Skip to main content

a good Friday

Felt like I lucked out on Friday! Rochester published student schedules for 4th year and I got the schedule I was hoping for. Right after I found that out, Emily called telling me she’d seen an apartment that turned out to be a great fit for us, and now we’re super excited to move into a cool new place in one of our favorite neighborhoods. On top of that, Em’s 4th year schedule aligns great with mine so that we both have blocks of electives at the same, which means we could do a good amount of camping this fall! So lots of good news for when I go back to Rochester :)
Meanwhile in Lima things are cooling down, which Jeff and I are thankful for. It may seem blasphemous, but hurray for the return of cloudy mornings! We’re continuing to split our time between the two hospitals we’ve developed the closest ties with. This week Jeff was in the infectious disease ward at Dos de Mayo, following up with patients in the HIV study we’re helping with there, and looking to recruit new participants. I was with Hansel at Hipólito working on our report about endTB-1 and helping out with medication accounting. We haven’t gotten to see Hansel as much lately, so it’s nice to spend a week in the same hospital and be able to share lunches together. We’re hoping he’ll join us for a quick trip to the sandy beaches south of here on Sunday.
On Thursday night, we went to a soccer game at the national stadium between the Peruvian and Paraguayan club champions. Unfortunately the Peruvian team got its butt kicked, but we aren’t necessarily the most loyal fans (despite buying some cheap jerseys for the game) so we still had a great time! Last night we played a quick game of soccer with a new group, and then bought some ice cream on the way home, which we got to enjoy on a leisurely walk through our neighborhood. I really love walking around Surco at night, especially when it’s cooler out, because it’s so well lit with warm, yellow street lamps. I’m looking forward to having our good friends Antoinette and Will arrive in a just a couple of days, followed later by another close friend Michelle as well as Jeff’s brother and parents. It will be great to show them around and have their company!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Homesick :/

Mom called it. After the excitement of being in a new place and making friends, I miss home. I miss the effortless enjoyment of Emily's company. I miss my friends, the fall leaves, Olive. I miss my weekly talks with Mom and Pierre That has been hitting me pretty hard lately, although I don't mean to suggest there haven't been plenty of bright spots, too. I'm still finding my way at work, and trying to find/create a community of friends here that I can do things like climb with. Sometimes it seems like a lot of the Peruvians I meet want to go to malls and clubs, which isn't really my scene :/ So I'm going to keep looking around for friend prospects. This may sound confusing because I have my best friend Jeff with me, but we realized a while ago that we needed our own space for various reasons, including being able to speak more Spanish. We are still working at Hipolito, although this week we were asked to help out with a quality control project involving anothe...
1 comment
Read more

Will and Antoinette visit!

This week has gone by in a blur! Early on Monday morning our close friends Will and Antoinette arrived from the airport. Although I felt torn between wanting to do a good job at work this week and wanting to catch up with my friends, I opted not to go to the hospital on Monday and instead volunteer as a Lima tour guide :) We decided to visit the buffet restaurant Jeff and I had really liked back in September to introduce our newcomers to some of the greatest hits of Peruvian cuisine. Jeff and I have sometimes chuckled at most Peruvians' over-zealous insistence that their food is the best in the world (we don't agree), but really it is quite good and I was excited to tell my friends about some of the dishes we've come to appreciate. To work up our appetite, first we walked around the historic center which is an area I almost never visit because it's busy and far from Surco. We admired the colonial architecture and did a tour of a beautiful 16th century church/monastery ...
1 comment
Read more

Cusco is doooope

It’s been such a long time since I posted any kind of update! With so much to catch up on, I think I’ll focus on some of the golden moments of the last month or so :) I got to meet and chat uninterrupted for a surprisingly long time with a founder of Partners in Health, Dr. Farmer, who visited Lima for the inauguration of a new TB screening program. I say surprising because it seemed all of Lima wanted to get his attention, and yet he found it important enough to sit and talk with a group of us volunteers on a long bus ride from the outskirts of the city back to the center. In this case I didn’t mind the traffic! An opportunity to work as research staff fo an HIV-related project opened up for Jeff and I from our chance encounter with a seasoned Johns Hopkins doctor. We’re still getting things organized to start, but we’re excited to potentially have more hands-on time with patients. Meanwhile we’re also still working on our independent research project on TB adherence. We didn’t...
1 comment
Read more