I'm so sad...We just got back from my last visit at el orfanato El Rosario. We just colored and hung out with them outside all afternoon. They love to just color. Some of the little boys were entertained forever by having tire-pushing races with scrap tires that were around! haha hilarious. I LOVE these kids and I'm so bummed I'm not going to be greeted by their smiling faces and kisses on the cheek anymore! I have really grown close to one little girl, about 11 or 12 years old, Haydee, in particular and she was so torn up today when I told her today was my last day. She drew me a picture saying "Te amo Zara! Que te valla vien!" (Which is funny because not only could she not spell my name, she misspelled the spanish, which is really que te vaya bien! meaning may you go well...) After I drew her a sign with her name and a little letter telling her I was going to miss her, but she would always have a place in my heart and I gave her my address to write, she literally wouldn't let go of my neck all afternoon telling me "Voy a extranarte mucho senoriittta!" I brought all my clothes today to leave at Rosario. I was supposed to leave just all of my clothes with the director to distribute, but I really really wanted to set aside a few that I knew would fit her to give directly to Heidi. Perhaps it is selfish of me, but there is something about actually seeing a child receive a gift and light up in person. So at the end when were leaving I ran back to the little house where Haydee lives in and gave her a bag of clothes and told her to put them in her room. She was soo excited, but so sad to tell me bye. Broke my heart. All the kids here share a little apartment like home-style dorm rooms and a little kitchenette with a little family of other children and one "mom". It's really a neat set up because they made it feel more like a community of homes than an orphanage. It is such a beautiful place. Also, right before we left I was talking to Doris, one of the older 16 year old girls, who I had helped with homework one day. I just complimented her green sweater and she jokingly said no I like yours better wanna swap? I had on my black mountain hardwear jacket that I had planned on leaving in Peru anyway but thought I might need to keep it until Cuzco and Machu Picchu because it will still be cold. But after she said that I could not keep it on any longer. Who cares if I get a little cold over the next few days, these kids wear the same ratty clothes every day. Doris especially wears the same sweater and same leopard print fleece pants everyday. I just told her sure you can have it, but she would not believe me and wouldn't take it at first saying, "Mentira, mentira! No vas a dejarla!" (Lie! like you're teasing, you're not going to really leave it!) Finally I convinced her that I really wanted her to have it, and she just lit up in shock. She gave me a big hug and a kiss and at that I left Rosario. :(

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!

So everything started to look up last night when I was dreading getting in an ice cold shower to make things even worse, when miraculously I had a legitimately HOT shower for the first time since I've been here! Ahh, soo wonderful! Then this morning I woke up feeling fine and had my appetite back. Thank God! This morning, we went to Daniel Carrion hospital. I decided to bring some of our many school supplies we have here to the hospital to give to the small pediatric ward, because the last time I went up there I noticed how awful it was. The kids are just sitting in beds in pain with literally no entertainment, no TVs no nothing! So today before we did internal medicine rounds, we went up there and handed out paper, markers, colored pencils, clay, cars for the little boys, and Disney princess stickers for the little girls. They instantly brightened when walked in with all of this, especially the moms were relieved and so appreciative to have something to distract their kids. There were a couple sweet young little girls, 2 and 4 year olds, and their moms, who I particularly talked to for a while. They had both fallen, and the 4 year old  (who was precious and so happy and spunky) had broken her leg really badly and had her legs suspended up in the air at a 90 degree angle and had been there for 2 weeks and still for 1 more week before they were going to cast her leg. Poor thing, but yet she was just as smiley and sweet as ever. One little boy, poor thing could not even talk because his face was so messed up from falling from somewhere really high. This morning made me realize again how much I LOVE pediatrics and really think this is the area for me, because I am just energized and get joy from interacting with child patients and trying to bring them some smiles, even though their cases are sometimes sad. I really realized this when everyone else in my group couldn't wait to leave the ped's ward because it was too sad for them to look at some of the kids, when I felt like I could have stayed much longer! After this we continued with women's internal medicine rounds with Dr. Yumpo, the one we all love so much. We saw many of the same patients, plus a new woman who was poisoned intentionally by her husband, awful! One of the older women, Dr. Yumpo said basically has no good lungs left because of awful pneumonia and her trachea had shifted blocking one of the lungs. Sad because he said there is basically nothing more they can do for her here and she has no financial support from her family so it's not like she can go to Lima to get better care. Basically, she is just buying time til her death. Today was the first day I heard someone speak Quechua, the indigenous Incan language. It was the 96 year old woman we saw last week who was moaning and groaning in pain. Tonight we are taking Dr. Yumpo and Dr. Suazo, the two nicest and most patient doctors with us, out to eat at a restaurant on the plaza. 

