So week 2 included the beginning of my first week at the clinic called El Centro de Salud in Cusco just down the street from the Family House. For the first two weeks or so I will be in 'Topico' which focuses on minor wounds and injections. My first half hour focused on an emergency case where a woman was bought in by a couple guys who had no idea who she was or what had happened to her. At first unconcious, when she came around she was very confused. Not until about an hour later were her daughters called to come take her to the hospital. Why wasn't this woman taken to the ER? Why weren't any tests performed? Not even a blood sugar was taken... My first day continued to be crazy and me and Mary Beth, my friend from my Spanish classes didn't get out until 6:30PM when we were supposed to out by 6PM.
The rest of the week in the clinic was nothing like the first day, though we helped clean wounds as well as make 'gasas' (bandages) and cotton balls. Everything the clinic has is what they can make or save or re-use. The lady from the first day? No oxygen was administered. Gloves? Not always available. My first week working in the clinic has shown me how lucky we really are in the states (as corny and over said as that is). Not only that, but I cannot wait to return with more schooling and more to offer than making bandages and pouring soap and water on gauze.
Unfortunately, this week I also experienced what practically every gringo visiting a country where tap water is not legit to drink experiences - A Parasite! Not just any parasite, Giardia... I started sleeping more and not having much of an appetite. Thursday I almost passed out in the clinic twice and was sent home. I have a sinking feeling that the head nurse working that day now thinks I cannot handle the sight of blood. Friday I went to the doctor and got to experience life on the otherside of the stethoscope....
I went with a girl from Maximo to a clinic off the main road and snaked around the clinic until we ended up down a seemingly random hall with a door for a dermatologist, a door for a OB-GYN, and another unmarked mystery door. Another volunteer was with us and went into the mystery door first while I waited my turn outside. From the white plastic chair I couldn't see who I assumed to be the receptionist behind the giant desk. When I made it into the doctor's office, it was basically like any other doctor visit, except for the whole language barrier. I then received my lab orders and made my way with the others through the maze of the clinic. The lab experience I won't go into, but I will mention the blood draw. Normally when you get poked blood only gets added to a sample tube when its connected to the port as oppposed to spraying out the other end of the needle, which is what happened. When the lady was finished, she basically taped a cotton ball to the inside of my elbow and sent me on my way. I didn't make it too far before my arm felt wet... I tore off my fleece to find blood everywhere!! The poor girl who came with us freaked out and I had to go back to the lab tech to get my arm fixed. This time she told me to keep my arm bent and keep the new cotton ball there. I then had to return for my results at 8PM that night. And so it was, I had giardia and had to take 3 pills a day for 5 days!! The bright side of this whole experience was that the pills were extremely cheap!
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Week 1 Part 2 - La Casa de Familia
So after an adventure with the Dutch, I was finally able to move in the Family House - a little bed and breakfast type place run by Maximo. About 15/16 people are living here now from all over the place, but mainly from the states or UK. I'm sharing a room with one other girl, Leilah, who's from Boston and like Lindy, became certified to teach English as a second language.
Classes went really well the first week, both my group and private classes. Spanish is almost easier to learn here since the teachers always speak Spanish, never English unless you are really confused. My private classes centered on medical Spanish and some verb conjugation. Group classes center on basic grammar, vocab, verb conjugation, etc. It's been a great refresher! I also got to meet some really cool people through my class. One girl, Mary Beth is volunteering at the same clinic where I will be starting and is also in the process of studying for the MCAT and will be applying for med school like myself!
Now, one important (haha) thing I've learned is that when it comes to winning random things, I'm really lucky! When I traveled down to Costa Rica, I won a hat on a coffee plantation. My second night after moving into the family house, we went out to a bar called Muse where they have trivia nights run by an NGO called Bruce Peru. This NGO is all about getting kids into state schools by tutoring and assisting with finances. Unfortunately for me, Bruce Peru questions are usually centered on English culture... Luckily we had an Aussie who had spent a good number of years in England and helped us (ok, carried us) to second place out of 13! We also won Best Name - which I picked out - but they only had one t-shirt as a prize. So they asked our team one final question: In what year was Mickey Mouse first animated? The answer was 1928 and I was the closet guessing 1933!! So I won an authentic Muse t-shirt =D If only I was that lucky with test questions in university...
The weekend also had some exciting activities...
