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!