Pickpocketed...

I managed to make it 3 months here without having had anything stolen...until this Thursday. I was headed to the airport at 5:45 am to catch a flight to Guayaquil (i´ll explain why in a minute), caught a taxi, got to the airport and saw TONS of people there, so I put my phone and my cash, etc. in my front pants pocket just to be safe, and got in line. By the time I got to the security checkpoint and emptied my pockets the cellphone was gone. It made my trip MUCH more complicated since all I had were the addresses of the hospitals I had to visit, and taxi drivers around here don´t know their street addresses very well. Not any wonder, since there is no rhyme or reason to the way the cities are organized (especially Guayaquil), but it makes it hard if you don´t know where you´re going either.

So the trip was for my project- it´s been almost two months ago now that the universities all committed to pass around a sheet of paper to their med and nursing students who had just received pediatrics...but have they done it? Of course not. Phone calls, emails... all have only served to get about 3 of the schools moving, and the last resort for me has been to start traveling and do it myself. It´s ridiculous that I should have to ask PAHO to pay $128 to fly me to Guayaquil so that I can pass around 2 sheets of paper asking students to write their email addresses... and to Loja...and to Manta...and to Portoviejo...and to Riobamba...and to Ibarra...

The only up-side has been that I´ve been able to see more of the country than I would have otherwise. Still, though, it´s frustrating. Why do people have such a hard time following through on their commitments? or better yet, why do they commit to something that they know they are not going to do? I feel like i did on my mission! I´m sure we could get a good study out of this using the Theory of Planned Behavior or Behaviorism...