Some Fun Stuff

The last week has been a little busy for me and I enjoyed that. Las Thursday there was a medical mission team that was giving a free clinical in Chenpen that we decided to take advantage of. We heard about it through pastor Tito whom helped organize the team. So Thursday morning I loaded up half of the kids in the van and we traveled to Chenpen. They gave check-ups to everyone of the kids and prescribed medicine if needed. They even pulled some teeth. Friday I took the rest of the kids, mainly the older ones...and Danilo. Danilo actually behaved very well, until getting back to the house. I guess he saved up all his energy for the whole afternoon and then let it out in about 20 mins. Somewhere in those 20 minutes he pee'd on another kid from the top of the slide.

Saturday I went surfing in the morning and Steve took the kids to soccer practice. However the soccer practice was cancelled he brought them to the beach to watch me surf and play in the ocean for a bit, it was a little cold for them. Unfortunately the waves weren't good so I didn't get to put on a surf demo for the kids.

Monday was a big March day. The kids had been practicing last week for the Flag Day ceremony. That was my third year in a row attending that, thinking about that kind of blew my mind. After the March we took a couple of pictures the kids needed for Father's day. Below are a couple of the Father's day pictures the kids are going to use for their school project.

Just bought my plane ticket from Trujillo to Lima, so now all my traveling preperations are finished (besides getting from Pacasmayo to Trujillo), and I'm already starting to get that bittersweet feeling with exactly 3 weeks left to go here.

Pulling Teeth

Father's day Pictures

Last weekend decided to take a trip with ALL the kids from the orphanage. We left Friday morning because the kids were still on their week long vacation. We went out to the house mother Gina's house. She lives about 20 minutes outside of town on a farm that is in a river valley. It took me two trips in the van to get everyone there and that was still a stretch. We fit about 20 people in the van with clothes and food each trip.

When we all got to Gina's house we started off Friday with a trip to the river. It was about a 10 minute walk from her house and was a great place to swim. The older kids had fun swimming against the current and goofing off on their own. While the other volunteers and I took the little kids out and swam with them. The current was too strong for the little kids to play in it alone. We took some fruit out there and had a snack, then after about two hours we returned to the house and got ready for lunch. We had come pan fried pork which was excellent. After lunch we went to a different stream which was more of an irrigation ditch but was just as fun for the kids to swim in. The little kids could play by themselves in that one because it had some shallow parts that did not have much of a current. After the second swimming time we came back and ate dinner which was a turkey from Gina's house that she killed and cleaned for us to eat.

After dinner we went to Rosa's house when it started getting dark. Rosa is a lady who goes to the church and has a son in the school. She likes to be very involved with the kids. We all slept in her living room after watching all three Home Alone movies. All the kids were piled on mattresses and I was sleeping on top of a couple blankets on the floor (not the most comfortable thing). Throughout the night one little kids kept waking up and crying thus waking everyone else up. I think we all got about 3-5 hours of sleep that night.

Saturday we went back to Gina's house and did some more swimming in the morning. Then we did my favorite part of the weekend which was return back to Rosa's house for lunch. For lunch Rosa and her uncle prepared pork, chicken and beef by cooking it under ground surrounded by hot rocks they heated up in a brick oven with firewood. It was by far the best meal I have eaten in Peru. It tasted a lot like BBQ and was super tender. After lunch we lounged around for a little while then went and played some soccer. We headed back to the orphanage around 4:00 in the afternoon. Overall it was an excellent weekend, I had a blast and I know the kids had even more fun.

Packing up the van.

Looking out from the back of Gina's house, beautiful farm country.

Swimming in the big river

Swimming in the irrigation canal

Smashed together on some mattresses watching Home Alone movies

Machu Picchu

I went on a vacation with my friend Matt Sams last week. We met up in Lima then headed out to Cusco. We had a great week exploring all the ruins and for the last day of exploration we went to Machu Picchu. Everyone kept telling me I had to go and I kept putting it off but I can now say I am very glad I went. It was definitely worth the little amount of money it cost me to go there.

In other news I have my return ticket to go home as in USA home. I'll be back June 30th around 6:45 pm. I kind of hate to say it but I'm ready to be there now. I will really miss all the kids and the house moms and some of the other Peruvian people I worked with here. But it is time for me to move on to some other projects. As a teaser I can tell you I am already in the process of working on another project here in Peru that I would love for you all to be a part of. I'll let you in on more information when I feel the time is right.

The famous Machu Pichu picture

Another famous Machu Picchu picture but with some random guy in it.

A good shot of the terrace techniques the Inca used

That altitude sign is in meters. And yes that lady is really spinning alpaca thread while sitting next to her alpaca.

A beautiful shot of Cusco. The weather was like that all week for us.

Danilo Emergency

Tuesday night Danilo had an emergency. He started breathing really hard and could not catch his breath, he was scaring himself so it just made it worse. We rushed him down to the Health Center here in Pacasmayo where they put him on an oxygen mask. Everyone was pretty worried at this point because he just wouldn't calm down and he was starting to sweat from all the effort he was putting in to breath. The Health Center here in Pacasmayo decided he needed to go to Trujillo and this time they had the ambulance ready. So I rode in the back of the "ambulance" with Danilo, Maribel, and a nurse. They had him on an IV and oxygen. About halfway to Trujillo he fell asleep which actually helped the situation because he was getting more oxygen through his nose that way.

When we arrived to Trujillo he was calm and breathing a lot better but still a little labored. They took him off the oxygen and gave him some more medicine through his IV. They said that he had to stay over night to monitor him. So Maribel stayed in the room with him and I went to Mari Ester and Luis's house in Trujillo to spend the night. We got back to the hospital early in the morning and they took an x-ray of danilo's throat and lungs. They said everything looked fine and let us go at around 2:30 in the afternoon. We decided to go to a private doctor afterwards to get a second opinion. The Doctor said it was a croup spasm probably initiated by a foreign object that Danilo swallowed (very likely as Danilo puts anything and everything in his mouth). The Dr. gave him some anti-inflammatory liquid and some steroid pills.

Danilo is back 100% and causing more trouble today, so no need to worry about his health.