Day 20

Today is our first full day in Puerto Montt. Us girls were a little slow getting up this morning, and we basically missed breakfast which was a bummer. Jaime was ushering us all out the door so that we could make our first meeting with his nephew. Juan took us on the bus to Universidad San Sebastian and it is quite beautiful there. We are so close to the ocean and the city has such a feeling of community about it. At the university we got situation in to a room where we were introduced to the vice head of the university Dr. Gillermo Leory. We also met the medical head of the university Dr. Alejandro Caro. After a photo of the heads and our group Jaime’s cousin gave a presentation on different medical issues in Chile. Afterwards there was a coffee break before a handful of the student presentations.

Jaideep- type II diabetes
Jeanna- Hanta virus
John- Alzheimer’s
Brandon- correlation between mental health and crime

We were not able to complete all the presentations though because Dr. Gladys Caro came in to give a presentation of the family health care in Puerto Montt. After the presentations we were able to have lunch. We were taken down to the building’s cafeteria where I chatted with one medical student who had watched the end of the presentations. His name is Gonzalo and he ended up having lunch with us. The second part of the day we were able to go with Gladys and some sixth year medical students to visit the homes of patients for some check ups. We went two students per medical student and I was with Brandon and Gladys. Out of the three houses we visited we were able to see one patient who was an older lady that has joint problems. She was very welcoming and told me that I was very pretty. We had dinner at the hotel again, but this time we were on the main floor which was a lot less smokey than downstairs. For dinner we had salmon with fried potatoes, and the salmon was very delicious. Our evening was pretty eventful, too. Most people decided that they wanted to go to bed early but a group of us (Brandon, Cameron, Marijke, Cynthia, Kelly, Emily and I) met up with some of the medical students we had met earlier that day. We went with them to a gathering they were having at someone’s house and from there went out to a dance club. It was a blast to be able to hang out with Chileans and dance the night away.