Off to South Dakota!

Today we met up at 10am to head on to South Dakota for the second half of our RAVS trip. My roommates and I had planned to get up at 9am to get ready, but we were all so well rested that we ended up waking up earlier than that! I accidentally looked at a clock still set in eastern time zone and panicked for a second, but was glad it was a mistake!

The drive to Cheyenne River took about 3.5 hours. We saw a lot of the same scenery on the way down, but South Dakota is a bit more hilly. A little ways into our drive, my car hit a skunk. Looking in the rearview mirror, she commented that piece of her car had fallen off and that she hoped it wasn’t important! A little while later, my foot slipped in the foot well and something splashed up at me. I was surprised and quickly felt up the suitcase I was sitting next to for a leak. Upon finding nothing, I became alarmed that we had done some important damage to her car and that we needed to have it looked at ASAP!! As I was putting in a phone call to one of the trip leaders to have them stop the caravan, we realized it was spilt laundry soap. Crisis averted!!!  I was so relieved (as was she) and felt a little bit silly, but I really know nothing about cars and was pretty darn concerned!

We a currently set up for tomorrow in a mechanic’s shop. We pulled up to a rather small building and as the garage doors opened, quickly realized just how spoiled we had been last week. We immediately set to work emptying, rearranging, and cleaning the building and then unloaded our rig into the sparkly space. It is super impressive and cool looking. This truly is an amazing mobile operation!

We had indian tacos prepared by the community cooks for dinner tonight. Fried bread topped with ground beef and taco fixings was super delicious. They also had my favorite peaches and nectarines! To help remind us of our rolls in the clinic this week, we each had skits for the various section of the operation (receiving, anesthesia, surgery, recovery) that were hilarious! We have a ton of awesome and fun people on this trip!

We are settled into smaller dorm rooms for the week now. Rooms have 3-4 beds in them and a small bathroom. We were lucky to find an awesome floor fan to run for the night that makes a big difference for how it feels in here! Our window doesn’t have much of a screen so we’re really hoping the bugs stay away! It should be a very interesting week of sleeping! I am super grateful to have a bed, but I kind of miss sleeping amongst my peers! We've all become so close during this trip that it was cozy all sleeping together in the same small floor space.