After Carrion, we went to EsSalud, the insurance hospital. Today, I was in the psych ward, which turned out to be hilarious when one of the nurses suggested we turn on music and dance. Oh my word! HILARIOUS! Another Peruvian surprise, you never know what you're going to experience here. We all were in a circle dancing to reggaeton and salsa and two of the younger girls were getting down! The men were hilarious because they are so drugged up that they move so slow and act like 5 year olds, so fun. They grabbed us and had us dancing with them in the middle. And then the crazy head nurse had the two young girls sandwich a young male nurse and then made me join the sandwich and act like I was smacking his butt in the air...She was yelling "Castigalo!!" (Punish him!) WOW they don't hold back here...hahah I guess she was trying to make it like a discoteca in the psych ward. But they had a great time. Always an interesting experience in the psych ward. 

After lunch, Lena and I went to the plaza to a cafe and got the best cafe helado (coffee milkshake type thing) that I have ever had at Cafe Grosella. Sooo good. Then just 5 of us girls went to the HIV shelter because the rest were sick, probably from the Chifa (peruvian chinese) restaurant they went to last night, thank God I didn't go already feeling sick... We just helped the kids with homework. They have sooo much homework here for young children. I love helping them with homework, especially with English. After that we just played lots of volleyball, which they love. Alex and I won the competition of who could keep the ball going the longest! haha they looove "volley". Then we taught them the short lesson on handwashing. We gave them all lots of pencils for each of them, and colors and glue and scissors for the group, since they are always doing homework, and they were sooo grateful! They were so careful to put them away and guard them. These children are some of the most well-behaved, precious, and intelligent children I have ever met. We are about to have a lesson from the med students on Health History 2 tonight and then we are taking out Dr. Yumpo and Dr. Suazo as a thank you to a restaurant we really like, Restaurante Detras de la Catedral. 

Wheww, today was a rough day. Starting around 3 am this morning I woke up feeling awful and proceeded to hug the toilet for the rest of the night til about 7 am. Apparently, I ate something bad on our excursion yesterday. I can no longer brag about being the last one standing in our group to not get stomach sickness. Now officially every single one of us has had food troubles! Ahh, can't wait to get back to American food where we don't have to worry about that. So today has been pretty rough because after last night I had nothing left in me, so I have been very weak all day and unable to do much. I think I've had a total of like 5 ritz crackers all day. Everyone went out to eat tonight, but I just couldn't do it, so Elena made me soup, which is good because I was able to eat some. I am actually feeling much better, just tired. Not really sure what it was, but you just never know around here. So today pretty much consisted of laying around, moving from my bed to the roof for part of the day to get outside a bit, and some cards, which we play like everyday! Anyway, hopefully I have no problems tonight and tomorrow I'll be back to normal. Only two more days in the hospital and Wednesday we take the HIV kids out of the shelter to a recreational park all day and then help cook for them! And then Wednesday night, Lena and I are off to Machu Picchu! And Sunday, HOME! :) and :(

