So Wednesday I went to the doctor to get round 2 of antibiotics because my sinus infection was not clearing up...I'm assuming this is where everything fell apart.

June 28th is OLYMPIC DAY! So in honor of olympic day I headed over to the sports complex for a 6km race! The course was dreadfully painful for a sea-level runner like me who had just (kinda) recovered from a sinus infection...the first 1.5 miles were uphill (gaining almost 500 feet in elevation! OUCH!) so my legs felt like lead even once we reached the flat part. That coupled with the course being long (3.9 miles instead of 6k) made for a dreadfully slow time that will not be mentioned...ever. I still managed to get second, so I got a medal and t-shirt! Totally awesome! I'm actually kind of glad that I didn't get first place, as they got a trophy and I have no clue what I would have done with it since I have that nasty little weight limit for my domestic flights here. The funniest part of the day was all the runner guys wanting to get their picture taken with the "gringa runner" which was really awkward because these people were total strangers, but I humored them nonetheless. haha!

In addition to Olympic Day, Sunday was also Pope Day, so there was a huge fireworks display in the plaza, which was amazing. These people build giant structures out of bamboo with fireworks that go off in sequences making wheels turn, levels light up, etc. It is so COOL! They also make bamboo cows that people carry over their heads, chasing after people while fireworks shoot out of the head! (Real safe eh???) Needless to say, the gringos were targeted every time by the crazy guy running around with the firework-shooting cow on his head...and we all ran away screaming! You would have too if you had fireworks sparks flying at your face! It was a ton of fun (even if it was mildly dangerous)! I was going to film part of it but unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries, so I only got a few pictures, which do not do justice to the whole scene, but I'll post them soon, promise! :-)

The past few days I've been fighting a nasty sinus infection. My head has felt like it got hit by a semi, but its finally feeling better. Totally not cool getting sick though, but I'll take it over what my poor roommate has. She has some sort of food-borne illness for the SECOND time in just over 2 weeks. Yuck! I'll take my sinus infection any day over that!

Tomorrow there is a carrera/road race in Ayacucho: 6km, so hopefully I can win...I'll let you know how it goes! :-)

My new volunteer placement is great! I'm at an elementary school in the poorest neighborhood of Ayacucho. I help the teachers with random tasks, teach songs in English (think the colors and head and shoulders, knees and toes) and play with the kids during their HOUR (yes, you read that right) recess. Its a blast and I actually feel like I'm doing something of worth/kind of making a difference.

However...The hour long recess kind of bothers me, because the kids only attend school from 8:30 (if it starts on time, which is a very rare occasion) to 12:00. Thus recess makes up 1/3 of their total time in school. Apparently this is in contrast to the private schools that have very short or no recesses and are in school until 2:30 or later. Not that quantity is everything, but I feel like the families who have to depend on the government for education here are not receiving as good of an education as those who can afford to buy their kids a top-notch Catholic school education. Perhaps this is why there is a very small upper-class, basically no middle class and a huge lower class in Peru (and pretty much all of the other Latin American countries). I mean seriously, how are these kids supposed to even dream about going to college when they don't even receive a basic education??? That part really frustrates me...sigh.

In terms of randomness going on, I woke up this morning with a slight sinus infection, so this afternoon I headed to the pharmacy and purchased an antibiotic and Rx strength expectorant without ever seeing a doctor and for under $20 (without insurance). I'm sure I'll be back to normal in no time. :-)

Today at school I had to control my laughter as one of the teachers lead the class in a song about the middle finger complete with hand motions. Just imagine a bunch of kindergartners screaming the lyrics at the top of their lungs and holding up their middle finger! haha! Apparently giving someone the middle finger means absolutely nothing in Peru, just like it meant nothing in Spain...

