Day 4

We started our day with the best breakfast yet: pancakes! After breakfast, we went to Victor's office at the Institute of Tulan. There he gave a presentation about Guatemala. He discussed poverty, malnutrition, education systems and general facts about Guatemala. After the presentation, we went to the the hospital in Xela. The hospital was a private hospital, so the patients pay to go there. This is different than the other two hospitals we visited. We could tell that the hospital has more funding due to the cleanliness, organization, and amenities. We also noticed a lot more advanced technologies.

At the hospital we worked with broken equipment to try to determine why they were malfunctioning. A common issue we found is that the hospital staff does not have the means to diagnose certain equipment and often times the donated equipment was English-based, including the manuals. So hospital staff had a difficult time keeping up with the equipment. Another problem we encountered was that we were not trained on certain machines. So we had a difficult time testing some machines. Overall, we were able to figure out what was wrong with a handful of machines, and were able to fix some others as well. After we were done, we took a quick tour of the hospital. We were surprised to see the quality of equipment and how up to date it seemed.

We departed from the hospital and went to the mall for lunch. The mall had a lot of American-style chain fast food restaurants; the longest line was at Taco Bell. After lunch, the YMCA song came on the radio, and Taylor seized the opportunity to serenade the food court via a conveniently available microphone. It was definitely a great entertainment event for all.

After lunch, we went back to the market to have another chance to shop in Xela. For dinner, we went to Albamar near the town square. There the waiters wanted to take pictures with a couple of our students, and Dr. Northrup met other travelers from Scotland. We concluded our day by dancing the night away!

-Rachel & Karissa