If your name is David Tran, I miss you and I love you.

Here’s a llama.

SLEEPY. Woke up at 5:50 and got down to breakfast by 6:15. It seems that as the week progresses, people wake up later and later. It was pretty shitty; they gave us the usual coffee, tea, bread, and jam, but today it came with a very bitter type of cheese and also peach yogurt smoothie. There wasn’t very much protein. I wish they had served something warm, like eggs or ham. Anyway I headed back upstairs, finished getting ready and piled onto the bus.

It was only 8am and it was already ridiculously hot. I was sweating in my t-shirt. Once we arrived at the community, we had to wait in the bus for 10 minutes while Alberto talked to the community leader. Then, we all came out and were about to start unloading and setting up when Alberto came to tell us that this community completely forgot that they had a clinic today and that we had no buildings to set up our stations in. So we all piled back on the bus and headed for another community on the other side of the mountain. However, to get there, it required a ridiculous drive up and down the mountainside. We were all terrified of falling down the steep cliff. On the way there, a pig ran in front of our path and we all freaked the f%ck out. We thought we were going to fall. We kept driving and the pig ran for its dear life as the bus came pummeling toward it. Eventually it moved out of the way and we arrived at the village. They had a clinic that was built already so we unloaded and set up very quickly. Since this community had a surprise clinic, one of the community members was able to use their speaker system to make a community-wide announcement.

I was doing vitals first shift so I grabbed the electronic thermometer and prepared myself. There wasn’t too long of a line, but it grew as fast as it decreased. We went through a lot of patients. One little kid kept crying as I approached him with the thermometer. So, I had to distract him as I placed the sensor on his neck to get his temperature. One woman came in who was 38 weeks pregnant, so she was about to give birth at any time. She didn’t look too big though. It was pretty amazing, since she already had a son who was 11 years old.

My second station was dentistry. It was my first time doing this in Peru, so I was pretty excited. Also I had heard that the dentist, a very young man, was pretty badass. He insisted that we call him Claudio and not “doctor” or “dentist” and spoke very fluent Spanish and a little bit of English. He pulled really hard on teeth, so hard that his hand was trembling. During a small break between patients, he talked about shots and alcohol. I think we’re supposed to go out with him as a group on Saturday. LOL. But yeah, he was pretty cool. The pregnant woman came in for a check-up and he explained to us that he couldn’t do anything for her since any anesthetic he used to accelerate and cause child birth. A mentally handicapped teenager also came in and he explained to us how he couldn’t treat him since it could put him, us, and the patient in danger if the patient felt threatened and lashed out. We went on later than all the other groups and we only finished after everyone had already packed up and got on the bus. After packing up, we went back to the hostel.

Since we had a really long time before meeting and dinner, we decided to visit the ancient ruins in the middle of Miraflores. Huaca pucllana was a ceremonial area constructed by the Limas, the native people, who lived there between 500-700AD. We arrived just in time to take the tour and were able to see all of the ruins. We were even able to see llamas, alpacas, a llama-alpaca hybrid (pacallama), and guinea pigs. The tour guide was informative and spoke good English, so it was a pretty enjoyable tour. Once we finished, we went to wait for the bus, but it wasn’t there. Since we didn’t’ have to meet the bus for another 20 minutes, we wandered around the area until we found a really fancy, high-class restaurant where we all bought gelato. Coffee gelato is delicious! We went back to wait for the bus. Once it hit 4:30, we all started joking that he left us and that we should just walk the 18 blocks back to the hostel. However, at around 4:40, he came around and we were all able to go home.

I hopped in the shower as soon as we got back, prettied myself up, and hung out a little with everyone before heading downstairs for the meeting. During the meeting, we talked about clinic and about the living situation in Pamplona. Apparently most people move to the highest parts of the mountains, Pamplona Alta, as a temporary situation in order to own their own houses even though they live without running water or electricity. They hope that it’s just temporary and that they’ll be able to save enough to move out of those areas into better ones. However, for many, they become used to the lifestyle and just live out their lives that way. Alberto said that they make only 10 soles a week from recycling bottles and papers salvaged from garbage. 10 soles is only about 3-4 American dollars. That is ridiculous.