Friday the TEFL people finished their certification and it was Lindy's last day in Cusco. So we went out for that, meeting up with a ton of people from Maximo. The last place we stopped had a local cover band playing American rock songs (good ones, that is), which was really fun. The only not so exciting thing was the guys who tried persuading us to stay out later with them, which was NOT a plan - Machisimo is alive and well in Peru, that's for sure!
Saturday was more or less the same, except we started out at Maximo with their "International Party" which more appropriately should've been called "International Awkward Junior High Dance". Overall it wasn't too bad once people loosened up and started (actually) dancing. My goal here is to learn legitimate salsa dancing, since it looks like soooo much fun!!
Sunday made me wish I had a million dollars and a million suitcases! I went to the Pisac market with Merel, the other Merel, and Sophie for the day. The market was HUGE and there was so much my head was spinning. The nice thing about markets is that you can bargain with vendors and buy fairly nice things for very little American dollars. It's good to know my money is good somewhere... I definitely plan on going back, especially to see the ruins, which are rumored to be the best around Cusco!
Hopefully tomorrow I will post about this past week... It's been quite the experience!
Classes went really well the first week, both my group and private classes. Spanish is almost easier to learn here since the teachers always speak Spanish, never English unless you are really confused. My private classes centered on medical Spanish and some verb conjugation. Group classes center on basic grammar, vocab, verb conjugation, etc. It's been a great refresher! I also got to meet some really cool people through my class. One girl, Mary Beth is volunteering at the same clinic where I will be starting and is also in the process of studying for the MCAT and will be applying for med school like myself!
Now, one important (haha) thing I've learned is that when it comes to winning random things, I'm really lucky! When I traveled down to Costa Rica, I won a hat on a coffee plantation. My second night after moving into the family house, we went out to a bar called Muse where they have trivia nights run by an NGO called Bruce Peru. This NGO is all about getting kids into state schools by tutoring and assisting with finances. Unfortunately for me, Bruce Peru questions are usually centered on English culture... Luckily we had an Aussie who had spent a good number of years in England and helped us (ok, carried us) to second place out of 13! We also won Best Name - which I picked out - but they only had one t-shirt as a prize. So they asked our team one final question: In what year was Mickey Mouse first animated? The answer was 1928 and I was the closet guessing 1933!! So I won an authentic Muse t-shirt =D If only I was that lucky with test questions in university...
The weekend also had some exciting activities...
Friday the TEFL people finished their certification and it was Lindy's last day in Cusco. So we went out for that, meeting up with a ton of people from Maximo. The last place we stopped had a local cover band playing American rock songs (good ones, that is), which was really fun. The only not so exciting thing was the guys who tried persuading us to stay out later with them, which was NOT a plan - Machisimo is alive and well in Peru, that's for sure!
Saturday was more or less the same, except we started out at Maximo with their "International Party" which more appropriately should've been called "International Awkward Junior High Dance". Overall it wasn't too bad once people loosened up and started (actually) dancing. My goal here is to learn legitimate salsa dancing, since it looks like soooo much fun!!
Sunday made me wish I had a million dollars and a million suitcases! I went to the Pisac market with Merel, the other Merel, and Sophie for the day. The market was HUGE and there was so much my head was spinning. The nice thing about markets is that you can bargain with vendors and buy fairly nice things for very little American dollars. It's good to know my money is good somewhere... I definitely plan on going back, especially to see the ruins, which are rumored to be the best around Cusco!
Hopefully tomorrow I will post about this past week... It's been quite the experience!
Monday, February 16, 2009
Week 1 Part 1 - La Casa de Mariana
Well it's already been more than a week, but I'll try to keep this thing going week by week...
So my 24 hour traveling was actually not terrible. I started in Milwaukee around 10:40 AM, landed in Lima at 11:30 PM and had to stay overnight to catch my 6 AM flight to Cuzco. Good thing college students are used to sleeping anywhere (i.e. the library haha). I could've kicked myself for not having a camera on that flight because the views of the mountains were literally breathtaking.
When I got to Cusco, I had to stay in a different house than what I signed up for because the girl (whose place I was supposed to take) was sick. This ended up being a great experience since I met some pretty cool people. Mariana was my Peruvian mother for about 3 days and she was a sweetheart. No english, but really understanding and always there to help us out. I shared a room with an American girl - Lindy - from Colorado who was getting certified to teach English as a second language. She left already this Friday so I didn't get to know her well. A young couple from the UK were also staying with Mariana - Paul and Paula. Due to the wonderful global economy, they haven't been able to get jobs at home and have been traveling and working as they can. There was also a girl from Holland staying there about my age called Merel.
