No hablo Espanol

Tuesday, June 26: We toured a Jesuit School for boys in the morning. Some of the senior most students from the school practiced their English skills by serving as interpreters for our tour. While touring the primary classrooms, the little boys sang songs for us. They were so freaking  cute. After lunch we went to Bible School and colored/played volleyball with the kids. Three girls were attached to my hip the whole time even though my Spanish skills are muy mal. The girls were troopers! After dinner a mariachi band came to surprise some of the gals for their birthdays. Dancing ensued. 

Bracey, Sophia, & Ana

The Mariachi Band

Wednesday, June 27: Our group toured another public hospital. Tours are getting kind of old,. This afternoon we had a guest speaker come in and talk about natural medicine (herbs) followed by a meeting with Padre Joe the pastor of Sacramento Santisimo Parish.

Meet Felipe, our fine interpreter

Thursday, June 28: First day of clinical..yay! My partner for the rest of clinical is Haley, which is humorous because both of us know the LEAST Spanish in our group. We'll manage and make the most of it so I'm really not worried, but it is kind of funny that we got paired together. Communicating at home visits will likely be rough, but whatever. Haley and I went to social services today where we taught English at the Santisimo Parish School. The 2nd graders gave me an impressive sticker collection. I also got to dance with students during their dance class in which they taught me some sort of native routine. This afternoon we sat through an awful two hour presentation about Peru's healthcare system. It was all in Spanish...luckily our interpreter is very vague/hilarious which somewhat lightened the mood. Felipe<3

Do you spy my sticker collection?

I currently have corn rows

Sunday, June 23: I love pick-up trucks, especially when I get to ride in the back. We piled in the pick-up to a local church for mass. It was national farmer's day, so many of the farmers from the local community were honored. They invited us to attend their fiesta afterwards where we were the special guests. We rode through a small farming village to an enclosure which must have been the community meeting place. The emcee of the fiesta chose ten American students to pair up with some of the farmers for dancing. My attempts to avoid eye contact with the emcee were successful so I was not chosen and therefore was able to just spectate the dancing. We were served rice, sopa de novias (soup of lovers), and some sort of meat for lunch. This meal may or may not be the reason that I'm feeling very sub-par today. Our afternoon consisted of downtime and in the evening we had a party for our Peruvian mom, Erika. Marquette nursing hosts a family here in Peru and we see them every evening before and after mass. Erika and Eduardo have 3 children whom we also get to play with. It was Erika's 30th birthday so we ordered pizza, had cake, played musical chairs, and gave presents. The three hours before bed were spent making friendship bracelets on the balcony outside of our rooms. I'm just as bad at making bracelets as I used to be…fail.

 

Ellen and our new friend Jose riding in the truck

                                                                  The suspicious meal

Monday, June 24: I've been feeling pretty shitty today so I took the morning off and stayed back while both groups went on a tour of another hospital in town. Luckily clinical doesn’t start until tomorrow (actually Friday?!). Hopefully this bug will be gone by then. After a few extra hours of sleep, medicine, and a cold shower I'm feeling a bit better. I ventured to the Supermarket with the gals where we were excited to purchase PEANUT BUTTER! It was 16 soles or about $6 for one jar...dang. This afternoon we met with a women's group called Vaso de Leche. We talked about exercise and danced the Macarena and chicken dance with them. They were extremely attentive and grateful to us. Five year old Rosita was there with her mother…she was prettiest little girl ever! After dancing, the ten of us toured the parish compound where we visited the pro-life clinic, legal offices, psych offices, alcoholics anonymous, and the operating room where the cataract team has been working for the past couple of weeks. I just got done playing cards with the group and I kind of suck at lying sooo BS did not turn out in my favor…maybe tomorrow.

The trophy table. These are the cataracts that have been removed from people's eyes. Good work cataract team!

Rosita bonita!!!

So, the Peruvian adventure begins…

Friday, June 22: My dad drove me to O'hare at 4am. I met up with the other nursing students and our initial flight left Chicago at 10am (which was actually 11am... Spirit Airlines) and landed in Ft. Lauderdale. The connecting flight to Lima was scheduled to leave at 5:30pm but was 15 people overbooked. The airlines offered promotions in an attempt to get passengers to take a different flight the following day. Although two free round trip tickets, $100, and a hotel room for the night sounded extremely enticing, the 10 of us decided, after much contemplation, that we better not volunteer to get booted. We arrived in Lima around 11pm, went through customs, and found our lovely taxi driver amongst the crowd of people awaiting the arrival of their guests.

Saturday, June 23: Our taxi driver drove us to a gated hostel community which appeared to be part of a Catholic Parish. The drive there was quite interesting. My first hostel experience was fairly nice. It was more like a hotel than a hostel. We settled in by 1:30am and got up by 4am to catch a ride back to the Lima airport for our final flight to Piura. Needless to say, we were exhausted.

We arrived in Piura at 7:30am and were greeted by a large Marquette sign held by the lovely parishioners of Sacramento Santisimo, whom will be our hosts.

We rode to the parish compound where we will be staying for 4 weeks and the 10 of us gals settled into rooms, ate breakfast, and unpacked. We toured the public hospital in town during the morning and anxiously returned to our rooms afterwards for a much needed afternoon siesta! After napping, we went on a tour of the hospice center. Having been in Piura for less than 24 hours I have already fallen in love with the Peruvian people...they have the biggest hearts/smiles. We were greeted with hugs and kisses from patients at the hospice who had close to nothing yet were SO happy, gracious, and loving. I'm excited to visit with them numerous times over the course of my stay. They were so sweet. Mass is at 7pm (we attend mass daily and sometimes twice on Sundays). Dinner is after mass and now we are hanging out enjoying one of our last nights of freedom. I'm dreading this aggregate project already, gah. I'm also hoping a little more Espanol comes back to me : /

Here is the view from our room...

PERU

Stay tuned for my personal experiences as I journey through Peru June 22-July 27!!!