Day 6 5/28/13 (More classes, warmed bananas (?), ventilators and frustration)

                        Today started at the beautiful time of 3:47 AM. I think I must be on some random time zone (like Italy or Russia time). Luckily I could fall back asleep until 6:45 AM. Breakfast today was this omelet with ham or something inside and red beans and rice and bread combined with this milk (leche con aveno which is like soymilk mixed with coconut). 

            We started class with pronouncing the letters and consonants with vowels as we had done yesterday. It wasn’t all that hard and we got to learn some new vocab that way. We also got to talk about our families a bit. In the grammar portion we got our tests back and I did okay (in the low B range), but we are going to retake the test tomorrow and try to learn from our mistakes. We also got our books today and did this really easy exercise where we had to use vocab and the correct words to express relationships (padre, hijo, esposa, primo, sobrina etc). We had a bit of homework which was to write about our state and our town.

            For lunch Adrianna brought our food into school at like 11:55 AM and it was still warm and fresh! We had _______ and ________ (fill in the blanks: rice, beans) and this chopped up meat (like beef) with warmed plantains or bananas (because whatever they were they were a bit sweet). The texture was somewhat strange on the warmed vegetable(s).

            After lunch we learned about ventilators and how to test them using either a balloon (to test the volume delivered) or with tubing (measuring the rate delivered). Additionally Ron (the instrumentation instructor) talked about the various control modes of the machines (many acronyms) and how P usually stands for pressure or positive in this case. The letter I usually stands for intermittent. The letter C usually stands for continuous or control. So for example CPAP stands for continuous positive airway pressure (basically forcing air into the lungs at all times (even when the patient is breathing)).

            While that wasn’t that bad, we had lab today that was to build an extension cord. While this may seem like and easy task, try using stranded wire to screw onto the screws on an outlet socket. It’s quite frustrating. Plus, I had the additional foresight to take my entire outlet socket apart (instead of just unscrewing the baseplate and had to jigger around with the connection ports several painstaking times to get the sockets in the right spot. I also had to re-strip and braid my wires once for the socket because I slit the insulation by accident and the wires at the base of the socket could touch (equaling instant death and fire). After all of my work, the danged thing did work correctly though (and it didn’t start any fires) and it could run a microwave (and many other devices too probably).

            After class Charlotte, Hannah, Dan and I walked around the local open air market to see what they had. I wanted to go into the local thrift shop, but Charlotte said that most of the items are from thrift shops in the US that don’t sell (which is probably partially correct). After that I went to the jolly ‘ole Euro Café for a good banana milk smoothie and some solid blogging. Several other members of my group and I left the café at 6 because the internet was turned off (so I apologize to all of those to whom I said I would post pictures yesterday) and I couldn’t get any more uploaded. Dinner was pretty good (___________, ___________, huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs), cheese and this red drank (that was quite sweet probably the equivalent of like high-c). Today I’m keeping it short (due to complaints from a certain Ukrainian individual).

            Also if anyone has any feedback on the blog so far or has suggestions, please feel free to let me know! (I will probably try out a few styles of writing and whatnot).

            Before I go, this was a picture I took of myself to show Adrianna Elana how a camera works (it also kinda captures my exhaustion/come culture shock/spacing out). Enjoy!