Start of the Journey

We're back from Juarez!!

This is the beginning blog about our Medical Mission Trip, and there should be many more to follow. I hope this is a proper account of all we did.

Last Saturday morning we went up to Southwestern to pick up the vans and divide the medicinas for each group. It was there that we found out who was on our team. We then counted pills for 3-4 hours! After this was all over, we went home, went to bed early, and got up even earlier to begin our trip!!

We had 9 people in our group: 1 doctor (Laura), 1 nurse (Rose), 4 2nd years (David, Sarah, Ashley, and Melissa), 2 1st years (Kristin and Taylor) and me. I'll talk about each of them later on. I put their names so you can know who is who on the following pictures:

http://homepage.mac.com/zan99a/PhotoAlbum18.html

We were supposed to leave at 5 a.m. Sunday morning (which is ironic since a "christian" mission trip made us miss Church), but the vans had low tire pressure. This took about an hour to fix. Then at 6 a.m. we were ready to go, I believe 43 or so of us total.

Seeing as almost my entire life has been lived on I-20, it was quite a familar road to take. We even stopped in Odessa for lunch, at the best chain restaurant in the world, Rosa's. Christy and Kristin are both also from Odessa, so we had quite a bit of family frequenting the establishment. My parents even got Melissa a spanish dictionary, as well as a couple of new sweaters! Very nice.

I drove the Medicine van down. Chris May was my driving partner, and we both thought it was cool to be the "drug traffickers". Of course, we never told the border patrol this, as we wanted to actually get to Juarez.

We played "smartest van alive" on the way down with walkie talkies, and I have to say, there are some smart people in Medical school. I know I don't read as much as I should, and so I don't know many authors, classic literary works, etc. so it was tough to get most of the answers. However, Chris asked a couple of space questions that no one else knew but me. It helps to read Popular Science I guess!!

We got in around 8:30 pm mountain time. It took us a while in El Paso, mainly because of the drugs. We couldn't take them over the border that evening, so we left them and Chris on the other side. That evening we had a great meal made by the ladies at the ophanage. They had some amazing cooks! We were fed well all week. As soon as we ate, got situated, and received our marching orders for the next day, we headed off to bed, ready to go for the following day.