By Jeremy Carter – Guest blogger traveling in Merida, Mexico.
Here it is my last night in Merida, and while in some ways it feels like I've been gone from North Carolina forever, the last month was certainly too short. I've spent most of today packing and buying gifts for friends (and for me, too, of course), and now I'm winding down the evening by having a Leon Negra (a local brew) at Restaurante Nicte-Ha (flower of the water) at the main plaza in downtown Merida.
It's a lovely night here at the zocalo, with most of the sidewalk cafes full, couples courting in the park and horsedrawn carriages clopping down the stone street. Much of the area is closed to traffic and bands are playing on the side streets. And from the trees filing the park come the sounds of the tropical birds that call Yucatan home. Which brings me to my list of the top things I've learned in the past four weeks:
1. Yucatan has (what seem to me to be) the noisiest birds in North America, especially for their rather diminutive size. Their calls are varied, beautiful and often amusing, but here in the zocalo, the calls you hear after dark are a recording (no joke) that serves two purposes: 1) ambiance, and, most importantly 2) to drive off the pigeons so they don't poo on everyone at night.
2. Yucatecans of all ages love to sprinkle their sentences with Mayan words, adding even more character to an already Technicolor language.
3. I love mangoes.
4. "¡Huepa!", which means, more or less, "Cool!", is my new favorite interjection, thanks to a funny commercial on MTV-LA.
5. Being 85 years young doesn't mean you should slow down one bit, as I've learned from Dona Nena, my house mother. She still takes cooking classes, regularly attends arts performances, cooks a mean "pulpo en su tinta" (octopus in its ink) and reads entire novels in a week.
6. Mayan culture is engrained in the lives of Yucatecans. In addition to the language still being alive (see #2), Mayan recipes are part of most home kitchens and restaurants, and kids learn from an early age about Mayan history, traditions, legends and religion, even through the vast majority of the population is Protestant or Catholic.
7. Cold showers are divine.
8. And finally, four weeks is – obviously – not long enough to stay in Merida. You'll need two weeks to adjust to the heat, and the third week you'll finally have the energy to explore the bus system and gain a semi-serviceable knowledge of it. The fourth week you'll finally start venturing out to make friends.
I could fill several pages with what I've learned this month, but that's the top eight. So now I'm going to close the night by walking home up Paseo de Montejo. It's a long walk of about 40 minutes, but it's one of the most beautiful avenues in Merida. Plus the stroll will wear me out so I can sleep well in preparation for a long day of traveling tomorrow.
Hasta pronto…
Jeremy

ER in Quito – By Robin Fillner – SALUD Program Guest blogger traveling in Quito.
Hola!
This weekend past, I went to Bellavista with the Salud group. This was our last weekend excursion together. I must say that if any of the trips on the weekend were bad, it was this one. But, not that it was horrible, just that the others were so much more enjoyable. First off, we were picked up by the owner of Bellavista, Richard. I believe he is English and has lived in Ecuador for 20 years. He is very nice, but perhaps a little stressed out at the time he met us.
We left from the school and headed out of town, winding our way through the high jungle of, I believe, north of Quito. The roads twisted and turned their way what seemed miles above a tiny river and alongside a vast, thick expanse of palms, ferns, and beautiful white trees. I was feeling a little nauseas, when we stopped at a cliff area that overlooked a wondrously (is that a word?) huge caldera, or crater of a volcano. I didn't know that that was actually a caldera until someone casually mentioned it as we were leaving. There was a cute little man explaining the natural and cultural significance of the place, but I wasn't listening because he had 2 dogs with him that captured my attention the whole time.
From the crater, we ventured up 12 kilometers on a rocky, dusty road to a jungle bungalow called Bellavista. Seemingly in the middle of nowhere, lay this rustic paradise complete with a "dome", as they called it, made out of wood that would have resembled a tree house had it actually been in a tree. We had to climb a ladder to get to our beds that overlooked the entire valley.
