This week was a mix of different things. I started the week by going out to find participants. I had a successful first day of recruitment when I was able to get a couple of people to give me their contact information. It was a bit challenging later in the week because the students are currently in their finals week, so they are all a bit stressed and oftentimes not on campus unless they have an exam. Nonetheless, I was able to recruit some people to be in my study which meant that I needed to set up a scheduling system with Rachel so that we wouldn’t accidentally schedule at the same time since we are sharing rooms. We decided to use a system called Doodle which can be connected to google calendar and after some trial and error got it to work. It has been a really helpful resource, and I would recommend it to people who are having difficulties with scheduling. Once we got everything sorted with the scheduling, I drafted a message for the participants and sent it out to all the people that I recruited.

To start the week on Monday we were able to go out to a local restaurant street with lots of street food and beach area. It was a fun time getting to see so many people and experience a bit more of the culture. I tried bacalaitos which is fried fish, and I also tried this fried ball of meat covered in plantain. Everything was good but very heavy, I was super glad we could just chill at the beach after that. We also went out to the mountains over the weekend and got to see life outside of the city. It reminded me a lot of my family in southern Spain which was really special. My favorite thing I tried this week was the tostones de pana that is fried breadfruit. It sort of has a plantain feel to it but is also different at the same time. I would highly recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to try it. We also entered the world of acai bowls this week and I don’t think we can go back now; they are so good! It has been so hot and humid here that the coolness of the acai bowls is so refreshing. One of my favorite things I’ve done was going to church on Sunday and Tuesday. The community was so welcoming and kind. They let me play the guitar for a song at their smaller service which was a really cool experience.

Acai bowls

Tostones de Pana

Bacalaitos

Mountain view from outside the city