Weekend Trip to the Coast! :-)


Day One (June 20th): We arrived late last night to our hotel in Huacachina so I had no clue what to expect when I got up in the morning for my run. Much to my delight and surprise, we were surrounded by massive sand dunes! It was absolutely beautiful and I enjoyed every last minute of my run! After a quick breakfast, we headed out for a few hours of Dune Buggying and Sand Boarding, which was by far the highlight of the trip! I had a blast trying to actually sand board standing up, and was pretty dang successful by the last dune! Afterwards, we spent some time at the nearby Oasis before heading to the winery for lunch and a tour. The highlight of the winery trip was by far the chocolate samples (not the Pisco samples), as they were absolutely delicious. The fig preserves were also fantastic! Then we headed over to see the "witch village" which was actually kind of lame...a weird shapped palm tree in the middle of a dusty village. We listened to some kid tell a legend about the tree and then point out all the weird shapes to us. Afterwards we went to a "witch"/medicine man, who was also midly disappointing, as he wore a polo shirt and nikes...we were hoping for at least a witch's hat. haha!



Day Two (June 21st): Nazca! I woke up around midnight last night with horrible stomach pains and ended up losing my dinner an hour later. Finally I fell asleep around 2 am...completely exhausted and frustrated at Peruvian standards (or lack there of) for cleanliness. It was cloudy in the morning so we went to a pottery shop where a guy gave us a demonstration on how the Nazca culture made pottery: no pottery wheel...just straight up by hand and only one firing, not two like the Western/Eastern methods, pretty dang cool, eh? Finally the clouds parted and we got to go up in the plane to see the lines. They were totally breath-taking...either that or it was the flying in tight circles at a 80 degree angle to the ground- Yikes! My favorite was by far the Baleen Whale, because he's so cute and happy! After the flight, we headed over to the Nazca cemetery where we saw a bunch of mummies, which were all dry and crusty. haha! That night we drove back through Ica to Paracas, being sure to stop at the Plaza Vea (think Peruvian Walmart) to stock up on fruit, batteries, etc.



Day Three (June 22nd): MY 22nd BIRTHDAY! I woke up in the morning to do my long run...along the beach!!! That in and of itself would have been enough to make me happy, as it combines two of my favorite things: running and the ocean. :-) I got back to our very swanky hostel/hotel and packed everything up real quick before heading to breakfast, where our tour guide surprised me with a birthday cake! Lucky for me it was covered in carmel, so I just scrapped off some carmel and enjoyed a carmel apple along with my eggs for breakfast. Then we headed over to Ballestas Islands where we saw Penguins, Seals, Pelicans and a ton of other birds. It was a pretty sweet birthday trip! Then we hung out in Paracas for a bit...I soaked up some beach time and then we had delicious Ceviche for lunch before the long ride back to Ayacucho. This was definitely a weekend trip to remember!



Photos (in the process of uploading):
http://s182.photobucket.com/albums/x29/deearthur_photos/Peru/Ica%20Nazca%20and%20Paracas%20Oh%20My/

So...After spending a few days in the health clinic, I decided that I wanted to do something different. Don't get me wrong, I liked the health clinic, but I came here to volunteer and make a difference, not to shadow a doctor. I talked to Rudy (the program director) yesterday about changing positions, and he agreed with me that in the healthcare placements, you don't really make a difference, you're just there to observe. I wanted to go work at the school for children with disabilities, but the girl that volunteers there already made it very clear that I was not welcome at "her" placement. Sigh...Whatever, I'm not going to argue with people about volunteering. So this morning I asked Rudy if I could be placed at an orphanage, and in about 30 minutes I will be heading over to my new placement: an all-girls orphanage run by nuns. Apparently the girls are all pretty young (aka cute) so I'm super excited about it! I'll be sure to let you know how it goes! :-)

So...considering that I only got to go to my volunteer placement twice last week thanks to the strike, there wasn´t much worth blogging about. But now there defintely is...

