¿Tú comes manzanas?
Before last Monday, I’d never been out of the United States. As I neared San Jose, I sat in the window seat of my airplane staring down at the verdant, mountainous landscape of Costa Rica before we touched ground. I walked through customs, grabbed my bag, and exited the airport when I was faced with my first task- getting from the airport to the Selina. I walked past an aisle of taxi drivers beckoning me to get a ride with them, but decided that I’d call an Uber instead (I heard taxis often upcharge tourists). I was aware that Costa Rica used colones as their form of currency, but the first sight of a ₡7,000 uber cost was slightly jarring to me, until I realized that’s about $12 in USD. As I sat with my driver, I felt strange being in a situation where I can be so physically close to someone, but unable to make a connection due to our language barrier. I was in awe of being in such a new place, but at the same time overwhelmed by the sudden change in lifestyle and culture. I had a lot to learn.
Our first day here, we went out as a group to the San Bolivar animal sanctuary, and walked through the Simón Bolívar Zoological Park and the San Jose Central Market. The animals were a great welcome to Costa Rica, specifically the Capuchin Monkeys, and the market was a great way to observe a lot of the cultural food and art in Costa Rica. However, I again felt a disconnect because I couldn’t communicate much with the locals and had to rely on others to make transactions for me. Coming to Costa Rica has been my first true exposure to the Spanish language and a new culture, and I felt like I was thrown into the deep end(my fault, I decided to take French in high school), so it took some adjustment to get used to. To end the day, we ate at a traditional Costa Rican restaurant which was delicious.
Coati at the zoo
The next day, we started our boot camp. Hearing the project pitches got me super excited for the camp, because I felt like the projects were solving important problems and created a positive contribution to the world. A lot of engineering in the medical field seems to have that theme, which I appreciate. When we got assigned our groups, our team clicked on the first day. I loved working through the engineering design process with my team, and even more so enjoyed getting to know the wonderful Costa Rican students in our group. Throughout the week we sat together each day, joked with each other, and went on lunch trips together. They even got us our first Pops ice cream which was delicious. Getting to work with these Costa Rican students made me feel so much more connected to San Jose and the community here, and I am happy to say I think I made two new friends. To top it off, by the end of the week, we ended up with a Parkinson’s tremor simulator that I was very proud to present.
Going out to Pops with the Parkinsimulators
Immediately after the boot camp, Walsh, James, Jefferson and I made an excursion to Jaco and spent the night enjoying the restaurants and bars on the main street in a night we will likely never forget. The next morning, we met up with the rest of our group to spend some time at the beach playing frisbee, surfing, or just soaking up the sun (a little too much for some of us). It was so nice to be able to have a break from our work week and get to experience some of the beautiful Costa Rican nature around San Jose.
Trip to Jaco
After Jaco, we jumped right into our needs finding workshop. It was my first time doing work in a clinical setting, so I felt like it was a valuable experience for me to understand what goes on in the background at hospitals and to learn about the different types of equipment they used. The hospitals weren’t very busy, and I wish we were able to observe more patient interaction to try to identify problems that occur in patient-doctor situations.
We jumped right into our Engi 200 and Engi 350 courses at ULACIT, which has a pretty sweet (but small) campus. I decided to work on the same Parkinson’s simulator project that I did in the medical innovation bootcamp, and I’m really excited to see what new ideas we can come up with over the next few weeks!
Some key highlights of the trip so far: Cooking dinner in the common kitchen every night, wearing the same business casual outfit for 6 days without washing, the wobbly fan in our room, pool on the Selina deck, Tuesday Salsa lessons, surfing successfully for the first time, and getting to know every single person on this trip.
If you made it this far, you may still be wondering why I asked if you eat apples in Spanish. I recently started the Duolingo course for Spanish, in an attempt to cross the language barrier I touched on earlier in this blog. Although there is no expectation to know the language in this program, being here has compelled me to learn. Tú comes manzanas is my favorite phrase so far. Hopefully, I’ll be able to ask about more than eating apples as the month goes on.
Thanks for reading,
Brendan