The hospital this morning was kind of boring because the men´s surgery´s rounds went really fast and then we just went up to internal medicine, which is what we start in next week and had to wait forever just for a doctor to even show up, so we didn´t do much. It´s crazy how kind of unorganized everything is here, especially for like the med students which we go around with some, they are always just waiting for a doctor to follow too. However, considering the few resources they have to work with at this hospital, the doctors all seem very smart and seem to do the best job they can with what they have to work with. Just a more rugged, basic old fashioned style of medicine.

After Daniel Carrion, we went to EsSalud the insurance hospital and me and three other girls went to the Psychiatric ward today and I taught yoga to the Psych patients! So hilarious/challenging! I´ve never really taught yoga before, much less all in Spanish, much less to a bunch of Psych patients so it was quite entertaining, but we had so much fun and so did they! Especially the younger girls loved it, but even like middle aged men were trying to do it with us..hahaha Clare got some good pics of this. I LOVED the psych ward, they were all so so sweet (very drugged up as well). There were 3 younger girls a little younger than us, 2 of which have schitzophrenia and one 18 year old girl who I talked to a lot who is recovering from anorexia and bulemia. She has been there a month and is planning to leave within the next few weeks and return to the university. I asked her about how she felt and if she felt like she was better after her stay and she said oh yes and was very positive about it. It was really interesting though because supposedly all these girls had struggled with depression too and they were soooo complimentary of us telling us how beautiful we are and the one with eating disorders kept complimenting my body, which is sad because when we would try to compliment them they were like oh no we are not pretty...There were also some men there for I´m not really sure what, some addictions, a couple schitzophrenics. One old man was soo sweet and just crazy! He kept talking to me all about America, how many stars and stripes we have on our flag and then told me all these elaborate stories about his brother who is an engineer in Italy, Africa, Peru, and Europe...He said he is not there because he is sick, but just because he works in the sciences and his mind needed a ¨break¨...haha he was so funny. I really hope I get to go back and work with them again because I just loved them all! I also talked to Elena about maybe doing yoga at this home she goes to some for formerly abused mothers and children, which I think would be a lot of fun and good for them. This afternoon we are going to the HIV shelter to give a lesson mainly to the moms on healthy communication and then we are going shopping for materials for the school we visited last week to take tomorrow and some soccer balls. The school has some sort of festival tomorrow which they invited us to, so we will be there from 11 for the rest of the day. In the morning we are going to a new school to give the same lessons on washing hands, brushing teeth and give fluoride treatments and toothbrushes. Tonight is Clare, my roommate from Canada´s, last night here! :( So we are going out salsa dancing tonight!

Clare and I started the morning out early doing laundry (much needed after the jungle) at 6:15 on the roof with freeezzingg water! So much worse than even playing golf in the snow...I have a new found appreciation for the wonderous washers and dryers and those who do this all the time, like all the kids at Rosario who do their own laundry outside in the mornings! This morning we went to Daniel Carrion hospital and did more men's surgery rounds. Same stuff pretty much, except I saw one guy who cut his hand bad with an ax, one alcoholic who was sleeping on the railroad tracks (which supposedly is pretty common here?! crazy) and when the train came he woke up jumped up and fell off, broke his femur and lots of ribs, one of which punctured his lungs, so he has all this blood draining out of his thoracic cavity. It was pretty crazy.

Next we went to Rosario Orphanage to measure all the kids heights and weights, which we will finish this afternoon with the other kids. Elena, our site coordinator, keeps track of this over time in order to help with their nutrition. It's so precious how EVERYONE here greets you with a kiss on the cheek, even when they first meet you. And now that the kids know us they always come running to us soo excited when we get there and throw big ole hugs and kisses on us yelling SENORIIITA, so adorable!

Tomorrow is my last day in the surgery rotations so hopefully I will be able to go watch a surgery, I lost paper rock scissors this morning, so 2 of the guys got to go :( This weekend, our plan is to just stay around Huancayo and go to the Sunday market where all the artesans from nearby villages bring in all their crafts. One of the med students we met, Pierra, a sweet girl, invited us to come with her to a big concert Friday night with lots of bands and salsa and Latin dancing! Oh and I made the mistake of telling Elena that my mom teaches yoga and that I have done yoga in the past so I am now in charge of teaching yoga to the Psych ward patients at EsSalud, the insurance hospital, tomorrow morning! Should be interesting...

