La Primera Semana

So we made it through our first week at El Instituto de Oscar Scarpetta and boy was it a crazy one! We are getting to know most of the children at the institution and evaluated the children who were preselected to participate in physical therapy. On Thursday we had the opportunity of meeting with and talking to the board of directors of the institution. There are several children who we think may benefit the most from physical therapy. Some of the ailments that we see consist of increased genu varus ( bow leggedness) , increased genu recurvatum (hyper extension of the knees) with flaccid muscles of the legs, developmental delays and children who are deconditioned. We are currently in the process of developing a plan of care for each child so that we are able to teach the caretakers how to efficiently provide benficial care. We emailed our professor who is a pediatric expert to gain information on how to fabricate an AFO from everyday materials in case we are unable to obtain one from a local physiotherapist. We have also had the opportunity to teach some of the children palabras ( words ) in english and they teach us new words in spanish (we promise our spanish is improving). This week we have experienced taking two buses to the institution each day ( El Mio y Pance : the names of the buses), experienced our first cups of authentic Colombian Coffee and Chontaduro with salt and honey ( a Colombian aphrodisiac). We have also received our first salsa, bachata and rumba lesson from two older girls at the institution. All in all our first week has been interesting, fun, challenging........ MUY MUY BIEN!

And the craziness begins...

We have now finished two days at Instituto de Oscar Scarpetta. Yesterday we met the director, the rest of the staff, and TONS of super cute kids. It was more of an orientation/observation day for us, but boy was it busy. With our limited and rusty Spanish and their limited English, communication was a tad rough but we managed just fine thanks to the spanish-english dictionary and google translator. One of the psychologists brought us around and identified the children the institute had chosen for us to work with. As soon as we walked into each "sala" or room, we were greeted with smiles and lots of questions. The kids bombarded us left and right with questions in VERY fast Spanish.

We share an office with one psychologist and a psychology student from one of the local colleges. The kids are able to come in and out of the office freely and many stopped by to say hi and ask more questions. They loved taking pictures and asking us to speak in English. We were told that we would also be receiving salsa lessons from some of the kids! Below are some pictures from yesterday.

Today we actually began evaluating some of the kids on our list. It was a lot tougher than we imagined because all the other kids would swarm around us making it very difficult to focus on the kids we were evaluating. We are going to talk to the director about using a separate room. We were able to work with several babies and some kindergarten-aged kids today. We feel one of the kids would benefit from an AFO (ankle foot orthosis) so now we need to figure out how to fabricate one or ask a local physiotherapist for advice on the best way to go about making or buying one.

We are already exhausted from these past two days, but are looking forward to the next 7 weeks here! Our Spanish can only continue to improve! Buenas noches! Hasta luego!

Anita and Tanya arrive in Cali!

Hola! We made it to Cali, Colombia last night after a long day of traveling. Magnolia, who is an interpreter for Gladney, met us at the airport and took us back to her apartment where we will be staying for the next 8 weeks.

Today, she took us to the local shopping center across the street where she helped us purchase a cell phone. Tomorrow we meet with Julieta, the director of the Instituto de Oscar Scarpetta. This is one of the orphanages where we will be volunteering. We are really looking forward to getting to know the kids and the staff. Stay tuned for our adventures...