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.

Some things still stand out

Well I know I just wrote a blog post not too long ago and I'm not in the habit of writing one so frequently but there are just some things that still catch my attention. Wednesday my attention was caught. Maribel found out about a nine year old girl that was living in pretty bad conditions through a pastor friend in Chenpen. The pastor's name is David and he does a kids group that anyone who wants to can come one of those kids is Claudia. Maribel went and visited Claudia last week because the pastor was wanting to know if there is anything we can do to help her or possibly bring her to the orphanage. Maribel came back crying and told me that it was the saddest thing she's ever seen, and that says a lot because both her and I have seen some pretty sad stuff here. So I agreed to go back with her and visit Claudia.

Wednesday we drove to Chenpen to go meet Claudia. We drove up and parked outside of what looked to be a pretty normal street in Chenpen. We got and I was a little surprised and was thinking this really doesn't look so sad to me, it's a pretty busy street nothing terrible. We then walked through what I thought was going to be a front door of a house but it was actually a door to an alley way. The alley was about 3 feet across and all dirt with adobe walls on each side. Along this alley were 10 foot x 10 foot rooms that people lived in. No electricity no running water. The people who lived there paid 20 soles a month for the rooms. One of these rooms is where Claudia lives. We knocked on the door frame (there was no door) and a mentally ill old lady told us to go ahead and come in, as soon as we walked in I had to walk back out because Claudia was just sitting on the bed naked. I came back in the room about 10 minutes later after she had put on the new clothes that Maribel had brought for her. The room was piled floor to ceiling with junk. In order to pay for food and the 20 sole a month rent the mentally ill mother and Claudia would scavenge for junk and sell it. After I got a hold of what I was seeing the older lady offered me a chair to sit in, however it was a preschool chair designed for toddlers and there was no way I was fitting in it so I just stood. We watched Claudia open her little doll set that we brought her and at the same time explained that the vitamins that we brought were only to be eaten one a day.

After she opened her present is when I noticed the old man lying on the floor. It was her mothers step father or something like that. He was lying there on the dirt floor on top of a blanket and he looked pretty out of it. David the pastor told me that they think he has TB and they are getting him some medicine. I wouldn't doubt that he has TB because the entire house is dust, mold, and cobwebs not to mention all the trash and the pot that they use to go to the bathroom in. We asked Claudia if she might like to come to Pacasmayo one day to come visit, she said she would because she hasn't seen the beach before. I doubt she's ever been out of Chenpen. I really am just flabbergasted as to how she has made it to nine with the caretakers that she has, the mother is in no way mentally stable and the man of the house can't even walk. It's just a sad sad story.

The entire house

you can see man sleeping in this picture

Alley way, their door on the right

alley way looking back at the street you can see our van parked out front.