**Cute story: After somewhat unpacking, Lindy, Merel, and I went to the main square in Cusco called 'La Plaza de Armas' where we sat eating some Peruvian ice cream. Of course anyone selling anything was trying to convince us that we needed to get a finger puppet or fake brand pair of sunglasses or a box of cigarettes. Finally a Peruvian family approached us with a camera out. I assumed, in my still jet-lagged state of mind, that they wanted one of us to take a picture of them. But no, we being three blondes in one place must have been such a sight that the mother insisted we take a picture with her children. So we are currently in someone's photo album with a caption saying something to the effect of 'My children with the Giant Blondes'. In case the giant part is confusing, I am rather tall compared to people at home and even larger when compared to the general Peruvian population.
And so I spent the first part of my week here with Mariana and family, got settled into classes, and started to explore the city....
My last night in Mariana's house, Merel and I were watching The Notebook (in English no less and on TV) when she asked if I would want to go learn dancing with her and a couple Dutch friends, Merel and Sophie. Naturally I said yeah and off we went to go find her friends. We met up not far from the salsa school and waited for the class before us to finish. While we waited more and more Dutch girls arrived until I was surrounded by a completely different language that I had no hope of following. I think they assumed I spoke Dutch but was rather quiet?? One of them at least tried talking with me and I had to cut her off saying "English or Spanish because I cannot follow Dutch at all!" Finally we started class and there I was with the Dutch girls, a couple Peruvian guys, and one other American from Montana (of all places). It ended up being an amazing time, though we couldn't always speak the same language! Afterwards Merel, the two friends we met up with, and I went out for Peruvian pizza at Chez Maggie, which made your pizza as you ordered it ~ delicioso!
So my 24 hour traveling was actually not terrible. I started in Milwaukee around 10:40 AM, landed in Lima at 11:30 PM and had to stay overnight to catch my 6 AM flight to Cuzco. Good thing college students are used to sleeping anywhere (i.e. the library haha). I could've kicked myself for not having a camera on that flight because the views of the mountains were literally breathtaking.
When I got to Cusco, I had to stay in a different house than what I signed up for because the girl (whose place I was supposed to take) was sick. This ended up being a great experience since I met some pretty cool people. Mariana was my Peruvian mother for about 3 days and she was a sweetheart. No english, but really understanding and always there to help us out. I shared a room with an American girl - Lindy - from Colorado who was getting certified to teach English as a second language. She left already this Friday so I didn't get to know her well. A young couple from the UK were also staying with Mariana - Paul and Paula. Due to the wonderful global economy, they haven't been able to get jobs at home and have been traveling and working as they can. There was also a girl from Holland staying there about my age called Merel.
**Cute story: After somewhat unpacking, Lindy, Merel, and I went to the main square in Cusco called 'La Plaza de Armas' where we sat eating some Peruvian ice cream. Of course anyone selling anything was trying to convince us that we needed to get a finger puppet or fake brand pair of sunglasses or a box of cigarettes. Finally a Peruvian family approached us with a camera out. I assumed, in my still jet-lagged state of mind, that they wanted one of us to take a picture of them. But no, we being three blondes in one place must have been such a sight that the mother insisted we take a picture with her children. So we are currently in someone's photo album with a caption saying something to the effect of 'My children with the Giant Blondes'. In case the giant part is confusing, I am rather tall compared to people at home and even larger when compared to the general Peruvian population.
And so I spent the first part of my week here with Mariana and family, got settled into classes, and started to explore the city....
My last night in Mariana's house, Merel and I were watching The Notebook (in English no less and on TV) when she asked if I would want to go learn dancing with her and a couple Dutch friends, Merel and Sophie. Naturally I said yeah and off we went to go find her friends. We met up not far from the salsa school and waited for the class before us to finish. While we waited more and more Dutch girls arrived until I was surrounded by a completely different language that I had no hope of following. I think they assumed I spoke Dutch but was rather quiet?? One of them at least tried talking with me and I had to cut her off saying "English or Spanish because I cannot follow Dutch at all!" Finally we started class and there I was with the Dutch girls, a couple Peruvian guys, and one other American from Montana (of all places). It ended up being an amazing time, though we couldn't always speak the same language! Afterwards Merel, the two friends we met up with, and I went out for Peruvian pizza at Chez Maggie, which made your pizza as you ordered it ~ delicioso!
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