Last night we finally ventured to leave the house and our whole group went to a cool place with a live band and salsa and latin music and dancing..so fun! This morning back to Daniel Carrion and I had a much better experience. We followed a really nice doctor today on his rounds through mens surgery. He was very nice and was sure to explain everything more in between patients. He also was teaching some of the medical student interns so included us in all his little lectures today, so I learned alot about infections and how to classify wounds in order to know how to treat them with antibiotics or not, how much and for how long. He also explained to them and us about hemorroids and how to tell if something is just a hemmorroid or an abscess or a fistula (in English im not sure), and a lot of other random facts. We saw some more crazy cases today, another nasty anal abscess up front and personal, a construction worker who fell from like 30 feet, and someone with kidney problems who had all kinds of internal bleeding, a man from a small pueblo nearby who got stabbed by a bulls horn in his prostate area-it was awful! and more appendicitis complications. He also took a lot of time explaining to us why Peru, particularly this central highlands region, has the common health problems they do. He said that appendicitis, though it is common in the US too, is different here and usually comes with worse complications because the people who live so isolated from medical centers try to just treat themselves for a while first and take antibiotics they have without consulting doctors first, which in the end causes complications like peritonitis (not sure what this is in English!) He said that the problems of 70% of patients in this area are caused by malnutrition as well as compromised immune systems from other things like AIDS, diabetes, hypertension and other common diseases here. I talked to him about nutrition around this area and how so many people mainly outside of the city in the central highlands villages are just so isolated from water and other things that they are very malnutritioned. Sad that this ends up complicating all of their basic health problems. Anyway this morning was good.

Then we went to the special needs school which was pure CHAOS!! so much respect for people who teach special needs, but here it is crazy they have like 4 teachers total for like 25 children! And they are crazy, the boys get very aggressive and are always trying to fight so its kind of frustrating.

Then we went to Rosario and did lesson on protecting environment and recycling and played lots of futbol!

This morning we went to Daniel Carrion hospital, I am in men's surgery this week. We got to follow a really nice doctor, Dr. Suazo, in external consultations, who explained a lot to me in Spanish. We had a nice warm up by getting a full on naked man butt view and check up of an abcess like in his butt crack...freaking nasty!!! But the doctor took out several people's sutures from appendix surgery and explained a lot to us, what I could get from Spanish at least. However, I felt like I was for sure going to pass out and hit the ground and have to get cared for in that nasty hospital at one point when he was cleaning a woman's wounds from some rough surgery she had had in a rural town after a tree had fallen on her abdominal area, which was all torn up...it was nasty, and I for real had to fight off passing out. The feeling would not go away after her so I'm not sure if it was her or if it was just standing up for so long without sitting down, but it was close and miserable. I finally had to leave and find a bathroom just to sit down for a minute! It was bad, and I left my poor partner who speaks no Spanish stranded to try and understand! Weird morning, but I did talk to the doctor and I think we may be able to watch a surgery with him on Wednesday, let's just hope I don't get the same feeling or I really may pass out! Surgery is not for me I don't think...

After, we went to the nicer insurance hospital, EsSalud and went around the pediatric ward just bringing crayons and coloring books to the patients and talking to them and coloring with them. I went into one room with a precious little 2 year old boy and his mom and an 11 year old boy and talked to them for about an hour. One had been poisoned by a bad spider bite, and the little boy had some sort of bad arthritis that he had to have several surgeries on and is in the hospital for 30 days getting treatment! Or at least that's what I could understand..It was fun to bring some distraction and fun to the kids as well as the moms there.

This afternoon we are headed to the HIV shelter to do a lesson with the kids on staying in school and professions and then just hang out with them.

precious kid at the school where we gave fluoride treatments on Friday

the school that we taught hand washing, dental care, and did fluoride treatment out in a village

jungle trip! Catarata Velo de La Novia (bride's veil)

my roomie at our homestay, Clare from Canada

our group! at Catarata Bayoz where we went swimming and jumping

the road to the jungle, this happened a lot, tons of sheep!

and a llama

We just got back from a weekend in the high jungle about 4 hours away from Huancayo. Henry, our driver who drives us around to our volunteer sites, took us this weekend everywhere and he knew all the spots to go way off the beaten path. He is such a sweet little man! We had another girl who we met here at the HIV center who is volunteering here for 5 weeks with another organization from Texas A&M who came with us. We left early yesterday morning, and the drive through all the mountains and highlands and changing scenary to the jungle was absolutely breathtaking!! The landscape here is so gorgeous, but it is sad how terribly impoverished and dirty all the scarce little "towns" are amidst all the beauty. When we passed through all the highlands mountains we constantly passed all these indigenous people with tons of sheep and donkeys and llamas in the fields. Several times we had to stop for a huge herd of sheep to cross the road! It's crazy how remote some of these people live, soo far from everything! We saw some just like little hut like houses out in the middle of the highland mountains and people working the fields all over the mountain sides. Such a rugged, remote style of life. You even see little kids all over the place in the middle of nowhere herding sheep and working. We passed through several towns on the way, Juala, Tingopaccha, Huaricolca, Tarma, and then finally arrived to San Ramon, where we went to the first waterfall, like a 30 minute hike, which was gorgeous but didn't compare at all to the two we went to today. Then after we went to this weird like tourist trap native town, where some of the Ashinka native tribe live in the middle of nowhere and they grab you and take you and dress you up like them in native clothes and then tell you their story in Spanish and Ashinka, which I had to poorly translate for our group! Then they just kinda dance around with you and ask you to make a donation...then they want you to shop through their handmade crafts, kind of a scam, but kind of sad because they are so poor and that's how they depend on trying to make money.

