Today we saw yet again another university. At the beginning of the day we started with touring and learning about one of their local hospitals. This hospital was a public hospital, but not quite like the others. It looked very worn down, but it seemed like the care was good. They have 303 beds. They have a lower floor that is dedicated to hospitalization, emergency, and operating rooms. Then they have an upper floor that is dedicated to outpatient offices. Currently their emergency and ICU rooms are under construction so if somebody needs to go to the emergency room or ICU, they need to be placed in a different area which then takes up space. This can be difficult for them to manage because this hospital is for a very poor province and if those people go to the hospital looking for resources, but the resources are not there or are backed up, it can cause a lot of issues. After our tour we went to visit, tour, and talk to students at Universidad de la Matanza. Touring this university was very interesting. It was cool to see the differences and similarities between this university and Pitt. One difference was definitely the size. Their school was a lot smaller than ours. Another difference was the organization. They did have different buildings dedicated to different majors like we do, but they did not have many because they connected theirs. For example, we have Hillman library which is just a library and study area, but nothing else. Their library starts as a library, but then towards the back it is their sports area. They have basketball courts as well as volleyball. That leads me to another difference which is that at Pitt we are very big on sports and have a completely different section of campus that is dedicated to many sports Pitt has to offer. At Universidad de la Matanza, they do not have many sports to offer, but they have more than most universities in Argentina. So there are many differences when it comes to size and organization, but one similarity that shocked me was their resources, especially for Nursing. We toured their simulation room which reminded me of Pitt’s. They had it set up like hospital beds would be and we got to watch the nurses practice on a patient. It was really cool and got me excited for next year when I get to do that exact same thing at Pitt. After we were done with all of our tours we made our way over to Palermo to explore and learn about street art. The street art we saw was so cool, but it was even cooler to be able to try to understand the meaning behind each piece and why the authors put it in the spot they did. Each one told a powerful story so it meant a lot to be able to walk around and try to interpret the meanings of each.