We spent most of the morning taking pictures of hummingbirds that flew noisily to feeders posted all around the main path in and out of the bungalow. The birds were beautiful and small, as hummingbirds are. Some of them, it appeared, didn't have feet! However, after the frustration of capturing the perfect picture took the best of us, we were left to explore the area on our own. A few of us ventured on the marked trails until lunch was ready. After lunch, we were left to explore the area on our own. So we ventured back to the trails.
We ventured back to the trails for a self-guided moonlight hike after dinner. Then the next morning we were supposed to have a 6am bird-watching hike, but around 7am we figured the guide wasn't coming and again we ventured back to the trails. By now, I had walked every trail the bungalow had to offer without taking a serious next step into exploring.
However, before lunch a guide took us deep into the forest to see a waterfall. It was a really cool hike through a stream bed, complete with a stream, up and over logs, and at one point we had to tie a rope around our waist and swing across a rocky cliff. That excited me. A little further and we came to a tall, not gushing, skinny, but sufficient waterfall. I don't mean to be a waterfall snob, but after seeing the waterfall in Banos, and of course living in Hawaii, I've seen enough to compare this one too.
Four of us, braved into the freezing rain of the waterfall just long enough for some pictures and then numbly ran out. It was really fun. Then we hiked back.
My friend Amie and I settled into our last round for the weekend of vino caliente. I think it's a mixture of just red wine, cinnamon, and solo un poquito de limon, heated up of course.
MMMmmm. And then the weirdest of all weirdest things happened. I picked up a book from the free book pile: Hyenas laughed at Me and Now I Know Why, a collection of short travel stories. I began reading The Snake Charmer of Guanacaste on page 12 and couldn't believe my eyes. The story was about a Russian hotel owner named Yuri that I actually had met. That was weird and it made the trip. Well, that and the cold waterfall.

By Glenn Rigby
Snow skiing is a whole lot of fun. I've only had the opportunity to fly down a snow-covered mountain a few times, mostly when I was younger, and I plan to do it again in the not-too-distant future.
Granted, I did fracture my leg on the last run of one of our trips to the Poconos almost 20 years ago. The fracture wasn't too bad, which is good because we were pressed for time to catch our flight back to Florida.
When we arrived, we went to a doctor who asked me how I did this damage to my leg. I told him skiing, to which he responded, "You fractured your leg water skiing?" "No," I told him – "Snow skiing." "Snow-skiing?!" the dumbfounded doctor incredulously asked in wild disbelief. We then explained to him that we just arrived back to Florida from Pennsylvania, and he set my leg in a cast.
You may find yourself pondering, "So where are some other good places to ski." Well, lots of places have mountains and snow, two key elements in this exciting pastime.
* China
* Austria
* Canada
* The U.S.
* Argentina
* Chile
The list goes on and on – those were just a few examples. I will briefly highlight a few interesting spots.
Chile: El Colorado ski center is 39 kilometers from Santiago. It has a snow-making system to guarantee snow throughout the season, as well as receiving an average of 5 meters of snow per year. This center, together with La Parva and Valle Nevado, forms the biggest and best ski area in South America.
Austria: Hinterglemm is a resort (and village) in the Saalbach-Hinterglemm region. This is a combination of the two villages whose names combine to form the one. Of the two, Saalbach is larger and is Austria's second most popular tourist destination, just behind Vienna. It boasts more than 125 miles of slopes and more than 60 lifts and cable cars. There are also snowboard-only runs and a snowboarding park.
China: Yabuli ski resort is located in Heilongjiang province in Northeastern part of China. All 11 of its trails exceed 0.6 miles (1 kilometer), and trail No.5 is the longest trail in Asia (3 miles). Additional activities include: Ha'erbing Ice & Snow Festival of Art: Every year, the Art Snow & Ice Festival is held in Harbin from December to March, with the ice sculpture and snowing statues, with other performances and lamp show.
The list truly could go on and on, but these were a few fun spots to point out.

By Jeremy Carter – Guest blogger traveling in Merida, Mexico.
Just when I think my adventure in Yucatan couldn't get any better, an adventure like the one I had yesterday comes along. After class on Wednesday, me, two other students (one from the US and one from holland) hopped in the car with Jose Luis, one of the school administrators, for an excursion to a tiny town called Cuzama to visit the cenotes, which are openings to the subterranean rivers that – along with the rainwater – provide the only natural source of freshwater on the peninsula.
