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.