First few days

Well this is the first time that I have every blogged so this is a new experience for me. Anyways, I got to Peru just fine. I had really good flights and there was this little man with my name on a sign there to pick me up. My first experience in Peru was this, unfortunatly he spoke no English, and I spoke no Spanish so it was quite a quiet ride to the house. It was dark out when we were driving so I could not really see many of the sites, but when I got to the house, I was shocked. It was huge and had this really cool look to it. (above is the house)The daughter of the lady who lives there let me in, she also spoke no English so that was sort of a bummer, but she was wicked nice anyways. The next day a lady from the program I am with came to pick me up and take me for a walking tour. For those of you who don´t know, Lima is a HUGE city. It is made up of many districts and has like 8 million people in it. Anyways, I live in the area called Barranco, which is a really nice spot. We walked around Barranco and another place called Miraflores. Miraflores reminds me of just an urban city and is pretty touristy but beautiful. We had a great walk and I got to taste my first Peruvian food which was really good.

The food here is really good, I was a bit shocked to eat a chicken leg though, I have learned to be more careful with what I eat. Anyways, I walk everywhere so I have been getting some exercise.

Anyways, the third day that I was here I went out to the center where I am working for the next four months. I was sort of shocked. It was a place where the roof isn´t finished, there is dirt all over the floor and people just sort of line the walls waiting to be called. I am still not sure exactly what my job is supposed to be, but the first few days I just sort of just recorded the height and weight and the development of the children ages just born to 5 years old. Eventually I was able to tell the nurses that I was able to do both of those, so I was able to perform both of those tasks. After that, I translated the entire development chart so that currently I am also assessing the development of the children according to how old they are in months. It has been very interesting. Most of the children have been pretty normal, they are graded according to language, motor skills, coordination and social skills, there have been a few that are deficit in one area, but the majority are okay. I have seen a child with two thumbs on one hand which was sort of interesting and a child that did not speak at the age of three. Both of them got referred to a childrens hopsital.

The center that I work in is funded by the government. They have a nurses station (where I work) an ob/gyn, dental, psychology, pharmacy, and a labratory. I was also able to work in the lab. They take samples of all sorts of specimans then test them for different things. The only day I was there, I got to do a few Gram stains on blood samples, I got to see different bacteria in a stool sample and urine samples, learned how to measure hematocrit. It was definatly interesting. I also got to do a few blood draws which was nice to practice some more, although the equiptment is very different than it is in the US (as expected I supposed). Anyways so far it has been interesting, I will keep you all posted!