Monday- I spent the first part of my morning working with the doctor and offered to help him fill out paperwork for a bit. However, he did not have a pen so I had to go around the clinic and ask for one. Apparently no one had one that they would let me use, so I was instructed to go across the street and buy a pen to use in the clinic. I´m not going to lie...this is the first doctor´s office/hospital I´ve been in where there is a shortage of pens. In the midst of my search for a pen I get asked to help in the kids clinic (which sounds 1000x more fun that paperwork). So once I found, I mean bought a pen, I headed back there. My job involved weighing, measuring and immunizing kids. Random side note- in Peru they like to weigh their kids butt-naked...they even remove the pony tail holders from their hair! Go figure... So anyways this mom came in with her little boy and as she was undressing him, he decides its a good time to go pee. A massive urine puddle on the floor is the result...the nurse finishes up with this patient and I wrongly assume that it will get cleaned up after he leaves. Granted urine is sterile, but it is a waste product nonetheless. My type A personality went insane for the next 2 hours, as I watched people step in the pee, drop toys in the pee, and yes...play in the pee. I miss my sterile healthcare environment...haha!

Tuesday- Again I am helping the doctor upstairs, but this time my heart gets ripped out when two girls come in ALONE. Both parents were at work (entre comillas...in quotes). The "big" sister was 9...the younger one was 3. Both were underweight and had intestinal parasites. The doctor said that the "older" sister always comes in alone...and apparently this is a typical scenario in all of Peru. I sat there and tried to imagine Chass´s little sister going to the doctor by herself AND taking care of a 3 year old. The forced maturity and the physical state of this girl was so tragic...I sat in silence for a bit, holding back the tears. Sometimes the reality of poverty is hard to swallow...you hear about it on the radio, read about it on the internet, see it on tv, but when you see it in real life it is a totally different thing. The whole situation made me sad at first, but then angry. I can take it when I see adults in poverty, as tragic as it may be, but when you see kids in this situation, it really breaks your heart. They haven´t done a single thing wrong! They were born into this situation and even more sad is the fact that they probably will never escape this situation. The problem is that poverty is such a big issue in Peru that I don´t think anyone knows where to start... Fixing a problem this big is going to take more than my 5 weeks here, which really, really makes me sad.

Today I woke up at 6:00am to do my long run (10 mi) before we left for the Llama trek, starting at 13,000 ft and going up to 15,000 ft with Llamas. Of course we got a flat tire on the way, but that wasn't all that bad. We also stopped by a guinea pig farm (yes...this little buggers are for food in Peru...not for pets), which was interesting as it was basically just a room filled with guinea pigs. The trek was amazing...the ground had the most amazing texture every as it was covered with lichens and awesome mosses that you could jump up and down on. Pancho (our guide) fed us lots of candy on the way up, including these delicious chocolate covered marshmallow things, which I plan on bringing back for everyone to try! We also had a delicious lunch! Everyone but 3 people took the horses to the top... and yes, I was one of the cool people who walked the whole way. :-) The view was amazing! Unfortunately the llamas didn't really like people, so I didn't get to pet them until the end when they were corralled up. But in doing so I accomplished my #1 goal of the trip- to pet a llama (actually that wasn't my #1 goal, but it was up there). A fun day, but I was definitely tired and in bed, asleep by 9:00!

Silly Llamas...they got all dressed up for the tourists/gringos!--->

Saturday!

A bunch of the volunteers headed out to see the soccer game in Ayacucho...Inti Gas (Ayacucho) vs. some other team...aka the dark side. When we got there much to our dismay, we weren't allowed to bring our water bottles into the game (apparently some people like to use them as weapons against the players/officials) so we had to check them into an area. Our liquid refreshments were them returned to us in plastic sacks with straws...how those couldn't be used as weapons too bewilders me. Anyways, we were pretty amused by the whole situation. The game got better when the Inti Gas team came out to the field and their mascot was a giant gas tank...and yes someone was wearing a gas tank costume! haha! The game was dominated by Inti Gas, but unfortunately they failed to score...so the game ended in a tie 0-0.

The rest of my day was spent on random errands trying to find medical tubing to do arm exercises for swimming and trying to find a pool. The pool everyone told me was the best was about 95 degrees...yuck! And the outdoor pool was closed thanks to the soccer game...sigh, I guess Peruvians have different priorities. haha!

