the end of last week i had another group of people from cincinnati come out to visit. we spent the weekend at this all-inclusive resort in punta cana/bavaro. we got a sweet deal from the verizon guy (neftali). it ended up being us, hector, milagros, and neftali and his family. an interesting and different side of the dominican republic which i had not yet seen. i've decided i'll most likely never stay in a place like this again in my life. i also ended up going back into la romana at the end of the last week, and i got the approval to shadow at the clinic there. the doctor ended up setting our patient up with a large regimen of medicines which should help his aids and opportunistic infections. the good thing was the meds were free meaning one less patient that we have to find money for.

this week is a big prep week for me. i'm spending this upcoming monday-monday in samana. i, along with hector, will be completing a community health survey of two communities in samana. one community, rincon is where i normally stay. the other community is further up into the mountains. i'm quickly learning more and more about the community as i prepare for this survey. the clinic in the community of rincon serves rincon and two other communities. that will be the focal point of my work. i will be conducting in depth surveys with health promotors, educators, and an NGO. i will also be conducting daily living and hiv/aids surveys with people in the community. i will be going door to door with hector to collect this information. in order to conduct this survey i've pulled together different versions of the engineers without borders (check out the link on the right) community health survey adding my own hiv/aids questions. while i'm doing this work, milagros will spend time seeing new patients which we are hoping to add. also, if we have time, we'd like to do another education program in a community further up in the mountain. also, we've been looking at this week at different water treatment options seeing as clean water is a big issue up there. following my week in samana i will have two weeks left here....most likely that time will be spent organizing the data i've collected, and maybereturning to samana one more time. one of the other cool things about this work is that hector is getting to be a part of it and is getting paid a little bit and getting english classes taken care of. it's exciting to see him buying stuff he needs with money he's made himself and also to see him excited about learning a skill (english) that can prepare him for good jobs, etc.