Mexico Part 1 - Merida

We just got back from an AMAZING trip to Mexico! Nathan is involved with a club at school called SVOSH (Student Volunteers in Optometric Service to Humanity). They do a lot of fund raising during the school year, and then after the spring semester several different groups go to a few different countries to do eye exams and give out glasses. I am sure a lot of you have seen those bins set up by Lions Clubs asking you to recycle your glasses? This is where we get the glasses we hand out. So we work with the Lions Clubs in whatever area we go to, and help people. We landed in Cancun, and proceeded to take a 4 hour bus ride to Merida.



On our way to Merida, we were stopped at a checkpoint to do a random search of one of our bags. At this point almost everyone left to go to the bathroom etc, leaving Kerie, me and a girl named Claire who spoke a bit of spanish. The checkpoint was run by the Mexican military, they had big guns... really big guns. Many of them looked real young, and one of them came a flirted with Kerie, this is her shortly after he hit on her.



This was the van that drove us to Merida.



We were happy to finally be in our rooms, we were very tired. I've never stayed anywhere that the service actually changes by how well you tip. We noticed that each day we tipped something nice would show up, whether it be nicer sheets, our toilet paper folded at the end, or bigger pillows.



This was the view from outside our room.



Each day there was a bus that would take us to and from the Lion's Club, our bus driver's name was Jose, he was awesome! I never got over the way they drive there! The streets aren't that large, and yet these enormous tour buses drove fast, and took corners I don't even know if I could make in our truck! It always appeared they were heading straight for the corner of the building, but he never even hit the curb!




Kerie and Jared are posing with bags of water, thats right folks I said BAGS of water. You bite a hole in the corner and suck the water out. It was an interesting experience.


Maria is shown here showing Shannon how to do visual acuities. Maria is an optometrist from Merida that is involved in the Lion's Club. She was a great help when dispensing glasses, especially when people didn't particularly like the frames we had to offer.



This is the dispensary, where we handed out glasses.



Most of the time the wives handled doing the visual acuities, but when we had someone that we couldn't communicate well with, or someone who was unable to read we had the guys that spoke Spanish fluently take over.



During the day Nathan and I wouldn't see much of each other, we were VERY busy. We saw patients for four days, during that time we saw almost 900 patients. With only 7 doctors/student doctors able to do the hard work that is pretty good! Especially when many of the people had severe cataracts, glaucoma and other issues.



Shannon Kerie and I posing for a picture.



These two girls helped immensely the first day when it came to translating! The girl on the right came back for parts of two other days too. They are the daughters of Rodrigo, one of the Lion's Club members.



Josh is one of the doctors husbands, he was quite a character! Here he is modeling a pair of sunglasses we brought to hand out demonstrating blue steel.



This is the full group of 13 people. 4 students, their wives, one person who just graduated from SCO, two doctors, and their two guests.




MORDIDA, MORDIDA, MORDIDA!!

In Mexico they have a tradition on a person's birthday. They chant Mordida, meaning bite it. Then the birthday person bites the cake and attempts to keep from getting their face shoved into the cake! Ben had his birthday while we were in Merida, and he obviously did not succeed in keeping his face out of the cake! The cake was very different, they import this special cheese from Holland that is grated into layers of the cake. It tasted pretty good.



This cathedral was the first one built on the American continent, it was very beautiful.



After going to see some markets and such we were tired and decided to take a rest.



After a long day of seeing patients we would frequently soak our feet in the pool at the hotel.



While we in Cancun the Lion's club took care of feeding us. We all expected rice, beans and tortillas. Instead they made us sandwiches, lots and lots of sandwiches. Sandwiches with shredded carrots, onions that were dyed magenta, and other random things. They also got us soda, this soda was called Negra, we thought it was some form of cola. It wasn't. It was licorice. Eww.



Several nights we would head to the farmacia down the street and get some Magnums... they were chocolate covered ice cream bars, and they were delicious!! Shannon and I enjoyed them thoroughly!



The last day we saw patients was our busiest! The line was huge, it went out the door, onto the sidewalk, and down the block.



There were several little kids we enjoyed playing with there, most of them stood in line with their parents for up to 10 hours! They are the most well behaved children I have ever seen. I didn't see even one tantrum.

I gave some little balls to these two, they were adorable.



These little girls were having fun with the fans that Kerie brought with her.



A woman named Catalina was taking care of the referrals for patients who would need more care. She brought her son Isac several days, he was absolutely adorable! Claire loved playing with him.



Shannon also enjoyed playing with Isac, here she is blowing some bubbles for him.




So this is part one of our little journey, there will be at least two more parts. It was really amazing. I didn't realize that it would be possible for me to communicate with people with my limited Spanish. We had many people that helped us out, and the people we tried to communicate with were so sweet. There are so many experiences we had while doing these exams that I will never forget. There were people who were so grateful for our help, people who the doctors had to break some very bad news to, and people who were so willing to help in anyway possible.