Andre’s in Peru!

Early Monday morning, Jeff and I made our way to Caminos del Inca, a major street near our depa, to meet up with Hansel so that he could accompany us to the bus stop on the evitamiento for our first day. He pointed out the packed buses zooming by that go all the way to the stop to get off near Hospital National Hipólito Unanue: the green Chinito, yellow and blue lines whose names escaped me. And, if in doubt, we can always quickly ask, “Atarjea?” Ask one potential ride after another passed our stop, we realized that perhaps the stop closest to our place (about a 15 minute walk) is not a major one. The bus we finally waved down was sardine can-full, or, as they say here, snug as fósforos in a match box. It amazes me how many bodies are constantly moving up and down major roads and highways here. Craziness. I grabbed onto the open door bars to haul myself up after Jeff and Hansel, slightly panicked because the bus started moving before my feet left the ground. In the crowded space, an ol...

Tomorrow is Jeff’s cumple (bday), and we’ll simultaneously get to celebrate that occasion along with moving in to our new depa in Surco. It ended up being the first place we saw, and it reminded me of when we went to the animal shelter to ‘just take a look’ at some pups and ended up signing Olive’s adoption papers (she was also the first and only dog we saw that day). This apartment charmed us with it’s airy terrace on the top floor of a cool, calm residential area. The rest of the space looked a little rough with uncovered potential, but we mostly liked imagining ourselves hanging out in the sunlight (or at least the cloudlight as it is almost perpetually gray here for now) of the terraza looking out at some nearby mountains. It seems like a great place to host friends - we’ll even have a charcoal bbq up there at some point :) It was a bit stressful figuring out how to get the downpayment for the apartment. Much more complicated than I had anticipated. After many failed attempts at...

The inimitable Jeffrey Collins arrived in Lima late on Monday night. I stayed up watching this show Atlanta and reading Guns, Germs, and Steel in Spanish until he got to the apartment around 1. We were tired but also jazzed up that we had both made it. We were giddy to officially be starting our year out fellowship together, so we didn’t fall asleep for a good while. I proudly showed off my shallow knowledge of the northern Lima transport system, casually hopping onto the T bus El Rápido (that runs by our place and takes us all the way down to the Partners in Health office in Comas district) and mapped out for Jeff the major roads in the area. He got settled in at the office, met some of the staff and the other volunteers, and worked on a long ‘ethics in research with human subjets’ training that I had completed last week. Meanwhile, I chipped away at translating a couple user manuals for a pillbox device that will be used in a TB prevention project, while also browsing a couple websi...

Leaving Rochester was tough. Lots of crying on my last night with Em and early on the morning of my flight when she had to leave for the hospital at 6. I was surprised by how intensely the sadness hit me, but at the same time it made me feel good because it showed that we care about each other a lot. Mixed in with all of that, I was excited and nervous to be going to Peru. My Spanish is out of practice, and I wondered if I'll like the volunteer work. While eating in the Atlanta airport, I noticed an Olive hair made its way into my tupperwared meal, and I ate it happily. I'll miss her very much and others, too. I was reminded of how much I enjoy people watching in the airport, and I had friendly neighbors on both plane rides. Sat next to a guy on the first flight who had just broken his leg and gone to a random country hospital in that em and i happened to drive by on our way back from camping. We'd pointed it out and commented how unlikely a place it seemed for a hospital...