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!