Make the first wipe a good one

Tuesday, July 3: I spent another, less exciting morning at the midwife clinic. Jacki, one of the parish nursing assistants, took Haley and I on home visits in the afternoon. We walked to get helado (ice cream) after dinner. Ah, delicious.

Arriving at the midwife clinic via motortaxi

Wednesday, July 4: The kitchen was elaborately decorated in red, white, and blue. We started our day with a 4th of July presentation at the Parish School. The effort that was put into this USA assembly was awesome! During the day we went about our usual clinical business. I spent the morning with an OB/GYN that is visiting with a group of 50 missionaries from Arizona. She was totally awesome and I got to do three spec exams on her patients in the pro-life clinic. Mass tonight was 90 minutes long because it was a special healing mass which the parish has every first Wednesday of the month. A nearby village hosted us for a post-dinner 4th of July celebration. Music, fireworks, and dancing. 

Decorations!

At the parish school

My little Peruvian BF at the evening fiesta. Happy 4th!

Thursday, July 5: I have acquired a permanent stench from my morning spent at hospice. This afternoon I did 6 home visits!

Haley doing a tube feeding for Maximino at the hospice center.

Friday, July 6: My morning spent at hospice involved a very nauseating diaper change. 'nuff said.

Saturday, July 7: This morning we took our Peruvian family to the open market where we bought them two mattresses and food. The rest of the day involved napping and lounging around :)

Hanging out at the parish

Travelers Diarrhea Spares No One

Friday, June 29: At hospice today I washed/cut hair, did nails, gave arm/hand massages, repositioned, and tube fed patients. Any takers for a haircut when I get back to the states?! I accept ca$h ;)

Maximo es muy guapo. He is blind which is the only reason he agreed to let me cut his hair.

Saturday, June 30: BEACH DAY! I didn’t even feel like I was in Peru. 

 

Pisco Sours<3

We stayed to watch the sunset :)

Sunday, July 1: Fifty missionaries showed up this morning so we made sure to get down to breakfast on time. They're here all week so things will be a little kray. All 60 some of us went to Hogar Madre del Redentor which is a preventative home for girls who have been raised in potentially abusive situations. They live in a nice compound under the supervision of nuns. Rosana took my hand when I arrived and she stayed by my side all afternoon. Some of the other girls performed cultural dances for us. 

Rosana!

Monday, July 2: My morning was spent at a midwife clinic. The midwife was super cool. She saw about 32 patients per day for pregnancy check-ups. She also had a delivery room where she delivered non-complicated pregnancies. While I was there, a laboring woman came in and lucky for me, she progressed rapidly so I got to witness the birth. This patient made the birthing process look like a piece of cake. No pain meds, no significant other, very few moaning noises and the baby was out before her second push. Awesome stuff!! Yay, babies. The midwife actually took time to deliver the placenta without yanking and pulling at the woman. How nice of her. I haven’t seen patience like this in the US. She allowed me to do vaginal exams on her patients. For most people this probably sounds disgusting, but it was pretty sweet considering this doesn’t usually happen for nurses in the US. This afternoon Haley and I accompanied one of the parish nurses, Jackie, to a couple of home visits. The patients we visited were being monitored for high blood pressure and we took vitals, compared data, cleaned/cut/filed their nails, and washed their feet. This was my first time being inside one of the local homes. The floors were dirt, chickens roamed free, walls were made of sticks, bamboo, tarp, cement, among other things. The patients, per usual, were so friendly and gracious. At mass tonight the girls from Hogar Madre del Redentor showed up. We seem to have new visitors with us every mass... It makes the mass feel less redundant.

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!!!

They see me rollin'...

Easter Break provided some much needed R&R. After a couple days of stormy weather, out came the sun and a comfortable spring temperature. My dad and I took a nice motorcycle cruise across town to Emo's, an ice cream shack. Two thumbs up for ice cream and smooth riding! All smiles for a much needed break.

(Flem, I'm sad I missed your homecoming by a couple days! Darn)

                             I look like a boy...it must be the "bro" sunglasses...

                             Check out dad's jean on jean. Stylish, eh?