| When the day is no longer day And the night has not yet arrived, -blurred profiles, blue sky with tremulous lights-, the carts roll –From Romance de Las Carretas, seen in my observation field trip to the Costa Rican National Library |
After the week-long bootcamp, we had the opportunity to tour a private hospital called Clinica Biblica. Before the tour, we watched a documentary called “To Err is Human” which discussed human limitations and human error in the context of the healthcare setting (apparently medical error is the third leading cause of medical-related deaths!). It was really cool to see how the documentary covered exactly what I wanted to study.
During the hospital tour, it amazed me how much observing as a “fly on the wall” made me realize opportunities to improve processes or make them safer. For example, everywhere I looked around, technicians seemed to be straining themselves, whether that was constantly staring at small numbers on a computer screen, squinting at the liquid test they did, or precisely hovering a metal stick over a petri dish to pop air bubbles. Behind the scenes, I could see how many hand-made solutions there were, such as warnings written in Sharpie and a paper towel to cover a flask using tape. 
^safety protocol sign in imaging room
On Tuesday, the Selina hostel we are staying at hosted a dance class. My footwork isn’t the greatest, but it was really fun to learn different dance styles like salsa and bachata. It was great dancing with my classmates and other travelers while laughing over our relatively novice experience, and our instructor was incredibly enthusiastic in creating a positive, fun environment. 2 hours of dancing is quite the workout!
While shopping for fabric material for our prototype, Summer and I got to check out a Chinese restaurant. It was really cool that the flavor was very similar to food back home (though egg roll in Spanish is “taco chino,” which I thought was hilarious). The restaurant owners were Chinese, and I got a culture shock hearing them speak fluent Spanish. I don’t think I had ever seen that before! For another dinner, I tried an Egyptian restaurant for the first time and ordered some koftas skewered on these dagger-like sticks, and the food was great there too. I’m surprised that San Jose has a good amount of diversity in food options available.
We did a field trip into Downtown San Jose to make observations in Parque Nacional and the Contemporary Art Museum. It started raining hard when we walked to the park–the rain was deafening! We were soaked (lesson learned, when the inconsistent weather app says 100% rain, don’t expect a drizzle). We quickly took shelter in Biblioteca Nacional across the street. When I entered, there was a quote in Spanish that looked really interesting to me. I later translated it and put it at the top of my blog post because the poetry has beautiful imagery, even after crossing the language barrier. Walking through the library, I noticed there were no books on shelves for free access. This particular library preserves the literary heritage of Costa Rica, and so to request a book, one has to fill out a form and read it at the library (you can’t take it outside the building).
The Contemporary Museum was quite interesting. I don’t think I’ve been to a contemporary art exhibit before. We saw towels on hangers, beer cans, and a student notebook all on display. To be honest, this experience made me frequently ask myself, “What is considered art?” Most of the pieces were quite aesthetic, but I’m not sure if I could gain a message from them, especially one that was specific to Costa Rica (I feel like the contemporary art featured here wasn’t that different from the United States). There was an unexpected graphic exhibit that had disturbing videos, such as a video of a woman casually putting coins in skulls like a piggy bank (that was one of the least disturbing videos), but their descriptions and the direction the artist wanted to convey was quite interesting.
^Contemporary art: towels on hangers for display
For my group’s TENS prototype, we were able to find the chunkiest shoes that we could find to put the TENS device in (the shoes were quite aesthetic, and cheap too!). I got to try out the TENS device on my arm, and it was a very weird sensation to have my fingers contract involuntarily. We are currently exploring the potential limitations and safety issues of using conductive fabric as a sock, and I’m excited to see where our prototype goes next week!
Pura Vida,
Carly