Packing up and flying South

Hello friends and family,
This is hopefully the first of many posts and updates from Sydney and Miriam during our Belizean adventure!

This afternoon we finished packing up two large duffle bags, stuffed to the brim with medical supplies. As you also might notice from the photo, we are transporting a full-sized keyboard (yikes!) for our host/coordinator Nurse Westby. We sent this picture to her so that she would recognize us on Thursday afternoon when she meets us at the bus station.

So, thoughts about this trip....
We agree that there is a huge amount of excitement coupled with some nerves. Some of our anxiety was asuaged when we finally did hear back from our host Westby this afternoon. Phew!
For those who don't know, UNC's School of Nursing is granting us 3 whole credits for going abroad, working a minimum of 84 hours as nursing assistants and completing nominal course work. All this with the hopes that we will broaden our skill set, cultural competence, and global perspective. Through a friend of Sydney's we contacted Nurse Westby who works at San Ignacio Hospital in the Cayo district of Western Belize. We have made arrangements to stay with a local family that has experience hosting hospital volunteers. This is a true adventure! Since there is no such thing as an "NA" South of the Border we will most likely be creating our own job description based on the needs we see. After completion of our required hours we are excited to spend a week or two (Sydney's boyfriend Scott is joining us!) traveling around the country and exploring Mayan ruins, paddling up jungle rivers and snorkeling in the second largest barrier reef system in the world. We will do our best to update this blog with reports and reflections. Thanks to everyone who contributed to make this trip possible. We appreciate all of your support and look forward to sharing our stories.

-Miriam and Sydney