After the meeting, we went to dinner and had an interesting mashed potato casserole appetizer followed by chicken parmesan. MORE CARBS! I quickly followed this with a lot of yogurt smoothie drink in order to get my calcium and protein. This was followed by another Wong trip where I bought more yogurt smoothie drink. We went back to the hostel and dropped our stuff off before heading to go shoe shopping. Judy asked Albert, en espanol, if we could go shoe shopping and he just laughed (either at us going shoe shopping for clubbing tomorrow or at Judy’s Spanish, or both) and kept laughing for 5 minutes. When he was able to breathe again, he gave us permission so the five girls went shoe shopping. I really didn’t need to buy another pair, but they were SO CHEAP and I’ve been looking for a pair of simple black pumps for so long. All five of us bought heels. As we were leaving, we remembered and booked it back inside before the shop closed and took a picture with the ladies who owned the shop. They willingly obliged and we then headed to the Fiesta casino.

We met up with everyone inside the casino. Everyone left to get churros while we went to the bar and ordered drinks. I ordered a Mojadita, which is basically a Peruvian version of the mojito. It tasted very similar to a regular mojito, but they used pisco in it. Eventually I got pretty buzzed and we all headed to the blackjack tables. The minimum bet where we were was 5 soles which equals about $2.25. I used about 10 soles and I lost it all, but whatever, it’s only $5. After gambling we all went back to the hostel. Some people went out bar hopping while now I’m just laying in bed typing. Sleepy time! ^^

Today was a sleepy, lazy day. I seriously slept a ridiculous amount today. After only about five hours of sleep since people were partying loudly the night before, I woke up at the usual 5:50am, got ready, and headed down to breakfast. To supplement what they gave us, I also ate a yogurt and mango I bought from the Wong supermarket. I’ve noticed that we go there almost every day. It’s like our daily Wong trip ritual. Haha. Anyway, breakfast was standard, bread, jam, eggs, and ham. Nothing special.

I was so tired that after I finished breakfast, I collapsed on my bed again and just laid there for another 15 minutes before heading downstairs. I wanted to sleep on the bus, but I ended up spending the entire time talking to one of the Berkeley MEDLIFErs. Today I did the doctor station and toothbrushing. The place we went to was really nice. They had nicely maintained buildings and were relatively clean, compared to many of the other places we went to. So once at the doctor’s station, I worked with Marla. She spoke a little bit of English and I understood some Spanish so we were able to communicate tolerably. The patients that came in had a lot of common illnesses: rhinitis, skin infections, colds, etc. There was one woman who came in with a severe UTI. While I was talking to Marla, I told her how I was interested in becoming a pediatrician. She responded in English, “You’re very brave.” I was wondering why she said that until one kid came in screaming and kicking. Okay, maybe I’ll look into another specialty (I’m kidding, I still want to do pediatrics). We pretty much worked nonstop until about noon before we switched stations. But yeah, I felt pretty bad, especially since the sleepiness started to kick in around 10am. I could feel my eyes getting heavier even as she was talking to me. I tried to keep myself awake and it took all of my willpower.

The second station was toothbrushing. Unfortunately since it was the PM shift, there weren’t too many kids left. Fortunately, the station was right by the Wawa Wasi Day Care Center, which I believe is kinda like a national program for daycare. We got to take pictures with the little kids. There was this girl, Ciela, who was about 4 years old. We tossed one of those playpen balls around and we even got to take pictures with her and another ADORABLE little boy. I was satisfied with all the pictures I took. Yay!

We packed up and left. I fell asleep on the bus. I just couldn’t take it. I fell asleep right as we started moving and woke up right when we arrived. 45 minutes of solid sleep. Once we got back to the hostel, there was a 5-person line for the shower, so I took another 40 minutes of sleep. After the nice shower and getting into nice clean clothes and makeup, I had to wait another 10 minutes before the meeting started. So thus, I made the very well-thought out decision to lay on my bed and “rest” for another 10 minutes. I woke up 2 hours later at 6:15, just in time for dinner. I completely slept through the meeting. Oh well.

Anyway, I went to dinner since I was madly starving, which consisted of a tamale as the appetizer and beef and mashed potatoes for dinner. It was strange, since the appetizer was very Peruvian, while the dinner seemed like an American imitation. I think they think that we can’t really handle Peruvian food so they’re trying to give it to us in small amounts haha. We made our daily Wong trip after dinner and then headed back to the hostel.

