Meters...why America why?

So I have been meaning to post about this problem for awhile. My first day taking height and weight in clinic I was rudely awakened to the fact that I have no idea what the metric system means. Like how many kilograms should a child weigh? So, I could never estimate a starting weight when wailing kids were pried away from their mothers and plunked down screaming every time I would have to start at 0 and work all the way up because I had no idea what 20 kg even was close to as the kids wailed for mom. Or centimeters for height? Why did America do this to us? I am getting a little better but when we were comparing how much we had gained from eating a plate of white rice every meal I was convinced that I had gained 20 pounds until I found a calculator and someone more informed. (It was only 4 pounds luckily). Don't even get me started on actual thermometers with like ...mercury? really? in them. I had to be shown like everything on how to use one of those. It doesnt even beep at you to let you know it is done! No one had a fever because I wasn't patient enough to let the mercury (seriously?) move all the way.

On a more recent subject today we drove a long way to find some bugs. We found like 6 bugs, more specifically Chimburi bugs (I think). We also found a scorpion and the largest cockroach I have seen in my life. It was the size of my hand. It was in a woodpile but oh my it was huge. We did some excellent gravel road driving. It is kind of nice here because like estimation of travel time never really depends on traffic...(double yellow line means wait until you are out of the blind curve to pass, por favor)...it depends on how quickly the driver wants to power slide in and out of curves on these gravel roads. There are also speed bumps on large roads between cities...that would not go over so well in the US I decided. But Dr. Torres liked to use those as a kind of green light for the drag race to pass other cars.

Doing very well overall, one more morning with the Infectious Disease Control.

This weekend I go to Quilotoa. To a volcano crater lake that locals say has no bottom. It is supposedly very cold so I might have some alpaca wool pictures in the future.