I officially have only eight days left here at Casa. It amazes me how quickly the time has passed. As horrible as it felt when I first arrived I'm already able to look back on the time spent here with much gratitude for all that I've experienced and learned thus far. There are friendships that I've made here that I'm certain will last a lifetime. I have a friend from Hungry that's here, she currently lives in Indiana but will be relocating back with her family to Hungry in June of next year. She has incredible plans for the families she will serve back home. Another woman is here from California that works with families in Africa's Sierra Leone. She trains traditional birth attendants on how to provide safe maternity care for the families in their village. She's invited me to come down for a trip with their organization...Perhaps I'll be in Africa twice next year...we'll see :-)

I've learned that there truly is no such thing as a "language barrier" I'm confident that the women I've served have walked away with all their questions answered and with nothing less then optimal care. When i first got here I was so worried that I wouldn't be able to adequately provide care to these families due to my lack of Spanish. I'll tell you what did it for me...It was the first day I was on my own and i had to do a speculum exam on a woman that didn't speak a smidgen of English. It was a MUST that i explain to her what I was about to do, I couldn't just walk up to her and shove this spec in her gyna!! I was seriously so nervous that I went through two sets of gloves because my hands were so clammy I couldn't get them on :-) In the best Spanish I could muster up, including my own made up words (that sounded like Spanish to me) I explained to her what I was about to do. She thought it was hilarious, which totally broke the ice for me. I showed her the speculum - How it opens and closes and explained what I was looking for. I managed to somehow find out that this woman had never seen her cervix before so I happily showed it to her with a mirror once the spec was in place. I hope I'm not grossing any of you out...If so, I'm sure you'll get over it.

Anyhow, I've since learned the importance of getting creative and doing whatcha gotta do to get your message across - weather that be demonstrating it, drawing it out, speaking spanglish, whatever, ther're so many ways to communicate. So that was my big epiphany while I've been here :-) My spanish is really coming along - I can make an appointment completely in Spanish now...he-he!

I should get to bed. I'll update again when I can. Much love to you all and I'll see you soon!

~Kim