We headed over water park in Miraflores that night. Basically, it was a bunch of fountains in a really big park. Some of the fountains were just purely for show, while others you could play in. I really wanted to go in, but it was pretty cold and I had already showered. There was one fountain that was basically an arc of red-colored water that we could walk under. My friends and I walked under it and I ended up getting wet when someone decided to splash me T_T anyway, we just walked around for a bit until we met up with the rest of the group by a larger fountain area where they had a light show, similar to fantasmic at Disneyland. It was interesting: there were lots of different geometric shapes and traditional Peruvian dances. It was cool and entertaining. Afterward, we were all so tired we headed back to the hostel and fell asleep fast.

Stairs today. I’ll update tomorrow when I’m not dead exhausted and have time. Right now I have to try to sleep through the ridiculous partyers in the pool outside my room. T_T

EDIT - 

Sorry if this is a bit short. I’ve had an exhausting day so I’m writing this on January 4, 2012. So we woke up later than yesterday since we were having breakfast between 6-7. I woke up pretty late (around 5:45) since I figured it wouldn’t take me too long to get ready for stairs anyway. I made my way down and ate one of the yogurt cups I bought the day before. We also had the basic bread and butter, which also came with some sort of ham (that had a peppery taste to it) and some meat spread, similar to the type they put on Vietnamese sandwiches. I was just happy I was getting some protein and not as many carbs. Plus I’ll need that energy to work today on the stairs.

We loaded onto the bus, which contained both UGA, Oregon, and Berkeley people and drove toward the site. I fell asleep during the ride since I was so tired. While we were driving there, I kept thinking, “ oh this isn’t so bad!” But when we finally arrived, I looked up at the path that we were supposed to travel up and I was awestruck. It was steep and slippery, especially since it really was just a hilly area with dirt, sand, and rocks. The trek up was okay; I slipped a couple of times and was traumatized but once we got to the area where the previous day’s group had finished the stairs, we were able to walk up.

When we got to the top, the view was AWESOME. We could see the coast from how high we were. It was pretty warm, but luckily there was a breeze and the sky was a little overcast. First we started with shoveling and mixing the sand and cement. We shoveled the pile right and left again. We then formed a pool to hold the water in order to make the cement. I didn’t do much since I figured I wouldn’t be much help anyway, so I just chilled and applied a third layer of sunblock.

While the cement mixture was being made, we went down the side of the hill to where the wood planks were forming the stairs. This was treacherous. I slipped so many times and had so many life-threatening accidents, I was terrified. Once I was able to find a nice foot hold and place to stand, the passing of the buckets commenced. I have to say, I’ve developed nice arm muscles from that workout. We were basically passing buckets of cement from the mixing area at the top of the mountain to where the stairs were being made halfway down the mountain. I did this for maybe about an hour, sweating profusely, before I switched to the other line which worked on passing empty buckets from the bottom back to be refilled at the top. It was pretty efficient and we worked pretty hard right up until 12:00 when we had to make the treacherous climb back down to get lunch.

Omg that trek was HORRIBLE. Luckily, Joe, one of the MEDLIFE staff, was there to hold my hand and guide me down, but I basically crabwalked down half of that side of the mountain since it offered more stability than just standing and walking. Once we got to the bottom, I was so hungry I had a cereal bar, an entire water bottle, and two sandwiches. FATTIE. It took us about 30 minutes and then we headed back up the hill.

Once back up, it was time for us to start the second set of stairs, but we needed to transport water from water tanks to the cement mixing site. So again, we formed an assembly line, but since the distance was so great, there was at least 10 feet of distance between persons. So we had to carry buckets of water and pass them down to the next person. Being the uncoordinated person that I am with horrible balance, I splashed at least an entire bucket of water on myself while passing them down. I was completely drenched. That plus how dirty the buckets were meant that I was basically caked in dirt; that really didn’t work well with the sweat either. After that, we formed the assembly line again to pass down the cement buckets. Since I was now an experienced cement bucket carrier, I knew the tricks to help me through it. I took another swig of water, found stable footing, and began passing buckets. We took a couple of breaks, but we were working for about 5 hours, just passing cement buckets. During one of our breaks, a community member, Cleo, brought us some Chicha morado to drink. It’s basically a purple colored juice made from corn that tastes similar to jelly beans. Another member also bought us inca Cola, which is a Peruvian soda which tastes similar to bubble gum. We were pretty proud with the amount of work we did, especially since we had less community members helping us out that day, but we did way more work than the group the day before. As we made our way down, some of the group wanted to play soccer with community members. At this point in time I was so tired I just went to the bus myself.

