Jueves parte uno: Be thankful!

We did not go to Clinica Madre de Cristo today. Instead, we went to a very poor neighborhood in Florencia, a province in Trujillo, Peru. We went around the neighborhood to put medication in each house's water reservoir; the medication kills mosquito larvae to keep Dengue fever under control. In this neighborhood, they only get running water 2 hours/day so they must store water daily. It was quite an eye opening experience as I have never visited poor neighborhoods before and it really opened my eyes. I am extremely thankful for everything I have.

Got a few interesting stories from houses we visited:

1. Funny story: we were about to put medication in one family's water reservoir when we saw a fish swimming inside. The lady of the house said that it was her pet and that she has had the fish for over a year. We then proceeded to ask her if her family uses the water for daily living and she said "yes." (ew?) We therefore could not treat the water, but if there was mosquito larvae, the fish would probably snack on it all (if it's related to me and LOVES snacking), so the family would not be at risk either way.

2. We actually went to a house which had mosquito larvae in the water, so the nurse took a water sample to be tested. 

3. At another house, the owner gave us a mandarin each. I was kind of scared to eat it right away cause I usually washed my fruit first, but I ate it anyways cause everyone else did and I am still ok =)

4. One of the houses we went to, there was a patient that got a stroke just last week. She now requires an NG tube for all her feedings, but for the last couple of days, she has not been able to get any food intake as the NG tube was obstructed. Her family could not afford a taxi ride (even though taxi rides are SUPER cheap in Peru, see below for more info) to the hospital to get her tube changed. Thankfully, the family asked the nurse if she could return later that night to change her tube and the nurse said ok!

We were told to leave all jewelry, phones, cameras, etc behind so it wouldn't seem like we were showing off/well off. Therefore, I don't have that many pictures =(

Group picture in front of the neighborhood clinic (From L -> R, me, Peter, JL, Mickinsie, Marina, Lisa and Lauren)

Taxi ride home! Seat belts and # of seats in the car is just arbitrary! JL and I with other students (though they are nutritionists) in the program, Lisa and Mickinsie

So here is how taxis work in Peru: there is no meter that runs faster than Usain Bolt. Instead, you tell the driver where you want to go, and then you haggle for a price. There is also no base fees. Most rides are b/t s/3 - s/15, which comes out to be ~$1-5 USD. It's almost like a private bus ride. There are also taxis EVERYWHERE. I heard that there are more taxis than people. Yellow taxis are kind of shady, so don't ride those; not to mention, some of them look like they are about to fall apart at any given moment. I don't understand how people how the nerve to get into those particular taxis, but they do. Usually,  white blue and black ones with drivers in uniform are ok. There are also some taxis with a simple "taxi" sticker, don't ride those taxis, or so we were told.

JL and I returned home, ate lunch really quick and headed to Chan-Chan since the last day to use our s/5(<$2USD)-ticket-for-4-locations expire after today. (Because I am not creative enough too lazy to summarize, and I would not like to receive a professionalism letter from CHM then proceed to get kicked out of med school, you can read about Chan-chan here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan_Chan). I took many many pictures here, so here it goes. I apologizing for not editing pictures, it was either edit pictures or keep updated on blog, and I don't have time to do both. If you would like to see nicer pictures of my other adventures or photography expeditions, check out my photography blog with the link to the right ------>


Layout of Chan-Chan

Entrance to Chan-Chan

Description of this plaza in the following picture. Yes I am lazy =)

It was JL's idea for this pose, and I copied.... hehehe

Interesting trashcans....

Beautiful marsh land? in the middle of the ruins

I think this is where people bury their ancestors. There is a statue at the end, but you can't tell from the picture =(

We saw some mud pits? (I have no idea what they were, that looked like mini cities, so I decided to take a picture)

Doesn't it look like there could be a whole city swarming inside?

Our ticket also allowed us to go to museo de sitio chan chan. It was very small and very lame, good thing I don't particularly fancy museums anyways or I would have been disappointed. (you can read about the museum here: http://www.trujillodelperu.com/site_museum.htm) At least the souvenirs are cheap and very pretty. Speaking of souvenirs, Chan-Chan and a "certain male body part" carved out in stone as a key chain. It would have made a great bachelorette party gift had I had a bachelorette party to attend later this summer. Too bad. It was quite amusing though.

Unlike the US, I suppose you can take pictures inside museums, either way, I took some anyways

Jueves [Thursday] parte dos coming up soon! it just took too long to upload all pics into one post