The ground here has a porous limestone base, so there are no lakes or above-ground rivers whatsoever, but there are more than 3,000 cenotes. The ancient Maya thought the cenotes were entrances to the underworld and thus threw offerings into them to appease the gods. Over the past several decades, explorations of the cenotes have uncovered human and animal skeletons, pottery, and jewelry. Divers have even found paintings on the walls of the underground rivers, leading them to surmise that the cenotes once contained no water and perhaps served as homes and/or refuges from attackers for the early Mayan settlers.
When we arrived in Cuzama, we hired a guide to take us on a tour of the town's three most popular cenotes. The four of us hopped into a cart, the guide hopped in the front, and his horse pulled us along a small, uneven train track that was originally constructed for farming the acres and acres of henequen plants lining the roadway (and I'm sure the plants are still cultivated today). When we arrived at the first cenote, we changed into our swimsuits and descended a steep staircase leading down into the cave, which opened up around us with one of the most spectacular views I've ever seen in my life. The cave was large – I'm guessing at least 1/3 the length of a football field, with the most crystal-blue, clear water you'll ever see as well as stalactites and stalagmites. At the entrance to the cenote you can see to the bottom of the water, but in the back of the cave the water is many, many feet deep and eventually goes down to the river that joins it to the next cave. Due to this current, the water is refreshed every three minutes.
After taking a dip here, we got back on the wagon (or the "truck," as the locals call them) and went to the second and smaller cenote. This one didn't have as many stalactites and stalagmites, but in the center the roots of a tree from above were spilling down into the cave and all the way down into the water, their mass so thick you could climb up them. A few minutes after we descended into this cave, the sky outside split open and came a ferocious downpour accompanied by loud cracks of thunder. For at least 20 minutes we were the only people in this cenote, so we cannonballed from the platform, rested on the cave walls, and swam to the center of the cenote, where the rain was falling in from outside. Eventually some other tourists showed up, so since this cenote was much smaller, we ran into the rainstorm back to the truck, where – after waiting 10 minutes for the rain to let up with no success – we finally headed back to the car, skipping the third cenote.
Swimming in the cool, blue, seemingly bottomless waters into which the Mayans once threw their offerings was one of many experiences from the past month that I'll never forget. But once again it was sum of the parts of the journey – including the truck and, yes, even the rainstorm – that made yesterday a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

ER in Quito – By Robin Fillner – SALUD Program Guest blogger traveling in Quito.
Hi again. Just got back from the hospital today… here are some things I've noticed. I think it's important to keep in mind though that the people in Ecuador are amazing: the patients and the staff. They do so much with so little. I am impressed. Even sick patients are incredibly strong, and don't complain very much about anything.
I have seen a lot of equipment that looks like it was down the hatch in the television program "Lost". I saw a thermometer shaker for glass thermometers and plaster casts. And the EKG machine was very perplexing. There are 6 bulb suctions and 4 clamps. The bulbs suction and ¨electrode´ onto the chest, with the help of alcohol, and the clamps go around the wrists and feet. The print out looks very similar to our 12-lead EKG. At the same time, I've only seen one ventilator, an Oxylog 2000, it was very small and had lots of dials. I think these manual machines are pretty cool, and the concept behind them is easy to understand.
I have noticed that the med students-residents-and doctors do a lot of the work of nurses in the US. But, I've never worked in a teaching hospital so it may be similar in the US. I have assisted doctors and students with putting in Foley catheters (urinary tubes), naso-gastric tubes, and flushing clogged renal-biliary tubes. Any nurse from the US knows that this is their responsibility and to have assistance doing it is a godsend. I think it is mostly because there is a surplus of med students-doctors at this hospital, but I am not certain.
The nurse that I was following was mainly stocking, but also documenting her observations in charts. I have also seen nurses drawing blood, putting in IVs, but not really ever giving medicine. The patients are definitely not on as many medications here as they are in the US, but, the meds are pretty similar.