I tried to clean myself off with body wipes. It took about three body wipes and half a bottle of hand sanitized before I switched from feeling absolutely revolting to slightly dirty. My hair was a completely different story though. Gross beyond recognition. Anyway, once everyone finished playing, they got back on the bus. Again, I fell asleep on the bus on the way back and once I did, I wasn’t able to shower since a lot of the other girls who did stairs formed a line before me. So I figured I’d go to dinner and come back and shower when there was no one there.

Went to dinner and had some curry chicken again with spicy soup. I felt disgusting but didn’t really care since I was so hungry. Nommed everything down, went back, and took the most rewarding shower I’ve taken since I’ve gotten here. I must have washed my hair at least three times and scrubbed my body at least twice. I felt so clean and refreshed coming out of the shower so I dressed up pretty nice and got ready since we were going to karaoke that night.

We walked toward the city center again and stopped at the karaoke bar not too far from the park. It was interesting and very different from those in the US. The karaoke was free, but it was required to buy drinks. This made it pretty cheap. They surprisingly had a large amount of English songs, so we had plenty of songs to sing. We were able to fit our group into the 12-person room and sing to our hearts’ content.

We didn’t leave the club until about 11:30 and once we got home, I still had to get ready for bed. Still, it was horrible since people were partying by the pool right outside our room and playing really loud salsa music until 2:00am. I was so exhausted that I just slept through it all.

Woke up at 5:30. So proud of myself! Got ready really fast and headed downstairs for breakfast. Today’s food was pretty abysmal. I know I shouldn’t be complaining because I’m just some spoiled American kid and I’m sure the women were working as fast and as hard as they could to make us food at that ungodly hour. All we had though, was white bread with jam and half a tamale made from corn and olives. That, plus a little of apple-guava juice and a gulp of coffee was supposed to last me until lunchtime.

A little more dawdling and we loaded onto the bus. It was confusing at first since we had 5 buses. 2 buses per group (UGA versus Berkeley) and one stairs group bus. The stairs group was going to another village in Pamplona that was in desperate need of stairs due to their hilly living conditions. In order to alleviate that, we were helping the community build stairs. I’m doing stair building tomorrow, but today I was to do gynecology for the first shift and vitals for the second shift.

There was a lot of delay today in the morning, especially since we didn’t have enough buses. We got to the MEDLIFE office all loaded up in two buses and met the other ones there. Like in Riobamba, the MEDLIFE office was on the third story of a residential building, so we made an assembly line and passed all the supplies for two clinics and loaded up the bus. Once finished, we separated into UGA vs Berkeley vs Stairs. We drove through the city and into Pamploma. We stopped at a square just on the outskirts of the city and unloaded from the truck. We met the eight doctors and began to unload the buses and assemble the tents. Since I was helping with the obstetricians, I helped them set up the examination table and set out the supplies. Once we finished, we decided to help doctors set up their massive tent since they were having some trouble. TEAMWORK! We finished and headed back to the building housing the obstetricians. We talked to them for a little bit, asking them questions about their specialty, what we could help with, and miscellaneous things. I could feel my Spanish returning, since I could understand more or less what they were saying. One of the doctors noticed that I could understand and translate to the other girls, but couldn’t really respond. We got two patients and were able to observe only two Pap smears and breast examinations before we had to shift to our afternoon shifts since we started late and clinic was pretty slow.

