I'm here!

It's 10:30 pm and I have to get up at 5:30 am, so this will be very brief. I arrived in Chinandega, Nicaragua today at about 4 pm. We had time to unpack and rest a bit before dinner and the first team meeting. There are 68 team members including plastic surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, (OR, recovery, pre/post op) dentists/orthodontists, pediatricians, medical records, child life specialist, and me...the lone SLP. The team is composed of people from US, Canada, Nicaragua, Peru, Paraguay, and Equador. We don't know each other very well yet, we speak different languages, and we come from different cultures, but somehow over the course of the day tomorrow we will learn each other's rhythms and learn to work as a cohesive team. It's pretty cool how that happens.

I am staying at the Villas del Cortijo http://www.hotelvillasdelcortijo.com/). Usually the whole team is in one hotel, but no one hotel here can hold all of us, so we are split among three. The largest group contingency is here and this is where most of the group dinners and gatherings will take place. According to what I've heard, this is the nicest hotel and it is the only one with a pool. I am in a "dorm room" with 4 single beds. It's a large room with a large bathroom. Not fancy, but clean. There is no mattress pad on the bed though, but I am trying not to think about that. My roommates are Jeesun (pediatrician from LA), Jean (PACU nurse from CO), and Kate (pediatric anesthesiologist from NYC). Our room has a nice patio and our view is of palm trees and an active volcano just a few miles away. Very pretty. It is hot! Mid 90s and the pool water feels like warm bath water. At night it is a very comfortable 70-something.

I'll write more later about today, but I need to go to sleep. 5:30 will come very early, I'm sharing a bathroom with 3 other women, and I'm not a morning person. We will start screening children tomorrow and the expectation is that we'll have about 100 kids to screen. It should be a long, exhausting, wonderful day.