We ate lunch at this restaurant along the Chanchamayo River which runs all through the mountains there in the jungle. It was good typical food from the area. We went by a coffee plantation as this area is where coffee is mostly cultivated and proccessed in Peru. Then Henry took us to the little town of La Merced to spend the night in a hotel. The next morning we left early and drove around deeper into the jungle for like 1 1/2 hours and then hiked up to another awesome waterfall winding through steep steps and slick rocks. But it was so so gorgeous and just sort of pops out of nowhere. Then we hiked to another bigger waterfall, with  a bunch of different cascades and went swimming under the falls and then jumped off one smaller fall into a pool area. It was so awesome! And we were the only people there at first because it was still morning. We spent quite a bit of time there, and then we just drove back and just got back. Fun, but tiring weekend. Now we still have to plan our lessons for tomorrow, and we have a new volunteer joining us tonight who has been in Trujillo with another FIMRC volunteer group.

So my internet has stopped working at the house so it's going to be a little more difficult now unless it comes back. So yesterday afternoon we went to San Juan Diego, the shelter for children with HIV, which was so awesome!! The kids there were sooo sweet and soo well behaved. First, we did a lesson on nutrition and health for the moms, which went really well. Then we just hung out and played with the kids and colored and talked about healthy foods and really just played outside and games. These kids were so smart, several of them even knew some english. It was so precious how excited they got just when we gave them stickers! Two of them, a brother and sister, I really just want to steal and take home with me!! It is so so sad though because all of these children and their moms have HIV. The moms asked us if we could come on June 29 to basically babysit the kids all day while they prepare for some religious festival, so we are probably going to take the kids to a movie in town...loooove these kids.

This morning we went to a school out of Huancayo in a very poor mountain village called Sicaya. We went around to all the classrooms and gave lessons on washing hands and brushing teeth properly. We did a funny skit which they all loved, and then we actually did fluoride treatments to all of the children and gave them all toothbrushes. We have been purchasing supplies as we see need with all of our donation money. Cool to see where our money is actually going. So sad how horrible all their teeth already are even the youngest ones at like age 4 or 5. Also I saw a lot of them had like scabies all over their hands. After this, we stayed in the older kids class who were learning English for like an hour just individually helping them with their English and going over their notebooks. So precious how much they loooveed this, they want to learn so bad, and it's hilarious to hear them try to read and speak English. I had a lot of fun really teaching them using both Spanish and English. They were so good and attentive and really really loved having us there. We stayed there from like 8:30-12:30 and we checked all of the school rooms to see if they had first aid and places to clean hands and such and the bathrooms. AWFUL! all they have is like a couple holes in ground basically for toilets that don't flush and sinks but no soap or toilet paper or paper towels. So next Friday we go back and bring them all the health supplies that we took note that needed. Then we played with them, volleyball and soccer. Volleyball is huge among girls here and they were soo good! Oh, when we first got there they were practicing a cultural dance from their region for a festival they invited us to next Friday and we started dancing with them trying to learn, it was hilarious! By the way, we are absolutely the ONLY gringos (white people) here, we have literally not met any others in Huancayo, so that's kinda cool. Only Spanish here, that's for sure.

This afternoon we went to the insurance hospital, which is a much nicer hospital where people who pay for medical insurance can go and we taught our first aid lessons to some volunteers from Peru who volunteer at that hospital that will be working with next week in the psychiatric and pediatric wards just going around bringing balloons and being loud and bringing fun around to patients! There were about 30 volunteers who all spoke Spanish and were around our age, and were really cool. Then later we went to a lesson at the Huancayo med school about the health care system in Peru with some of the med students from like 5-7, which was interesting but mostly in Spanish so difficult to understand! A very long day, but I loved this morning because I felt like we really did a lot of good, especially since we are able to see the need and fix it next week. We are exhausted and about to pass out and we are leaving at 7:30 tomorrow morning to go to the jungle for the weekend about 3 hours away, so I won't be able to have internet again until next week.