The only people I have seen wearing protective equipment – such as gloves, gowns, and masks – are surgeons and the cleaning people. In the ER I haven't really seen anyone wearing gloves while drawing blood, changing dressings, etc. They don't have retractable needles and there are needles lying around a lot. Not that the in-hospital infection rate is really good in the US, but here it must be pretty high. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of money to spend on research into in-hospital infections or money to spend on protective equipment.
The sterile field is compromised a lot. Some people put un-sterile and sterile supplies together, or moisten their gauze over the sterile field… But, they also don't have as much packaging as we do in the US. For example, they have a sterile container full of gauze and use sterile hemostats to pull it out. That saves on so much waste.
Usually, people here have to buy medicine and food from outside the hospital and bring it in to take. They depend strongly on their family for this assistance. Without family, the patients don't do well. I think also because the focus is on getting the patient better, privacy doesn't take on to much importance. Many patients are examined in full view of everyone. I saw a man getting a prostate exam, a women getting a urinary catheter inserted, and even a woman giving birth while people were passing by checking it out. I think they were just happy they were getting help.
It is interesting too that the sickest patients, unless they are really young, are assisted to and made comfortable, but they are not given resources that others could use because they have a chance to survive. This is sad but I think it is very practical. There is no existence of 'code status'. The doctors in my hospital think it's crazy that we put patients through so much trauma when they are very old.
I followed the neuro rounds today and I saw a lady today with cerebral lesions due to uncooked pork. In Ecuador this is very common, also with strawberries. The lesions are from parasites. I always wondered why Isabelle cooks the meat to the point of not being able to cut it, or chew it. I couldn't understand if the woman needed surgery, but she is on anti-convulsant medication as well as steroids due to the increased intercranial pressure.
This is my last week and then it's off to the jungle for a week for some piranha fishing!! Tomorrow I'm getting a yellow fever vaccination and buying malaria pills to prepare. Take care!!

By Kayla Allen
The Ming Dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644 and responsible for some of China's best known achievements even today.
Great Wall of China
Though the much repeated myth that you can see the Great Wall of China from space (the moon or mars) is not in fact true it still remains one of the seven wonders of the world as well as the longest man made structure on the earth.
While many a wall had been made in China before the Ming Dynasty came along, however they had never been so well constructed and so ambitious in their scope. The walls that went before it have long since disappeared into the earth while the Great Wall with it's strong stonework and towering lookouts looks like it'll be around for years to come.
Porcelain
Porcelain production and diversification occurred. Blue and white porcelain became the normal form, but experimentation in two color and even three-color porcelain began. Everyone has heard of the beauty and priceless ness of the Ming vase; still sought after today.
Other forms of artwork started being popularized within the people and not solely the nobility including wood and block prints. As people began moving from the farms and country into the city, the market and demand for goods and art became larger.
The Novel
A great cultural development of the Ming Dynasty was that of the novel. Ming Dynasty novels developed from the oral tradition of storytelling. As a result, they were written in the people's language, not the language of the nobility. Their origins as oral stories made natural pauses in the narrative where the teller would have asked for, or accepted money; these pauses, in the written form became chapters. Some of these stories, first set in moveable type during the Ming Dynasty are still read today.
As the written word became more accessible and moveable type made it possible to create multiple identical copies, encyclopedias were written containing important information from a variety of fields, such as geography, music and medicine. Dictionaries were also written; including the most influential, written in 1615 A.D., which reduced the number of signs for Chinese characters to 214, as opposed to the 540 plus signs of previous dictionaries.

By Jeremy Carter – Guest blogger traveling in Merida, Mexico.
In the past three weeks, I've seen – and traveled in – nearly every type of transportation there is in Merida and the state of Yucatan. Here in the city you can take a nice, air-conditioned cab from one end of the city to the other for about $5 US (including tip), or you can take a first-class charter bus to nearby archaeological sites for less than $10 round trip, or you can take a combi – a 12-passenger van that's been converted to fit as many people as possible – for even less. You can also buy a round-trip ticket to Progreso (a port town 25 minutes north of Merida) for about $2.50 US. These buses range from fairly new charter buses with air conditioning to older charter buses where the only air conditioning is provided by opening the windows. When it's nearly 100 degrees out, the resulting breeze is anything but cool, but it's either that or bake inside the bus with no air circulating. In downtown Merida, there are horse drawn carriages for tours, and in the smaller towns in Yucatan the most common form of transportation is the trici-taxi, which looks like a cross between a bicycle and a rickshaw. I've yet to take one of these, but next time…definitely!
