The mayor and a glacier

Well well where did I leave off last?? Thursday: The end of my week at the hospital ended well. I went back into the pediatric unit and was able to assist the main nurse in giving breathing treatments to many children. Like i have said before many of these kids are admitted for respiratory problems or infections. This same day I listened in on rounds with the doctors and I was able to see something interesting I had never seen before. This child had a paralytic ileus. This pretty much means that they child had a bowel that was non functioning. On an x ray you could see that large amounts of air that had been collecting in the abdomen. That was quite the site to see. This same night all of the volunteers were invited over to Eli and Netos house for pisco sours and karaoke. Eli put on a show and taught all of us how to make pisco sours which is the national drink of Peru. Pisco is a type of liquor that is made of grapes... I think. It tastes pretty similar to tequila. Anyway a pisco sour is made up of water, lime juice, sugar, egg whites and of course pisco. Pretty simple if you ask me. I will have to try to bring it back into the states. People were jamming out to karaoke that Eli and Neto set up for us. All of the girls had a pretty great jam session to some Justin Bieber songs and of course I had to end the night with my go to karaoke song.... Sweet Caroline. Neto taught us how to play his very own drinking game at his kitchen table that I had heard a lot about. It consists of rolling a dice and based on which number you roll you either have to drink yourself or the person to the right or left have to drink or you can order someone to drink. If you have to drink twice in a row then you get to make up a rule. It was a blast!! This evening was also a send off party for one of our coordinators Tyler. We have a running joke that Tyler was "dad" and that Michael is "mom". Now that Tyler is gone we say that dad has left on a business trip and we are stuck at home with mom. Hah only love Michael. Tyler was a great coordinator and we miss him mucho. ohh I forgot one crucial part of the evening. Michael was challenged to eat 100 mini picarones which are those delish donuts. This had to be done before Tyler left. It was quite the event. All 15 or so of us headed over to a near by cafe and ordered up 100 picarones. It was quite the challenge... He ended up eating only 50 which was still very impressive.
Friday: After a roudy night we slept in and two of my other friends and i decided to hike torre torre again, which is the hike that the group did when we first arrived in Huancayo. It is a beautiful hike that is not too difficult but gets you out and active. When we came back home we were informed that we would be having dinner with the mayor of Huancayo. Whoa what an honor. We all got in our fanciest outfits that we could put together aka jeans and cardigans and we were off. We ended up in what we think was the mayors office and they served us an intersting meal consisting of potatoes (duh), dried and salted corn, onion salad, and a very tough meat. It was funny to try and keep out composure as we were trying to saw away at this meat that was impossible to eat. Needless to say after the meal we were still hungry. The mayor showed up after we had all eaten. He was dressed very casually and had a hat on that looked like the traditional Peruvian woman's hat. He was very nice and very grateful for all of our work in his town. He recognized all of us individually and gave us gourd like keychains that said sustainable Junin on them. Junin is the state that huancayo is located in. After the dinner we headed over to eli and Netos for banana crepes. Yummy if one dessert wasn't enough we headed to
Archie's for some more postres (pastries) and sent Tyler off to lima. We all packed up our backpacks and went to bed early because the next day we were hiking a glacier!!
Saturday: whew! We were all up early and got on the bus for the hour and a half ride to the glacier. This is one of the most difficult hikes I have ever been on. It wasn't that it was a physically tiring hike but it was extremely hard to breathe. At the end we were almost at 17,000 feet!!!! When we were getting closer to the actual glacier I would hike about 50 feet and have to stop and take a break just to breathe. How do the people hiking mount Everest do it? We were very lucky because we were blessed with a clear and beautiful day. There was not a cloud or any fog in sight. Being on the glacier is now in the top 5 most beautiful places I have ever been. It was pretty amazing. Pictures to come. Once we were on the glacier we attempted to use an icepick to get up some snow covered hills which ended up being very difficult. So we just decided to open up all of our snacks and have a picnic on the glacier as some of the others explored. Then we grabbed our windbreakers and sledded to the bottom of the glacier. After an easier hike back to the bottom of the mountain we enjoyed a well deserved lunch. Some had lamb soup and others such as me had trout. Yum! It really hit the spot. We were all tired and cold and this point. During our meal these young peruvian woman came up to us and asked to take pictures with us. This happens quite often when you are the only white people in town. It was flattering at first but they started going crazy and asking to take individual pictures with some of the guys. We eventually had to politely tell them to leave. It just so happens that the bus of these crazed peruvians happened to leave at the same time as our bus. The entire way back to huancayo they were driving up next to us and still trying to take more pictures and waving at us. One girl even had her head out the window and was screaming. All of us in the bus were very confused. What was all they hype about? We aren't that cool. Haha that night we tried out a new bar (can't remember the name) they had a traditional Peruvian band there that was really fun to listen and dance to.
Sunday: (dooms day) our goal for the day was to get ground beef for the evening because we had big plans to make an authentic Mexican dinner at Eli and Netos house. Around noon we ventured out to get some lunch (chicken, papas fritas, and inca cola =perfection). Then we started walking through the markets headed to the famous meat market. On the way there we stopped at the flower market and as steph and I were admiring the roses a kind woman gave us each a rose. We got to the meat market which I didn't last long in. There were dead animal parts everywhere and even live animals in cages. It was quite the site to see. I didn't like it. They ended up getting the ground beef in the market. We started to head home and in order to do that we need to walk through the market some more. Heather and I decided to stop at a cart for cookies. While I was deciding which one I wanted some crazy man came up to us and started talking nonsense. We ignored him. As I was about to pay my wallet was suddenly swiped out of my hands. I screamed and turned around. There were hundreds of pieces of paper everywhere and I could not tell which direction This robber had gone. I was scared out of my mind... Someone had just stolen my wallet that had everything in it. My Spanish speaking lifesaver and friend michelle found a police officer and the cop tried to help us out was it wasn't of much use. As we started waking home someone threw my wallet at heather. It had everything left in it except for the 40 soles worth of cash that I had in there. Which is about 18 American dollars. I am so so so lucky that some nice person out there decided to throw my wallet back at us. Lesson learned. Don't carry around a lot of cash and be very cautious in the market. After being a bit shaken up for the rest of the afternoon we cooked our Mexican feast. And a feast it was indeed. We all helped out to chop up veggies and prepare the meal. It was so good. We were all so so so happy by the end. Eli and Neto tried our tacos and loved it too. It was their first time eating mexican food.
Monday: today I ventured back to the Huancan clinic with my friends to show them the ropes before I will go to a new clinic tomorrow. The main highlight of my day was that there was a school that came to the clinic so that the children could be weighted and measured to evaluate their nutrition. A lot of the children were with their parents and needed vaccinations. That means us volunteers were able to give shots today. Woo. Some of these kids were crazy like kicking screaming and crying. It took about four of us to hold down some of these kids. I was lucky enough to be able to give five shots to some of these crazy kids. It was a really col experience to be able to vaccinate children today. It was a great day today filled with a lot of learning experiences. Now off to eat some dinner and pick up my laundry at the lavanderia (favorite Spanish word to say)
xoxo