I went over to vitals and volunteered to take the temperature for patients. They had this awesome thermometer thing where you stick the sensor to the patient’s head and it measures their temperature in a few seconds. It was a lot more efficient than the oral thermometers. Judy took the patient’s weight and height, I took their tempuratura, and Tabia took their blood pressure if they were over 16 years old. We went through a lot of patients and things began to slow down a bit. My Spanish just kept improving. We got to talk to Alberto, the MEDLIFE head coordinator, for a little bit. He’s pretty cool and funny. At vitals, we saw two ADORABLE babies. One, Samir, was just 9 months old and positively scrumptious? LOL I’m not really sure how else to describe him. Another bebe, Valentino, was dressed up in a frilly dress. She was so quiet and well-behaved; I couldn’t help but hold onto her little hands as her mother went through all her examinations. During my lunch break, I walked around and passed out sandwiches to the doctors and professionals. While I was on the bus, one of the kids climbed on the bus and was being really mean to one of the girls. He pushed her sandwich from the bus onto the sand. After eating a quick lunch of PB&J and oreos (HEALTHY!), we finished up packing up all the clinic supplies. The same little kid also threw sand into Cham’s face and tried to spill water on Ben. Trouble maker. Anyway, we got back onto the bus and rode back to the hostel. We got back around 3:15ish, rested, and headed to Wong to get snacks. We got a lot of produce, yogurt, almonds, and chips to snack on, especially since rations are so meager. We chilled for a bit before we had our MEDLIFE MEDICINE meeting.

During the meeting, we just discussed any problems we had, questions, improvements, etc. We also discussed the situation of medicine in Peru. Alberto and Sophia talked about the medical situation in Peru. According to them and from what I understood from what they said, everyone living in poverty conditions, such as in Pamploma, have access to a highly under-staffed clinic meant to serve over 10,000 families. They also have universal healthcare that they can apply for using their government ID. The problem, however, is that oftentimes citizens don’t know about the health insurance or that they even need a government-issued ID card. For those who don’t have this ID card, they’re not considered persons. I remember driving back from Pamploma and seeing a hospital, located outside, with at least a hundred people waiting for attention. It was strange that their hospital resembled a train station, located on the median between two highways. After the meeting, we headed to dinner at a local restaurant about two blocks away. We ALL tried fitting into the restaurant and failed. Some of the people from the stairs project came back during the meeting and they were EXHAUSTED. A lot of them had to stop to shower before coming to dinner and came late. Dinner was decent. They gave us this purple-red colored juice that according to Reina is made from corn. I don’t know what it’s called. We also had an appetizer consisting of cold boiled potatoes, cheese sauce, and a hardboiled eggs. I was so happy for the egg. YAY PROTEIN. For the main course we had something resembling curry chicken which was PERFECT and curry rice with vegetables.

After dinner, we all went back to the hostel and hung out for a little bit before meeting up downstairs and heading to the city center. It was the same place we went to for dinner on Saturday and had La Lucha. We walked round the park, taking pictures at the cathedral and visited a local flea market. When I first walked in, I saw the CUTEST LLAMA SOUVENIER EVER. I wanted to get it for Derrick since he asked me to bring him back a llama right before I left for the airport. Too bad it was 30 soles and I didn’t have enough. I walked around some more and bought a few souvenirs for my roommates and best friend. I figured there would be plenty of time on Saturday at the market in downtown Lima, which we were supposed to visit, to buy stuff for Derrick, my parents, and David.

Sophia directed us toward a well-lit area on the other side of the park and we walked in. Immediately we were bombarded by people trying to guide us into their restaurants and bars. We found a bar and went inside. To our surprise, we found a group of Berkeley kids already inside so we hung out for a bit, danced, and partied. I had a Peruvian guy ask me to dance and I was straight up like, “psh no.” I’m a good girlfriend. LOL. So we all danced for a bit and left so we could keep looking around. We walked around the square, found a karaoke place, and walked back to the meeting place to meet Sophia. We brainstormed some places to visit over the weekend while waiting for other people in our group to show up. Later, we went to Bembos, which is the Peruvian equivalent of McDonalds, and all ordered ice cream cones. I got a ChocoBembos, which is basically soft-serve in a cone dipped in chocolate syrup. YUM CARBS. I reasoned that if I was going to do stairs tomorrow, I should stock up on energy.

Anyway, after Bembos, we walked back to the hotel and here I am now. I pretty much power-walked back before any of the other girls could in order to reserve the shower for myself. MUAHAHA. No I really did feel gross after more than 24 hours of not showering. All in all, today was interesting. I’m dreading tomorrow, especially from all the horror stories of near-death falling experiences, bruises, cuts, and sunburns. Their advice was to bring plenty of water and lather on plenty of sunblock. They also suggested pushups but I can’t really do that. Oh well, STAIRS BRING IT ON.

