Somehow Ended Up in Honduras (Reprise)

So weird to be writing the rough draft of this post from an airplane coming back from Honduras. This has been the most incredible of bookends for our journey: one year ago, we were silly little people who had just moved into our massive RV, ready to haul that sucker across the country, but took a little detour to Honduras first. Now, we are still silly little people, but we've hauled that RV, sold that RV, spent some time in New Zealand and South Africa, matched for residency, had so many laughs and tears, and are now heading back from the same spot in Honduras. We just really have a lot to reflect on. So, hopefully you'll stick with my unhinged stream of consciousness for the next little bit.

First of all, I graduated! Yeehaw!!! It was a wild few weeks being back in Maine and spending time with friends and family, attending events for graduation, and keeping up with the terms of our mortgage loan changing at the last minute. Perhaps one of the hardest times of our relationship, making sure we both felt seen, heard, and supported.

Also, our pals Alex, Matt and Jaimie deserve a shoutout for traveling to Portland to join us for fun times in our favorite place!!!

For part of our time in Maine, we stayed at the now (probably) world-renowned Drewvannah Inn, which is still exceptionally great at hosting wayward travelers when they're in between airports. (It's us, we're the wayward travelers.) Honestly, 6/5 experience if you're ever in the Portland area. Somehow we are still so bad at getting photos with them, though, but the memories are alive and well in our brains.

Chad had the opportunity to work chairside for the clinic in Portland that he does teledentistry for, Mainely Teeth. Which mostly meant he finally got to work IRL with all the people he gets emails from! They also deserve a shoutout because they let us use a company car for our time in Maine, which was a baby blue Bronco. Fun fact: apparently the owner bought it because it looks like toothpaste.

Okay, now let's go to Honduras. We left on a damp morning at 1 am in the team van, driving away from Portland for the last time. It was hard. It was hard to be back in Maine, which is home, but we didn't have a house there anymore. But then we were driving away at 1 am, and who has time to feel their feelings in the middle of the night???

Perhaps the cherry on top of Chad & Amy ridiculousness? After arriving to Boston Logan, we officially closed on our house via a Zoom with a mobile notary. From an empty food court. At 4 am. On a Saturday. Long back story here, but this ended up being the only "reasonable" time for us to do this before leaving the country, so our realtor, lender, and notary made it happen.

We landed in Comayagua as new homeowners, greeted with the familiar Honduran heat and humidity. It was great to be back and to see pals we had made from our previous trip! This time, our team was a lot bigger: we had 6 family docs (including me!!!), a dentist (Chad), 2 students, a logistician, and a pharmacist. We were an absolute riot when moving from place to place. We saw over 350 patients, pretty much everyone had some type of GI distress, and we shared many laughs, tears, and electrolyte packets.

Something I've really been reflecting on after this trip was just how much these brigades are helping the people they serve. Is this an experience that fills the cups of the team, or is this an opportunity to really help communities that wouldn't otherwise be able to access healthcare? Are we actually hurting the communities by allowing problems and diagnoses to come to light, then we leave and there's sometimes no one there to provide continued care and support (or we are providing care through a different cultural lens)? I'm still sitting with this, and if you're ever bored, I would love to have a chat about it.

Chad and I were recently asked why we are so interested in international work when there is really hard, important work to be done in the US. It's such a fair and reasonable question: places in Michigan and the Mississippi Delta still don't have clean water to drink, Utah is one of the hardest states to access healthcare, funding for research and access to healthcare keeps getting slashed, and reproductive healthcare is always on the chopping block. Is leaving the country to help other communities worth it when our neighboring communities need help, too? What does it mean to actually help a community? Prevention? Research for better treatment? Definitive treatment? Education for chronic conditions? Reproductive healthcare? I have no answers here, but I did warn you that this would be a stream of consciousness.

Okay, back to traveling. After a overnight layover in Houston and seeing pals Josh and Leah, we arrived at our unfurnished, very echo-y, new-to-us Boise home. What an absolute privilege to be able to buy this lil gal while we were literally in different countries.

You may be thinking that moving in was probably difficult because I'm laying on the floor. But I'm here to tell you that moving in was actually kinda easy because the only stuff we had was that which fit in our truck and a couple FedEx boxes we sent from Maine. It was approximately 7 plastic containers, plus random stuff squeezed into nooks and crannies. I'm also here to tell you to spend more time on the floor. It's great for your hip and knee mobility and sometimes we all need a little floor time to chill out (just me???).

We quickly found furnishings on Facebook Marketplace (update: still no sponsorship), meticulously vacuumed the floors and new-to-us furniture (me), and made sure our utilities were sorted (Chad). After we picked up some of the larger furnishings, we traded in the truck and we are now the proud owners of a hybrid Prius, which is quite the change from a one-ton diesel. But, we miss her rumbly engine every day. Truly, the end of our ~RV~ era (RIP Marge).

The Wy-Phi Inn is now officially open for business!!! Please come hang out with us. I'll probably be working at the hospital, but when available, we're hilarious and Chad makes such good dinner.

Here is a special shoutout to our first visitors: Chad's fam (Terry, Jody, and Taci) flew to Boise to help us settle in, fertilize the lawn, and clean out the garage. Then my aunt Becky and uncle Jim stopped by on the way to their new house in Oregon and treated us to tacos! We are so grateful to have a space now to share with others, especially considering all the times we've depended on others over this past year.

We'll be wrapping up this blog with one last post. We have so many people to thank for helping us make this past year happen and we want to give credit where credit is due. Stay tuned for the final send off ❤️