Friday...the new volunteers and I (finally) had our second day of work. Mine was alright, I was feeling mildly helpful until the clinic got really slow. Then one of the nurses started asking me all these political questions, which are hard enough to answer in english...nonetheless in Spanish. I was trying really hard and succeeding for the most part until I got to the question: Was the US under Bush a dictatorship or democracy? Well of course the US has always been a democracy, but how on earth was I to explain that the current state of the US was due to YEARS of bad choices/legislation...and to blame it on just one president would be stupid. Granted that last straw (Bush) that broke the Camel's back was rather big, but other factors led to this situation. Anyways, lucky for me the nurse got called out of the room and I escaped without having to answer his weird, loaded question. (For those of you not into Peruvian politics, the Shining Path (think extreme leftist movement) is no longer violent, but it is definitely active in Ayacucho...which makes politics a very, very touchy subject here)

After my placement, the newbies and I all went to see the Wari Ruins and the site where South America won its independence from Spain, as well as some town that pretty much only sold pottery. The Wari ruins were pretty sweet...a bunch of us got down into the crawl space that was a mass grave quite a few centuries ago. We were feeling rather Indiana Jones like until the crawl space ended about 20 meters sooner than we thought. But it was still cool nonetheless. (History Side Note: The Waris existed before the Incas and were a highly evolved society with pottery, large cities, aqueducts and human sacrifices) The ruins were fun...definitely impressive,but the ride there was a little scary...haha!

Since we didn't have work today, a couple of us headed out around 9:00 to hike up the cross on top of a mountain nearby. The hike was a lot of fun. I talked to the guide about cars and America, and tried to explain that my brand of car is no longer made because GM shut down Oldsmobile. Then I told him how hard it is to not use a car in the use...although Coach Lutz is pretty good about this. There was a church built into a cave on the way up and the way back down me and the Army guys bought candles to lite and prayed...I asked for happiness, fulfillment and faith (in myself, others, and God...no particular order). Then we hiked back down and had a delicious lunch at the house. Later me and some of the girls walked into town and saw the national congress on the potato. I have never seen so many potato varities in my life...that fun lasted about 10 minutes, then we got ice cream, which you can get here for about 66 cents!!!!!! I went to a spin class, then chilled out for the rest of the evening...I'm more than ready to start (again) my placement tomorrow!

New pictures posted on the website...not labeled yet (I'm too tired...and yes its only 9:00) Link below:

http://s182.photobucket.com/albums/x29/deearthur_photos/Peru/Lima%20and%20Ayacucho%20week%201/

Today when I woke up to go run with a couple of the army/ROTC guys, Travis (the major in charge of them) said it'd probably be best if we don't go. Apparently he woke up at 3:45 to a bunch of people yelling and starting a fire in the street...so I went back to bed. After breakfast, we were informed that we won't be going to our placements today due to the strike. I went for a run later, because the director told me it was safe. A bunch of people were in the streets, but very few cars. I saw a few tires lit on fire and there were a ton of big rocks in the street, but everyone was in a good mood. A bunch of people were out in the street playing soccer etc, apparently even the big protest downtown was never out of control...everyone told me that people looked happy. Weird. Tomorrow we are on a strike again. The strike today was because of local grievances against the government...tomorrow's strike is a nation-wide strike against the mess that's happening in the rainforest in the northern part of the country. I think I'll finish the book "eat, pray, love" with all the free time I'll have.

I left this morning bright and early (3:30 AM...yuck!) for the airport and on to Ayacucho. The same lady who checked in our bags also took our tickets at the gate AND was our flight attendant. Crazy! One of the flight attendants was really nice...she was trying to learn English and talked to us for a bit. Her dream is to work for a big airline in America, which is a pretty big dream, so I thought that was really cool. Last night the power went out in all of Lime, which was a bit scary...apparently the last time that happened was when the Shining Path movement was going on (10 years ago), so there were all sorts of suspicions as to what was going on, especially since their a very volatile situation right now in the jungle between the Peruvian government and the indians. But I can't find anything about it in the news, so it was probably just a power outage.

