Happy Birthday!

Ok, so I know it's not really my birthday yet, but we really just wanted to go for a bike ride and we knew that's what we were getting for my birthday so we just moved it up a few weeks. And can I just say FUN? Holy crap, I forgot how much fun it is when the brakes work, and the gears too. Anyone want to go with us? Just give us a call, we'll go anytime.

So we found this trail that ran along the river and were having a great time til we reached the stairs and realized it was for people on foot only and horses. Then a guy passed us who told us they actually ticket you for biking, weird, but we had fun anyway and the view was awesome.

San Diego (DDW)

Here is us at dinner, Kimberly, me, and Laura

Here is the whole crowd at "The Confidential," this next picture is the last night we were there. If you click on it to see it bigger, starting from bottom left, up and over to the bottom right, Dr. Conklin, Dr. Jee, Dr. Soffer, me, Walter, Dr. Chang?, Janet and her husband, Colleen, Vankatta, Claudia, then Kim and Laura are missing, then Vicky, Tess, Michelle is missing, and then Dr. Pimentel. Awesome dinner, and lots of fun.


Toast to DDW! Dr. Conklin, Jee, and Soffer.

Here is us on the balcony of the convention center, you can see the bridge to coronodo island, and the island itself in the background

Here is us at Donovan's Steakhouse. Wow, best steak I've ever had. Thanks Michelle!

Here is the view out our hotel window, that is the island in the background. Here is our pool and the firepits.

One night we ventured out to little italy and we took one wrong road, I think we found all the homeless people in Sand Diego, we ended up giving our leftovers to two of them.

(Laura, Tess, and Vicky)

This is me and Tess in the italian restaurant, the food was excellent.

This is the top floor of some restaurant, they had a cool firepit. We went for the dancing but there wasn't any dancing that night, so everyone headed to the 40th floor of our hotel instead, I went to bed.

There is a little war memorial right outside our hotel along the boardwalk. This statue was absolutely huge, if you can't tell, it was taller than the aircraft carrier. It was dedicated to the soldiers and nurses during the war.

Here's us in front of the gaslamp district just being tourists. No it's not a real strip club, it is just a steak place. But the lights look cool.

All dressed up for dinner.

Go Dodgers!!!

Michael and Mikey came to the L.A. area and we were all able to get together at a Dodgers game. Fun, but also one of the most boring games I've ever been to. Not one point for the Dodgers, that's alright, we won't write them off yet. Mary,Scott, and Travis came too but we didn't get any pictures, sorry Mary.

Also, sorry for the cell phone pictures, we tend to forget our camera lately. We'll have to pay attention to that.

Aren't we cute?

Here's Mike and Mikey

The view of the field. We were clear at the top.

And if you look close, there are letters out there on the hill that say "Think Blue" kinda like the hollywood letters.

Nicaragua

Okay so I know many of you have been asking about the trip and wanting to see some pictures. I finally have a day off so here you go. The first few pictures are of the resort we stayed at in Montelimar. It was sweet as you can tell. You can see the pool and in the distance the ocean.

Below is a picture of the rooms where we stayed.

Don't worry we found the casino. I've never played blackjack before, so I gave it a shot. A lesson for gamblers, don't do it, cause even when your'e hot, you still lose it all. This is Jed, Me and Mike C.

And yes we also found some 4wheelers and went for a little ride on the beach. Yes thats me with that rag on my head like Lawrence of Arabia. At this point I had been in the pool and in the ocean so much I had a bad sunburn. I forgot my hat back in CA, so I borrowed a hat, and threw a t-shirt on top of it to protect my ears and neck. It looked goofy, but it worked.

The beach we were on had all these rocks, it was cool.

Oh and our guide showed us how to pull the 4wheeler on 2 wheels so of course I had to try it.

The beach at the resort was beautiful and we found some rocks to climb all over.

This was on the bus on our way to Ciudad Antigua where we set up to do our clinic. The entire country was this poor. Even in the big cities there was just no infastructure. Almost no government at all.

This is Ciudad Antigua. We did our clinic at a school in this City. This is also supposed to have been the oldest city in Central America, but the kids in the school there didn't know about it. I thought that was a little strange until I found out that most of these kids couldn't tell me there birthdat, or even their age... Yeah we're talking some teenagers. I met this kid who couldn't be older than three and he (and his older sister) told me he was seven years old. Crazy!


So this is at the school. Anytime you pulled out a camera the kids would swarm. Here is me and Cody being "swarmed"

These are more pictures of me and some of the kids. The little girl next to me wanted to be my best friend and follow mw around.

This little girl was also my buddy. She was deaf and didn't sign, so she had no way to communicate with people except in very rudementary sign language. She was cute.

See how scared this kid looks? All the kids thought that the job of a dentist involves only pulling molars. I had about 15 kids look at me scared and say, "please don't pull my molars."

So since we stayed at the same school the entire time we were there we left all our equipment at the school so we would not have to take everything down and set up all over again. Naturally we asked them to lock the doors, because we had 2 labtops and really expensive x-ray equipment inside. When we returned in the morning we found out how a nicaraguan secures a lock.

So I was able to do my first operatory work while down in Nicaragua. It was my pre-pre-pre clinical course.

And now let me explain to you the many adventures of the Bus. This was passing the bridge the first time, note how the entire concrete slab has been pushed over. The bus barely made it through, it was a tight squeeze.

The next evening when we were returning from the clinic the bridge had actually broken. Safe to walk over, but barely.

So the bus drivers decided to go around through the stream. Bad idea!! Needless to say, 2 hours later we were back on the road.

So we had to cross the bridge again to go back to the clinic. This is the nicaraguan way of fixing a bridge. Side note: the pieces of wood only lasted3 times after that. In fact, the last time we needed to cross the wood actually broke. Its a good thing it was the last time crossing.

Then on another night, we ran out of gas. According to the bus drivers we had plenty of gas, just not enough gas. Once again, after a couple of hours of waiting in the middle of nowhere, the boss came with a gas can and saved us.

Then, when leaving Ocatal, we ran into this line of cars. A bunch of Farmers were having a strike. So they parked a truck on the only bridge out of town and wouldn't let any cars pass. Apparently they wanted the gov. to pay off some loans for them.


This is the truck.

Here we are waiting long hours into the night. Very Frustrating!!!

So after a few calls to the US Embassy and a couple calls to a friend of someone's uncle we had some action. Police arrived in bullet-proof vests with AK-47's screaming down the road in a truck. After about 10 min. they came and escorted only our bus across the bridge. We had to close the windows and curtains and turn off the lights, because we were told they would try to throw stuff at our bus. Some people were crouching on the floor. They didn't do a thing, I was looking out the window the whole time.

So this is a random picture out of the bus of Managua. Its a pretty dirty city, trash everywhere!

So in order to go on the zip lines we went on this road, it was the wildest ride I'd ever been on.

This is Cody holding on for dear life!

So these now are pictures of lake managua. It was beautiful.

This is the little house that was at the top of the wild road, with beautiful vistas of lake managua. And this is one of the many protectors of Nicaragua. Armed guards everywhere!!