Now That I'm Home...

Well first of all, it is great to be back home! I really missed AC, hot showers, and Starbucks! :) Though parts of the trip may have seemed rough to me at the time, looking back I can truly realize what a great experience it was to be able to go to Panama. We take so many things for granted that other people would be overjoyed to have. I was really moved by our neighbor during the homestays. She was not very well off, and enjoyed coming over to our house. Every night, she would come and ask Kelsey and I how our day had been and what we had done. She only spoke Spanish, so sometimes it was a little hard to speak with her, but we could tell she really loved coming to talk to us. She had three young sons, who also liked to come over and talk to us. When we would go away for the weekend, she would even tell us that she was going to miss us and we needed to come back. One night, she offered to go to the store and buy soap just so she could wash our clothes. She also looked at a poster we had made to present to the elementary schools, and saw that there were some pencil marks on it. She went looking everywhere until she found an eraser and erased all the pencil marks off our poster, even though we told her she didn't need to! On the last night we were in Chitre, she took us over to her house to meet her husband. It was her son's birthday, so she had gotten a cake and insisted that we eat some. I felt so humbled sitting in this woman's home, who had so little and yet had been willing to give so much of herself to us. We ended up giving her one of our homestay gifts and some of our school supplies for her sons, and she seemed so grateful.

I know this trip was a clinical experience as well, but I think I learned the most outside of the clinics (although I do think I perfected the IM injection!). People here can be so selfish, and only think about what's best for themselves. We are so blessed with the resources that we have here in the U.S., but so often we are unwilling to share them. If a woman who could barely communicate with me was so willing to share the little she had with me, I should be even more willing to share what I have with others. I left Panama feeling so completely spoiled! I really hope that I never take what I have for granted, and I truly appreciate the lesson I learned from my neighbor.