Day 20 6/11/13 (Power (access to the Mystey Box finally! (COD joke mandatory)), reflexive verbs, aspirators and an adjustable DC voltage supply)

Today we actually had power back to our portion of the house. This was quite exciting. Breakfast was regular (scrambled eggs and B&R). I also listened to some music to start the day right (Marina and the Diamonds, Ke$ha etc). Class today has so far been quite good. Conversation was about this newspaper article on working women in Central America. Anyways the article goes on to talk about how in Mexico there are only 1.5% of women working as bosses and how there are large inequalities in the workforces in some countries (but an interesting statistic shows that 1 in 3 families is supported by a woman). That was about all that was really interesting in the article (the other information is more or less common knowledge about inequalities and companies looking for women and women being good additions to the workplace). We then talked about reflexive verbs (not super exciting, but I thought the verb despedirse and despedir is quite interesting). Despedirse means to say goodbye, while despedir (without the reflexive pronoun) means to fire (Just think of Trump saying “Tú estás despedido”).

Another one of my favorites is colocar (to place (as to give something organization)) and colocarse (to get a job) (Yo supongo que necesito colocarme y no escribir este Blog). I also liked the verb rascarse (to scratch oneself) as I have never heard of this word before. Also the verb for committing suicide is reflexive (suicidarse) (No te suicides).

            For lecture we learned about aspirators (basically suction pumps) used for cleaning everything I dread encountering in a rural hospital out of a patient. One of the main problems with aspirators is user error such as hooking up the suction bottle backwards so the automatic filled-capacity stop valve isn’t used and the machine (being a suction machine) pulls the yak into the motor and boom, I’ve got to clean the motor out. Yeah not looking forward to that one (I wish I could wear a level 5 biohazard suit). With luck, Dan and I won’t have to futz around with this too often, but can just fix the suction lines and describe how to use the machine. Lab today was a continuation on yesterday’s bridge rectifier (which changes a 28 V rms AC to a 38 V DC). Today the idea was to add an adjustable voltage regulator, a pot, and several smoothing capacitors. The interesting part was that we swapped boards with other groups before starting the next step (of adding everything else). Dan and I got pretty much everything working but we had turned out pot too far (and it was giving out weird resistance values), but otherwise we had no issues with that lab, and it was fun too! Not much else happened today. Dinner was fried cheese and steak-ish meat and plantains, B&R, and lettuce like coleslaw. Day was uneventful besides this. Since this is short, I wish y’all the best! I’ll most likely be heading to Ometepe again this weekend for an epic bike trip (and maybe Masaya on Thursday night, so I’ll make sure to take many photos for y’all)!