Im officially settled into CR, after arriving mid-afternoon on the 29th of May. I got to the Selina after a brief stint at passport control and met the group. I’m in a room with Erin, Leo, and Madison.
Bright and early Tuesday morning, we got to work on our clinical observations. The first hospital my group–Leo, Luke, and Elliot–visited was the Trauma hospital. We were shown around the place by doctor Gonzalez, who was super helpful, with translation help from one of my favorite people I’ve met thus far: Luis. He’s the man. After our visit, we go lunch from a food court near our next hospital, which was pretty far away. No problem, Luis hit us with a ride to the hospital area. Then the 4 of us had lunch, joined by Professor Howard and Luis. Then we walked through CIMA, the only private hospital we visited.
The next morning was the last day of clinical visits as well as the first and last day of the Needs Finding Workshop. We visited the Geriatrics hospital, and then had lunch at a place near UCR called Ondina. We then went to the needs finding workshop at UCR, and it was really hot in the classrooms, but we learned a lot.
The next few days were intense… Medical Innovation Workshop taught many things, and I made a few friends. I had three group mates, but one of them dropped out. The other two were really nice, and I think one of then is gonna show me some museums around San Jose.
Our project was to design a brace that would help pediatric patients with cerebral palsy as they grew. We worked really well as a group and created a low-fidelity prototype as well as a model leg that I am really proud of.
By far my two favorite days I’ve had here have been our two days off after the innovation bootcamp. On our first day, Izzie and I left early in the morning to go to some waterfalls at Los Chorros Municipal Park. We got tot he falls after an hour and 15mins of travel. First we took a 50min Uber with Carmen, who was really nice and I got to practice my Spanish. Then we paid 1000 CRC to get into the park, and hiked for 25mins. We emerged to a nearly empty piece of paradise. The first waterfall was gorgeous, and we took some photos before stashing our stuff and then venturing upstream to the second waterfall. It was breathtaking. We hung around for a while and it was pretty peacefull. Once the rest of the gorup get there we showed them around and then eventually made the trek back upstream. Izzie and I dunked in the pool in the second waterfall and it was super cold.
Not sure why this is upside down… but here we are at the waterfall
Waterfall
Very overgrown branch on the hike in
Clouds before our hike
Clouds outside hostel
Clouds at eye level (!!) after lunch
Clouds outside hostel