Waterfalls

We have had quite a packed day of adventures in our first 24 hours or so in Stavanger! After we arrived and got settled at the hotel, Tore Laerdal showed us around the old town and the port of Stavanger.  The old town is full of wooden houses built in the 18th and 19th centuries, maintained in the original style and decorated with beautiful flowers covering the patios and front steps.

Collecting water from a waterfall

Pankti enjoying the fresh water

After walking around the old town, we had a boat tour of the Lysefjorden fjord along with people from Jhpiego and Laerdal.  Although it was pretty cold and windy on the top deck, we all had a blast seeing what is reportedly one of the top places to see before you die.  During the boat trip, we pulled up to a waterfall and the captain collected some water directly from the waterfall for us all to drink.  It was delicious - better than most of the bottle water I've tasted!

For dinner we stopped at a restaurant on the water in Lysefjorden which had a delicious buffet with lots of seafood and salads, prepared just for us.  We ate outside and the view from the restaurant was beautiful! We also enjoyed sitting with Ingrid Laerdal who taught a couple phrases in Norwegian including takk which means thank you. I don't think any of us were able to remember how to pronounce the words correctly, so we'll have to keep practicing.  After dinner, we were so exhausted that a bunch of us passed out on the boat ride back to town.

Jenny, Aaron, Kevin and Barrett braving the cold on the front deck

After a fun day of being tourists yesterday, this morning we were back to work on preparation for our developing country trips.  We had several talks and workshops on the CBID-Jhpiego-Laerdal Day of Birth Alliance and on how to get the most out of our upcoming observations in the field.  We also got to tour the Stavanger factory which was quite interesting - we learned about the manufacturing process from early stage product development through assembly and testing of products. It seems like quite a challenge to manufacture training tools for both the most resource-poor settings and the most sophisticated developed country needs.  Tomorrow we are looking forward to hands on practice in delivery and neonatal resuscitation with some of Laerdal's simulation tools!

-- Melissa