Today was a great day! We started the day at the Bilbao School of Engineering after a delicious breakfast at the hotel. We then got to attend two great presentations that helped me to learn about both the nursing and engineering professions. The first presentation was by Dr. Ingio Ruiz, who talked about the differences in the healthcare system between the U.S. and Spain, and we got to have a great conversation as a group about the various contrasts. He also highlighted his research about pacemakers, and how they could be reused in third-world countries to provide affordable care for people who could not previously afford new pacemakers. They did this by sterilizing the devices with enough battery life and putting them in patients, which is a much cheaper alternative to using brand new alternatives, and can be very beneficial when needed. Following the first presentation, we got a second engaging presentation by Mikel about how to design a medical device. In this presentation, we learned about the design process, which was very interesting to learn about as a nursing major because engineers work so closely with nurses in making care for patients optimal through the best technology possible.
After the two engaging presentations, we ate a delicious lunch at the school before getting split up into two separate groups to do our Basque Cooking Class! I was in the second group, so we decided to explore around Bilbao and do some shopping. We got to shop around a European store chain called Bershka, and got to explore a 7 floor department store called El Corte Inglais, which was absolutely enormous and had basically any item you could ever want. My highlight of the day was for sure our cooking class, where we got to make two different authentic Bilbao pintxos, along with tortilla and a dessert called Goxua, which were all absolutely delicious! My favorite part was when we got to torch our desserts at the end to caramelize the sugar. After the cooking class we went back to the hotel and had an early night in to get some sleep before a long day tomorrow! Overall it was a fantastic day and I can’t wait for our day tomorrow!