So today started off late. I tried to wake up at 8, but that didn’t work out. So I got up at 9, got ready, and went downstairs for breakfast. A lot of the UGA people were downstairs already so I sleepily headed down. Breakfast was similar to what we had every day in Ecuador: jam, butter, bread, eggs (with ham), coffee, and tea. I made a beeline for the coffee and poured 90% of the small container into my cup, added milk and sugar, and drank that shit. “It’s weird that this coffee is cold,” I thought. More people woke up and joined us. Todd sat down next to Judy and I and Sophia joined us shortly after. Sophia taught Todd how to drink the coffee. Apparently what was in the small container was coffee extract and extremely CONCENTRATED. You were supposed to add a little coffee, hot water, and milk and sugar. At this point, I’m realizing I just drank the equivalent of 10 cups of coffee in about 5 minutes. I keep eating my bread and eggs but start to feel really awake. I sat down talking to people for another 45 minutes and headed upstairs to get ready for the day’s activities. At this point, I start feeling sleepy again. Now I know for SURE that I’m developing caffeine tolerance.

Amparo, one MEDLIFE staffer, takes us to this shopping mall and plaza on the cliffs overlooking the beach. The view was AMAZING and BREATHTAKING. We wandered around trying to find a place where we could exchange money, but there was nothing open. We cleared Starbucks out by trying to exchange our dollars for soles. Since we couldn’t find anywhere that was relatively inexpensive (it was a tourist trap) and that took American dollars, we had to eat at TGIF. Horrible. We’re in a foreign country and we’re eating at TGIF. Still, given the circumstances (we had no soles and needed to go to a place that would exchange with us), it was whatever. We then took more pictures and headed back to the hostel.

At the hostel, we pretty much just hung out for two hours by the pool since it was so hot. It was nice just chilling and recuperating from our “stressful journey.” At around 4:30, we started our meeting, which divided our enormous group into Berkeley + others versus UGA + others. It was self-explanatory; they talked about what to do at stations, what stations we were assigned to, etc. They also went over their safety policies and how we were not allowed to go out without a chaperone. Everything was much stricter than in Riobamba.

After the meeting, we hung out in the lobby and played cards. I taught people how to play German (also called Shithead apparently) along with Big 2 and Egyptian War. I won Egyptian War :) and they also played spoons while I looked at a map of Miraflores and looked for places we could explore. Afterward, we got Papa John’s pizza for dinner. It was uneventful and not very delicious. I’ve eaten SO MANY CARBS since this trip began. After dinner, I took my shower, which was a lot better than the one the night before, and sat down to type out my journal and just relax for a bit. I was pretty tired so I turned in for the night after.

I’m so amazed by how different Lima and MEDLIFE in Lima is from Ecuador. Everything in Ecuador was much more relaxed and less structured; we could go out whenever we wanted and clinic wasn’t as organized. We didn’t’ get an orientation or anything of the sort. In Lima, there were more MEDLIFE staff and everything was organized. I can’t help but keep drawing comparisons between Ecuador and Peru, even though I know I probably shouldn’t.

December 31, 2011

Flight at 12:45am. Of course. I was pretty upset thinking that I would be spending the night on a plane to Peru, but that didn’t turn out to be true. The first half of the plane ride was uneventful. Basically, I spent the time watching Kevin Hart, trying to sleep, and listening to more Adele. Four hours of that. I was pretty bored. We got to San Salvador and luckily, we found out we would be on the same plane to Lima. We waited at the gate for about an hour and boarded again. Fortunately this flight wasn’t as booked as our previous one, so we were all able to sit relatively near one another. But that was a little pointless since the extra space made it more conducive to sleeping. I knocked out for the entire four hours. Once we landed in Lima, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. My Spanish was still really rusty so it took me a while and a few “Que?” questions to get back into the flow of things. I didn’t have to go through customs since they do a random customs check. We met up with Alberto, one of the MEDLIFE staff and rode taxis to the hostel.

The taxi ride to the youth hostel was uneventful, but breathtaking. Driving from the airport, I saw a lot of things that were reminiscent of Ecuador. The buildings had similar designs and were painted in the same colorful way. We wove in and out of the city and finally after a series of sketchy-looking alleys, we found ourselves along the coast. The sight was amazing. Since its summer in Peru right now, the sun was shining and the sky was clear. We drove along the coast for a while, seeing different shops, restaurants, hotels, and even a place surrounded by fireworks in preparation for the night’s celebrations. We then entered the city again, arriving in Miraflores, and stopped at our hotel room. Once we got there, we all unpacked out of the car and got in.

