We have just gotten back from our first day of volunteering. We participated in a campaign called ¨Medicine for the Andes" and it was an incredible experience. We administered health checkups to families at a small community center in the mountains surrounding cusco. Ashlee and I spent part of the day checking peoples vision, nasal function, tonsils, teeth, lymph node inflammation, and cranial damage. It was a huge responsibility to be the person that is supposed to discover if something is medically wrong with another person. Luckily we did not observe many infections or problems, however Ashlee did observe infected tonsils on a young boy.
For the second part of the day, ashlee and I examined patients hearts and lungs for any disfunction. This part was extremely hard because not only were we in a room full of screaming children but it is also dificult to recognize any irregular noises, especially for the lungs. Alot of our patients were small children under the age of 8 which was fun because they were very friendly and liked to play. Ashlee taught a few of the kids how to play patty cake and they had a ball. After all our checkups were complete we walked back to Maximo HQ which was about 30 minutes down hill, and now I am here, writing in the blog!
Since we only have wifi in the afternoons, we will post about the mornings and the nights prior.
The festival yesterday was a ton of fun! we followed the parade up the road to a plaza where an incan king was hoisted on his thrown and carried through the streets. as he passed, all of the locals cheered and clapped and the streets were so packed that everyone was shoulder to shoulder. During the festival we went to a resturaunt that looked out over the plaza and we sat on the balcony. We had an incedrible view of the plaza along with some delicious food! Ashlee had rocota rellena which are spicy chili peppers stuffed with beef an vedgies (a peruvian classic) and I had an Alpaca Burger which was interesting. Alpaca has the consistency of Tofu and tastes very salty with a tiny bit of sweet flavor. It was honestly, almost better than a beef burger! We also noticed on the menu that the most expensive dish was fried Guinea Pig! Apparently it is a delicasy here in Peru so Ill have to try it at some point. Ive heard its delicious! After lunch we went to our orientation where we met our work crew and learned some basic techniques for doing health check ups. Our group is really cool even though there is only one other guy and its all just a bunch of girls. 3 girls are from Ireland and are currently in medical school, one girl is from Brazil, and then two girls are from Arizona. between Ashlee, me and the 2 other girls we have ever Arizona University covered. After orientation we found out that the three irish girls will be living at the same house as us which ashlee was pretty excited about. We began walking home around 7:30 and it was already dark. Turns out we didnt really know where we were going and what should have been a 15 minute walk took more than an hour. We found ourselves at the top of a mountain at one point with no idea where we were! Luckily we found our house before anything bad happened and after that we will never get lost again!
We ended our day talking to the head of our host family Jorge. He wanted us to explain our faith, which is hard enough in English let alone in Spanish! It was so awesome to get to hear his testimony and to share ours in a way we never had before. Even with a language barrier, we can see what amazing things God is doing in his life and in ours as well. It was an incredible day in Peru and everything has been amazing. We are both loving every minute of this trip and cant wait to see what else Peru is going to throw at us. Pictures will be posted soon. We love and miss all of our family and friends and cant wait to see you all in august!
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