Today we went on a long hike to the Huaytapallana glacier, which was soo awesome!! We had to drive about 1 1/2 hours away on a horrible bumpy dirt/rock road...We weren't sure if we were going to ever make it at first because we had to wait about 40 minutes where they were doing road maintenance once and then had to get out of the bus one time and walk up a bumpy road a ways because one road was closed and the one we had to take was really bumpy and dangerous in one section so he made us get out and then they drove the bus over it! haha rough start, but then we finally arrived in the middle of nowhere at a little restaurant where we parked and began our hike. I seriously have never been in a more remote place in my life. Peru has so many remote areas in the mountains, it's crazy! We first had to use a bathroom at the restaurant which literally consisted of a hole in the ground you had to stand over, so that was lovely. One thing I will not miss about Peru is the bathrooms, awful!! The hike started out really difficult immediately and really steep! We had a precious little Peruvian guide because we had heard you can't hike it without a guide because it can be dangerous as there are no real marked trails, which turned out to be very true. We first had to climb directly up and over a steep mountain to get to the glacier which was on a mountain on the other side. They don't do it like Colorado here with lots of switchbacks, oh no, they just go straight up, its like doing a million lunges up a mountain! We were so out of breath all the time because it was so steep and the altitude was really high. This was by far the most difficult hike I've ever been on because it was so steep at parts and because the trail was so rugged. At times there was not even a real trail, we just walked through rock quarries. Thank God for our guide, we would have never made it without him! We finally made it up to the peak of the first mountain we had to climb over in about 1 1/2 hours, which had an incredible breathtaking panoramic view. The Andes mountains are so different from mountains in North America, so so rugged and remote, not a sound around except for ourselves. We sat here and caught our breath again for a bit, which was much needed! It took us about 3 hours total to climb up to the glacier itself, they don't all it a glacier but rather playa de nieve (snow beach!). From the peak of the first mountain it wasn't as bad to the glacier, although much of it was just hopping over rocks, not a trail. Only a couple of us, me and the 2 guys and a peruvian couple that was with our tour group went up on the glacier because the rest wimped out. But our guide was very cautious and knew exactly where we could walk and only let us go on that certain area. It was unbelievable! I've never seen anything so enormous in my life. It was a massive amount of snow and glacier all over this one huge mountain ,which popped out of nowhere because all the other mountains are so dry. The peak of the glacier mountain extended so high up that you couldn't even see it because of all the clouds covering it. The peak is over 15,000 feet, but where we were on the glacier was around 14,500 according to our guide. Air was very thin! We just walked around on the glacier for a bit then I pretty much crabwalked it down because it was steep going back down and slicckk. I wasn't trying to fall into the several open crevices nearby! So so cool. I've really never seen anything like it. The only thing living up there were some birds and some cows near a couple gorgeous lakes below the glacier. The views the whole way back looking back were amazing as well. Betsy, the girl who went to Texas A&M and her boyfriend came with us. I really enjoyed them coming they are soo sweet! Good to meet some good ole fellow Texans deep in the heart of Peru! I also loved talking to our sweet guide, who was practically sprinting up the mountain while I try to keep up huffing and puffing and trying to talk in Spanish to him. It's unreal how unaffected by the altitude the Peruvians are, doesn't even phase them! Great experience, so awesome to see all the crazy different types of natural terrain in Peru. However, the whole hike took about 6 hours so we are totally exhausted now!

our team at the Sicaya Dia del campesinos festival

one of the winners of the fattest cuy competition! ridiculous, this is what they eat

poor cuy

Maite, precious girl at Rosario at the birthday fiesta, we attempted to make balloon animals

Maria Eloise

balloon sword fights

traditionally dressed woman at Sicaya festival, you see older women dressed like this everywhere, and mom's carry their babies in those little clothes on their back

Today was a fun day! We went to the dia del campesinos (farmers) festival in Sicaya, the rural village outside of Huancayo this morning and had a booth with posters and information we made about nutrition of cuy (guinea pig) and quinoa (a grain from the Andes that is much better for you than rice, higher in protein)--My job was to teach about quinoa. We also had posters and info on how to purify and filter water using bare essential resources. We also had an example and showed how to make a water faucet to wash hands and such out of a reused big water bottle upside down for those who do not have any running water. Also, we taught about the dangers of the smoke from cooking with a wood fire inside the house, which many people do here and in small houses it is even worse. It can cause damage to the lungs and heart and cataracts in eyes, and even lung cancer. It increases the risk of TB because it decreases your immune system. The festival was crazy, I think everyone in the whole town was there and it lasted all day. It is a very rural farmer's hardworking town, and so all the kids even got out of school for farmer's day. Mostly people just walked by and looked at our posters and we handed out flyers with all the info and talked to them some if they wanted. Mostly though all the school kids especially would come just hang out at our tent and google at us because we are the only white people around and maybe that they've really ever seen. Most of their questions weren't about our information, but rather about us and the US! I had 2 little boys who hung around our area for hours and they just drilled me on questions about the US, I mean they went through every animal, every plant, every type of food asking me if we had that in the US too! So curious and so cute. We got to walk around and try all the different ways cuy and quinoa were prepared. Not so much a fan of cuy, I think I'd rather have it as a pet, but they are actually really nutritious for you. It probably didn't help that they had pens and pens of alive cuys for sale for people to buy, reproduce, and eat! We also saw them cooking the cuy on open fires, nasty. They even had cuy judgings to judge who had the fattest cuy and then dressed the winners up in traditional peruvian attire, hilarious! I'm going to be glad to get away from all the nasty dogs here too, they are everywhere on the streets! And I think the cat population in our little house compound grows everyday! We probably have about 15 cats in our little gated houses area.

After a long day at the festival we went to Rosario orphanage and helped with a big fiesta for all the children who had birthdays between January and now. I think they have like 65 kids total there, so it was tons of fun! We dressed up like silly clowns with some of Elena's friends who go around and do that and dancing for kid's parties. We did games and dancing competitions and they had a huge cake and lotttss of candies. They had a great time and it was fun to see them be able to have all the fun they wanted to. We leave tomorrow morning for our glacier hike, which should be fun! Thankfully, I'm breathing a little better, so hopefully I'll make it up there!