~Journal 3~

The weather here is beautiful and not quite as hot as last week, I am falling in love with the sounds of the animals, the girls are very friendly and welcoming, my fridge is now working so I can have ice and iced tea (!!), and I cannot wait until the oranges ripen! I plan on making batches of fresh orange juice and freezing them like popsicles. Fresh squeezed orange juice popsicles! It sounds soooo good! Until then, I am quite content with iced tea. Speaking of food, the girls and I were talking and they decided I should make them a batch of cookies because they want to try some popular American food :). So, if any of you have some simple cookie recipies I would be greatly obliged if you would send me some of your favorites! We have at our disposal Mexican cocoa, peanut butter, and oats. I am sure I can buy some chocolate to use for chocolate chips. I would also appreciate a gooey brownie recipie. The one I have at my disposal is not anything to write home about.
Because of schedule confusion yesterday I did not lecture either on hot and cold therapy or music theory. Instead, I lectured today! Both classes went fairly well though the girls looked rather confused when I walked them through the most basics of music theory. Only one of the girls has experience with a choir and she cannot even read music. Imagine hearing about staves, measures, the signs for and length of notes and rests for the first time! I hope to practice in the church tomorrow where we can utilize the piano and make an introduction to putting sound to the black dots with lines. What fun! I will probably not lecture on nursing theory again until after the girls´ exam on Friday. Femia has yet to inform me of our next topic. Until then, I am their personal tutor!
Life in the clinic has been very slow lately. I have only helped out with one patient because there was confusion about the IV system they were using. The absence of patients has given me time to study the Spanish textbooks, do some recreational reading (I have already started and finished "Through Gates of Splendor!"), and plenty of time for devotionals. I have also enjoyed to sit in on the classes for the students. Last night the topic was "rescue breathing" and today Dr. Frederico gave the girls an overview of the surgery room. It was a great introduction for me because some of the equipment here is a bit different than in the US. I hope to sit in on a surgery sometime. There is not one currently scheduled as of yet. The experience also allowed me to discover that scrubs are very cool in the tropical climate, even though that means wearing pants rather than a skirt! I will probably make a habit of wearing them. One perk is I also look more like a nurse than a tourist. That is always a plus!
As for sending pictures, I have tried uploading them onto my album on MSN but I need to download ActiveX and this computer is so slow it won´t pass the intro phase. I then tried posting them on MySpace but the photos are too big and there is no photo modification software on this computer... then I tried attaching one to this e-mail and Hotmail gives me an unnamed error message *sigh*. Oh well. If any of you have bright ideas for either sending or posting photos, let me know! I can´t imagine taking photos for two and a half months and not sharing them with anyone until I return home and can once again utilize my beautiful computer!
During my devotional times I have been impressed with using this summer to fall in love with Jesus again. I will be taking the girls through the book of John in the mornings with an emphasis on the character of Jesus in an attempt to give them a good foundation before graduating in a month. I will also review and rework the Beth Moore bible study of Jesus I did a couple of years ago during my personal study times.
Prayer requests
The only prayers I would add to the last e-mail is that traffic in the clinic would pick up and I would be able to help out and gain some clinic experience and that I would remain faithful in my personal study time and keeping the girls accountable in being ready for morning devotionals.