Come to Ecuador for Your Medical Care!

I’m serious. Two weeks ago, I had been experiencing a sore throat and intense fatigue. Becca finally convinced me to go see a doctor, and the results were impressive. We waited for no more than a half hour without an appointment before being called back by the doctor. He was personable and professional and diagnosed me with tonsillitis within a minute. I received his consultation and a penicillin shot in my ass (is that standard?) for 10 dollars. That was not my insurance co-pay, but the actual cost. Dr. Jerves wrote me a prescription for Amoxicillin, and I picked that up at the pharmacy for another $10. I understand there are limitations in the system here but I am not longing for my return to the Kaiser bureaucracy.

Much has occurred since our last blog post, and Shari has (for better or worse) been here to witness it. I had (ostensibly) received an actual paying job as a basketball coach for a local sports federation. I worked with a sweet group of 8-15 year-old girls for ten days, only to find out that the director decided to hire someone from the community who would be in Cuenca for a longer period of time. Fair enough. In other news, the three of us had a spectacular excursion into the Amazon, which stands out as a highlight of our trip to this point. The pictures should help to illuminate some of the experience, but it featured personable monkeys, exposure to indigenous culture, floating down a river on a handmade log raft, and striking jungle scenery.

Unfortunately, two nights before leaving, our apartment was burglarized. Before you start to feel too sympathetically, let me say that it was probably one of the more benign burglaries in the history of civilization. The intruder(s) took the following items: a blender that belonged to our landlord, a radio that could not fast forward or rewind, and my basketball sneakers, which smelled like a poorly maintained zoo cage. So in terms of concrete loss, there was little. However, the psychological piece was a bit more impacting- the burglars entered the home in the middle of the night while Shari, Becca, and I were sleeping. We didn’t hear a thing and did not figure out what happened until a few hours after awakening in the morning. Our landlord and friend, Pablo, is incredibly responsive in such situations, and the next day he constructed bars over the window where the intruder had entered. We now feel safe again.