I arrived in Lima late last night thanks to American Airlines´ complete lack of punctuality. Both my flights were delayed over an hour...yuck! And to make life more fun my flight that was due into Lima at 9:30ish didn´t get there until 11:30ish, add customs and I finally got to my hostel at 1:30 in the morning. Driving through Lima at night didn´t really make me feel all that comfortable about where I was staying and I secretly wished that I had just let my Dad book me a snazy hotel for the next hour until I fell asleep.

But in the morning the area I was staying actually wasn´t that bad, and neither was the hostel. Unfortunately the breakfast consisted of bread (yuck...gluten) and jam, so I opted for one of my larabars and a banana on my way to the bus stop. I hopped on a bus that took me all the way to the center of the town for about 50 cents (where is that in the US?) and visited the sights down there. I saw the catedral, both the monestaries (and the catecombs), watched the changing of the guards at the Palacio Nacional, and somehow got conned into spending about $2 for three of these cool butterfly toys that a street vender was selling. They´re actually really cool...you wind them up and then let them fly away...they look very realistic. In fact, the vendor almost scared a (male) tourist right of the curb into Peruvian traffic with one (silly boys afraid of butterflies). Yes, I´m easily amused, but I know quite a few other people who are too (aka all my friends) so I had to buy some to share.

I went for a run tonight and got lost...in the rich/nice part of town, but its stressful nonetheless when you can´t even remember your street´s name (its not my fault it had FOUR words...its actually some dudes name, thus making it even harder) and it gets worse when the streets you do know go by multiple names: ie Avenida de Roosevelt and Avenida de Panama. Okay so maybe you could relate those two names, but that´s not the point. The embarassing thing was when I stopped and asked for help from a very nice Peruvian lady, it became obvious that I was only 2 blocks from my hostel...so close, yet so far. Sigh...so needless to say the last twenty-two minutes of my 45 minute run where around a park the size of 2 small city blocks that is right across the street from the hostel. I was definitely not going to get lost twice in one night. Tomorrow I plan on running in the morning and not getting lost on my way to the beach...I´ll let you know how that goes for me...

I spent the last few days frantically moving out of my apartment in SA town and into my apartment in Dallas. I'm in love with my new apartment...especially the adorable little courtyard (it even has an outdoor fireplace for the "oh so cold" Texas winters)



I leave for Peru tomorrow. I have a couple more errands to run and my carry-on bag to organize, but other than that I'm good to go! My flight isn't until close to noon so I'll even have time to fit in a morning run before heading to the airport! :-)

The time has finally come to pack up my apartment and move everything to Dallas. Its definitely a bittersweet moment, and I'm not going to lie...I'm kind of scared about what the future holds. I'm leaving a lot behind in San Antonio: my boyfriend, almost all of my best friends, my cross country team, a couple of great part time jobs...not to mention my favorite city in Texas. I know I'll be back to visit, but its still not fun to think about. So instead of packing, I've decided to procrastinate and design my blog for Peru. I really can't wait for June 2nd to roll around...it promises to be a totally exhilarating adventure. I'll be back on July 24th, so don't cry too hard...I promise I'll try to visit everyone before medical school starts. My tentative travel plans are as follows:

June 2nd: Arrive in Lima, Peru
June 3rd-6th: Lima and the Surrounding Area
June 7th: Leave for Ayacucho, Peru
June 7th-July 11th: Volunteering with Cross Cultural Solutions in Ayacucho, Peru
July 12th-July19th: Backpacking (most likely the Salkantay Trek to Machu Pichu via Cusco)
July 20th-22nd: Lake Titicaca/Nazca Lines/back to Lima
July 23rd: Lima, fly home to Texas in the evening
July 24th: Arrive in Texas