Today was a pretty okay day for me. For the past few days I have been sick with some sort of flu virus, "gripa" in Spanish, that may possibly be dengue....Thank God I'm doing a lot better, but I still have a bit of a cough, "tos" in Spanish. Today was a pretty reflective day for me. I ACTUALLY got a bit more sleep today!! WOOHOO!! I was relocated to a new room that was cooler, but it doesn't have a door and initially didn't have a fan. Unfortunately for me, the mosquitoes had a family reunion buffet with my face and body, leaving me with a swollen lip and itchy spots for days. Since I'm naturally an EXTREMELY light sleeper, I couldn't sleep a wink. Also, since there are at least 6-10 stray dogs that live on my block ALONE, they have gang-turf wars. It's absolutely horrible. It literally sounds that someone dog is getting jumped every 15-30 minutes. Sadly, this increases as the night ages. In result, I ended up crying for at least two hours because I had not had a SINGLE full night's rest since arriving to Ecuador. I was sleep deprived and miserable. What hurt the most was the fact that sleep deprivation causes memory loss and hinders memory retention. Sadly, I was beginning to notice that. Simple words and phrases that I knew in Spanish were gone in the wind. So, that following morning, I made a list of things that I was going to buy, no matter the cost, in Spanish for my host family to direct me. Door, fan, repellent, mosquito net, and ear plugs! Luckily for me, my host mom was able to retrieve a working fan for me and smoked the house with a particular wood that mosquitoes hated. Then I used a housemate's repellent spray, and plugged my ears with toilet paper. No matter what, this night was going to be a real night! So, I slept and woke up for 30 minutes, PRAYED, fell asleep, woke up for 5 minutes, slept, and then saw the sunlight! I rejoiced!!! Honestly, sleep has been a real struggle for me the past few years. I know I need to do a sleep study, but sometimes I wish that there was something free and easy that I could do to be able to sleep through one night.

Yesterday, I took a day off of work in order to allow my body to heal, while I searched for possible sleep solutions. So, today I decided to go to work after lunch, when the ER is usually less busy. When I walked in, the hospital's director, Dr. Caballero, who actually is a gentleman, was helping out. He did not appear to look like ANY of the other people in Puerto Lopez. He's tall (6'3"), has dark, thick, wavy eyebrows and hair, light skin, and speaks fast and confident. With looks like that, he should be in a telenovela! The other volunteer and I got to shadow him and learn some awesome diagnosis techniques. One child had asthma, so Dr. Caballero let me listen to the child's breathing, another child contracted hepatitis A, his liver was sore to the touch, so the doctor used an IV to administer vitamin b (not sure about which one). I thought that was pretty cool. Anyways, this doctor had SO much confidence and swag, I'd have to admit I was a little jealous. He was able to not only be effective, but also efficient. Also, his demeanor was humble, and calm. Best 10 minutes of my life! After he left, the ER was like a desert land, so I left to help somewhere else.

Now that i've been here for about a week, I have a few random thoughts:
-Let your desires be independent of what others have
-High waters don't always mean trouble; they could also mean protection
-Old people and young people are one in the same; they grow to be stuck in their ways
-Give out of love, receive out of love

Yup. That's it folks. I've been home most of this week because of my flu (maybe dengue!)...thank God for wifi!