The hostel was nothing like what I expected it to be. I was expecting something really shady and not clean at all. I was taken aback by the Christmas decorations that were still up and the really warm atmosphere. We all checked in, and it turned out that I was staying in the room with 12 other Berkeley girls. I was one of the first girls to get there so I quickly reserved my bunk and passed out for a little on my bed.

Later, Sophia, one of the MEDLIFE staff, took us to Wong to buy supplies. Wong (funnily named for a business in Peru) is similar to Walmart: they have electronics, groceries, etc. I bought some water and miscellaneous hygiene supplies. I got some money exchanged from that; we then headed back toward the hostel and got some directions for dinner places. Alberto suggested La Lucha, a supposedly delicious place that made the “best sandwiches in the world.” So we, along with some other girls from NY area that had already arrived, walked toward one of the central districts. It was a bustling place lined with more and more shoes and clothes shops. I don’t know if it was because it was NYE or if it was because it was just always busy. Funnily, we discovered a bunch of casinos like “Atlantic City” and “Fiesta,” giving Miraflores a very Las Vegas-y vibe. We got to this big park surrounded by both Peruvian and American restaurants and wandered like lost children until we finally found La Lucha.

We were all a little apprehensive to order initially, especially since the line of cashiers behind the counter looked so intimidating. Fortunately one of the cashiers spoke a little bit of English so we were able to order and get our food. It took a while, since they wouldn’t take any crumpled or ripped American dollars. It was a bit of a hassle to find a crisp new bill, but we later found out that it was because the exchange rate for them is lower if they try to exchange a damaged bill for soles.

We found a nice circular, tiered, bench on the park grounds, sat, ate, and people-watched. There were, strangely, a lot of wild cats wandering around. Two adorable black kittens even came and sat near us while we ate. We finished and explored the park. We did the usual tourist-y stuff and took pictures at the cathedral and fountain. We stopped briefly for some shoe shopping and an ice cream break and made our way back to the hotel.

Once here, we planned to go down to the beach around 10 to watch the fireworks, but one MEDLIFE staffer said we couldn’t leave the hostel after 10:30 since it was dangerous, especially on NYE. I was ridiculously upset by this; especially since at this point I was cranky from the lack of sleep but also hoping I could start off the year right. We are in Peru, aren’t we? Why can’t we celebrate? So I was starting to get pretty grumpy at this point and I complained a bit to David online. We were ridiculously bored, but it got better when we ordered Pizza Hut, pigged out, and decided to buy some beer from the hostel’s stock and went on the roof. Some Berkeley brigaders who had gotten to Peru a few days earlier had bought fireworks so we lit some fireworks on the roof. The hostel staff was kind enough to bring out a prepared set of balloons and crazy hats / masks. I donned a pink masquerade mask and we lit a bunch of fireworks on the roof. It wasn’t too bad after all, but I really started to miss David since I wasn’t able to spend this NYE with him. They opened up a dance floor in the hostel lobby and made us some shots. It was strange, a  combination of lemonade, vodka, and a shot of chili sauce in each. They were pretty delicious though. I had two and people began talking about how my face was turning red.

At this point I was ridiculously tired, so I headed upstairs to shower and to my embarrassment it turned out the pink masquerade mask had left pink ink marks all over my face that people were mistaking for Asian Glow. T____________T I was mortified. I tried scrubbing it off and was able to get most of it off, but some of it remained. I decided to turn in for the night and tried to sleep over the music that was raging downstairs.

At around 2:30am, the rest of the people came. They woke us up and we weren’t upset at them, but at the fact that they were still partying and making noise downstairs. They were playing the music and partying way until 4:30. I was EXTREMELY grumpy at this point. Girls coming in and out of the room kept leaving the door open as well. I wanted to punch someone in the face. I’m usually a pretty passive person, but if you do ANYTHING to disrupt my sleep I will break you.

All in all, it was a meh day. There was nothing exciting about it. I just thought about how DIFFERENT Peru was from Ecuador, not only in terms of the city, but also in terms of how MEDLIFE is structured. Everything is more structured and controlled. I was expecting everything to be a lot more relaxed, like how it was in Riobamba. Well who knows, maybe it’ll get better tomorrow?