Last night was a lot of fun taking our two favorite doctors out to dinner. We had a good time Spanglishing with them and they were very appreciative. Dinner here is like in Italy, unless you ask for your check you will be there all night. I think we got there at 7:45 and didn´t leave until 10:00! We talked to them more about medicine in Peru and all the differences with the US. They told us more about how there really aren´t specialties in medicine in Peru, except for in Lima. Lima is the only place where all the specialists will go. In Huancayo and other central highlands pueblos all the doctors pretty much do it all. Also, Yumpo told me that here doctors can only work 4 hours a day because the government only pays them for 4 hours a day! ´They can work more than that, but they won´t get paid. Also, they are on call 8 times a month. It´s horrible! It´s crazy how busy Dr. Yumpo is. He literally answers his phone during his rounds about 10 times per morning at least. They all do this, they will just stop right in the middle of a patient and answer their phone every time it rings! Crazy. I realize now though it is because he also does a lot more since he can only work 4 hours a day, such as HIV programs, TB programs, and other things. Also, they were telling us about how the university here in Huancayo, which is more than just the med school has closed down for at least 7 weeks because the alumni have stopped supporting it financially. So sad, because this would never happen in the US. The students don´t even know what to do with themselves. It was fun to be able to have real in depth conversations in Spanish for several hours, because though Yumpo speaks some English, Dr. Suazo only speaks Spanish.

Today was my last day in Daniel Carrion hospital. Only 4 of us made it because the rest of our group is sick and didn´t come this morning. Our group is dropping like flies! I feel completely better now thankfully, but starting yesterday several others got sick to their stomach. I am wondering now if it may be a 24 hour stomach virus that I caught and then spread...hope not. One girl does have my cold now though, I feel bad. I hate that everyone is getting sick here at the end. We did rounds with Dr. Yumpo in women´s internal medicine. One lady who was struggling so bad yesterday with most of her lung capacity gone from past TB and now pneumonia died over the night. :( We saw more similar kinds of cases with pulmonary and cardiac problems. I never got to see a surgery, which is kind of a bummer. Only about half of our group got to, but I did get to see lots of interesting cases and learned a lot about the different kinds of health problems here. After Carrion, we went to the special needs school one last time to hang out a bit and mostly just say bye. This was probably my least favorite part of our schedule because I never felt like we did much good there, but just cause them to get all excited, fight, and more chaos. They always loved to have us but it is just so unruly! It really makes me sad how poor of care they get, and how few people they have to attend to them. I thought I might punch a special needs kid today, there is one bully who is bigger and older than the others who is just awfully aggressive and constantly tries to fight and hit the other kids. Today he was no different and was even flipping people off. I seriously almost just knocked him out. haha The others are pretty sweet. Sad also because at their snack time there were several whose parents didn´t send them any food for lunch so they only got a tiny piece of bread from the school. Awful.

This afternoon I think only 3 or 4 of the 9 of us feel well enough to go to Rosario! We are giving a lesson on controlling anger and just playing as usual. I´m going to be so sad to say bye to the kids at Rosario. We have really begun to form relationships with these kids and get to know them, since we see them like every other day. I´m going to try and get the orphanage address and send letters to some of the ones I have gotten to know, because I can´t just invest all this time in them and then just flat leave and never keep in touch with them or do anything for them again!