Interviews, Smiles, Ice Cream & Missionary Work

Today I went out to the subcentros again to do interviews. This time though I went with Allie because Cheryl had to stay with the other students at the hospital. It was so fun. The woman that took us around at this subcentro wasn’t as outgoing and didn’t seem to know the people as well, so she kept saying, “I don’t know of anyone else who has recently given birth.” And I would say, “Well, why don’t we ask these women sitting here on the corner if they know of anyone?” She would say, “I don’t even know them!” And this is where I would be so glad that I had served a mission, because during that year and a half of going up and starting conversations multiple upon multiple times a day with people that you had no idea who they were, I definitely got over the feeling awkward about it stage. Also, asking them if they knew of anyone who had recently had a baby is usually a whole lot easier than diving into something deep and asking them to change their lives. (Not quite as fulfilling, but easier.)

In asking around, we were able to find 2 women who had recently given birth and were able to do interviews with them. When we got back to the subcentro, the ambulance still wasn’t there to pick us up and there was a woman coming out who had just had a baby and she allowed us to follow us to her house and interview her there. When we got there, she took off her shoes before entering the house and so we did the same. She told us that we didn’t need to or whatever, but of course, if she herself did it and from the looks of the number of shoes on the porch, also made her children do it, how were we not going to do it. It was just a crazy feeling though to take off our shoes to enter the house when it really just seems like everybody is just always camping out here.




When we returned again to the subcentro, the head volunteer lady came out and apologized that she hadn’t been able to take us out to find women because she had been in a meeting and invited me to come back the next day. I told her that I would have to talk to my professors and see if it would be possible, but I would love to.
After clinical, the nursing program at the University of Guayaquil had invited us to come and tour their school. We went and toured the school which was actually incredibly like our own school back at the SWKT, except for one thing that they have that we all wish we had. Instead of using mannequins, they have their own “clinic” where real people come in to get checks and help and they are able to learn using real people. A little scary (on both sides) but cool. We also got to just chat with several of the students. It still amazes me sometimes how similar all of our concerns, complaints (about busy work), hopes and dreams are.

Driving home from the university, we were all a little tired and some were a little grouchy, so my friend Casey and I somehow came up with the “Permasmile game.” The rules were that you had to permasmile the whole way home. You could talk and do basically anything you wanted, as long as you were able to keep the permasmile on your face. We got almost the whole van involved. Let me tell you though, that after 20 minutes of all out grinning, our face muscles were absolutely quivering by the time we got home. It was a good dorky fun game though and it seemed to lighten everyone’s mood a little.

After burning off all of those calories exercising our faces, we decided that we needed to treat ourselves to ice cream at Fragolis, and not just their regular ice cream cones (which are incredible), but their famous stretched and chocolate dipped cones. See picture below. Good times.
Then we got showered and all pretty to go perform at a musical fireside. The missionaries who came to our ward on Sunday when we sang in sacrament had apparently spoken with their mission president and the other missionaries of their district and decided to do a musical fireside for their investigators and asked us to help them. So we sang Joseph Smith’s First Prayer again and some other song that I can’t remember right now. Yay for fun missionary experiences!