out over the past week. Our very first day was a rest day which we used to explore the surrounding area, including a zoo! I found out later that this zoo is set to be closed so hopefully the monkey friends we made there will be able to find a better and bigger home with even more glass to smear bananas on.
Our educational week started with the Biodesign Medical Innovation Bootcamp. Going into it, I wasn’t too sure or confident on what to expect as it had been 3 years since I took ENGI 120 and anything engineering design related. However, throughout the program, I was surprised how much of the design process came back to me as we basically went through the crash course version of ENGI 120.
While the project our team worked on was interesting and I am very proud with how much work we were able to accomplish in just 4 days, I think the best part of the workshop has been the Costa Rican friends we made throughout the process. Even though we all grew up in different places and cultural environments, I found we were able to hold genuine conversations and laugh about silly things like real friends. Overall, I think team Parkinsimulators was a great success, engineering and friendship wise 🙂
For the weekend, we took a bus to Jaco, a nearby beach/surf town. The nightlife was very eventful and was a nice change of pace from the medical bootcamp. In the morning, we headed down to the beach and spent the day there, getting extremely sunburnt…
And with that, our education began again. As part of our needs finding curriculum, we spent two days shadowing the operations of 2 Clinica Biblica locations in San Jose. This was pretty exciting for me as I have never been behind the scenes in any hospital. Equally excited were my parents as this is probably the closest I’ll be to a medical student. Although the tours were a little bit hectic at parts, I think it was a unique and valuable experience to be able to observe the process and equipment used on a daylily basis in a hospital.
As this post comes to an end, we have just officially started the ENGI 200 and ENGI 350 portions of the program. Costa Rica has been full of wonderful moments and San Jose is a great place to be situated. I am excited for what’s to come!
-Jeff