And then, there are the city buses. These range from new, air-conditioned mass-transportation buses like you see in many US cities to rickety school buses with hard plastic seats and no shocks. It took me more than two weeks to figure out the bus system here, as it's not terribly standardized due to the fact that several companies offer the bus service. Each route has a number and a name, but don't count on either appearing on the window. Eventually you learn which buses will take you downtown, and to get back home you learn that the buses for each route leave from a specific place, although the signs marking these points are handwritten on cardboard and not posted in the most conspicuous places. Instead of being annoying, it's another humorous and charming example of the very relaxed way of life here in Mexico.
Today, my classmate Amy and I experienced a combination of these modes of transportation. After taking a city bus downtown, we crammed into a combi with 16 other people to go to Oxkutzcab, a small town a little over an hour from Merida. Here the flat terrain gave way to the first hills I've seen in a month. In Oxkutzcab we took another combi to Loltun, a series of the largest caves on the peninsula. Here, archaeologists have discovered traces of human existence dating back 7,000 years, including bones, sculptures, and paintings and carvings on the walls. The words "lol" and "tun" mean flower and stone, respectively, and many people say the caves take their name from two side-by-side columns (stalactites and stalagmites that join to form a large post) that seem to say "lol" and "tun" when struck with a fist.
To return to Oxkutzcab, our guide told us to just wait by the road and eventually another combi would come by. Aside from a house (apparently abandoned) across the street, the ticket booth and shop at the caves were the only signs of human existence within eyesight, but we waited by the road nonetheless. Many cars and trucks passed by, but no combis. After about 30 minutes, a farmer of about 70 years or older stopped and offered us a ride. Amy sat in the front and chatted with him, while I sat in the back of the truck with the hoes and water bottles. When we got back to Oxkutzcab, we walked around town for a bit, then hopped a combi to Ticul, where we took a first-class bus back to Merida for around $3.50 US.
While Loltun itself was beautiful, it was the experience of riding in the combis, exploring the town of Oxkutzcab and – most of all – hopping a ride with the farmer that made this day so incredible and gave us our best glimpse so far of Mexican life outside the city.

ER in Quito – By Robin Fillner – SALUD Program Guest blogger traveling in Quito.
The next morning, we went to Cotopaxi National Park and visited some Incan ruins. Santiago always wanted us to get out of the van to look at stuff but it was sooooo cold. Eventually, we made it to a parking lot from where we could hike to a refuge, a starting point for climbers and a nice hut to warm up in. When we got out of the van we were immediately pelted by hail and almost knocked over by the intense unforgiving wind. We were encouraged to go slow up the mountain due to the effects of altitude, but I felt that I would be knocked over if I went slowly.
Fighting the weather, we tromped through the loose dirt on a subtle path through the bareness. The mountain offers no protection of trees or even large rocks, only the exposure of reddish-brown loose pebbles, which easily fell into my shoes with every step. We could only stare at the ground because the exfoliation of our skin with the hail was too intense. I was scared of walking off some cliff! After my jeans and outer jacket were completely soaked by the hail, and my shoes and socks were caked with mud, I made it to the refuge and was greeted by a nice fireplace and, my favorite, mint tea!
We hung out for a while, discussing our thoughts on the mountain and the weather (and the warm tea and fireplace) and then headed back after about an hour. I decided to run down the mountain, just like in the Jack Keroac book. It was so fun and only took me about 10 minutes (whereas the climb took us between 30 minutes to an hour)!
Although, I didn't want to go back, we returned to Quito that evening. I was exhausted but had to prepare for my early morning at the hospital. It was such a good weekend, one that I'll never forget!