Will Blaschko Photography

Will and Catherine have moved on, and as well as enjoying the Seattle weather, they have gone into professional photography!

http://willblaschko.com/

Our last night in Peru

Will and I are ending our adventure in Peru today. We’re staying the night in Lima waiting for our next flight to the states. In my last post, I know I sounded a little bit frustrated, but I'm now feeling a lot better. I was writing in the blog to vent my frustrations, but now I just wanted everybody to know that I'm okay and we're okay, and that overall my experience was not bad.

I feel like I learned a lot. My Spanish improved, I’m more self-confident, and I became more outgoing or willing to talk to people. I also learned a lot about the medical system in Peru and the Peruvian society; for example, I decided to focus on disabled and elderly people for my thesis paper. And for me the best part was that we got to work with the people and bring them services, rather than being stuck in an office and not really knowing what the situation is really like for them. We got to meet the people and we may not know what it is like to be them, but we can understand a little bit more by seeing their homes, hearing their stories, seeing their schools, and just knowing them a little bit more.

Anyways, I really did enjoy my experience in Peru, even though there were some stressful times, we also had a lot of good times and we met so many great people who made a big impact on us :) I'm also happy and blessed really because I now have another family in Peru, a lot of people who really cared about me when I was sick.

I'll be home soon and we're going to be starting the NEXT stage now. Writing our thesis, job searching etc.

Love,
Catherine

Phew: Life and Pictures from Arequipa

Well, like Catherine eloquently wrote, it's been a long last month, but things are getting better slowly, progress is being made on the thesis, and preparations are moving forward to head home. I've gotten really sick twice in the last month, Monday and Tuesday I couldn't do anything but lay in bed... I was literally in bed for almost 48 hours straight--it was very rough.

All better now however, and my stress levels are down. It's been a relaxing week--went to see Harry Potter yesterday (opening day), and somehow got tickets. Well, not all of the shows were sold out, it's not as big a thing here in Peru. Besides that we've been working a lot with our advisers on the thesis thing.

One of our friends leaves Sunday for the US, and I automatically said "I'm sorry" jokingly. Then I realized that I wasn't sorry for him, I was sorry that it wasn't us going home! I miss a lot of things, luckily we're back soon to a less stressful and controlled environment. Our days are built around "acceptable dining hours" at the house we eat at. Very sad actually.

Well, I was sick for the Arequipa mission (among other issues and being very occupied as the only translator in Dental) so I have only one album of pictures to share with all of you, but here they are!

Clinic Arequipa

Vacations to Machu Picchu and Puno

One of the few vacations I actually did take in my 6 months here (the other being to Chile for 3 days to renew a visa). Wow we worked hard! The photos are in reverse order from the actual events.

Family Tour - Lake Titicaca

Family Tour - Bus Cuzco to Puno

Family Tour - Horse Tour

Family Tour - Machu Picchu

Family Tour - Valle Sagrado

We're still alive :)

We have 5 weeks left here in Peru. We are not doing the Arequipa Eye mission this July because they do not need more interpreters, so the June Arequipa mission was officially our last mission. We our using this month to help out in the MMI warehouse three times a week, and then the other 2 days plus weekends we will be doing research for our thesis. I have done 2 interviews so far, one with Tania and one with Brian. I also did one electronic interview, with a nurse who lives here somewhat permanently, Karen. Luckily Will has a tape-recorder on his MP3 player, so I haven’t had to worry about copying down things too much. It helped a lot. Now I just have to transcribe stuff over to paper. I have a few more people I want to interview, so I need to talk to them about what times are good for them, but at least I’m making some progress, which is good.

Other than that, things are going okay. We are trying to wind down after doing 3 missions basically back to back, we had like a week break in between Colca-Puerto, and 2 weeks between Puerto-Arequipa but we went to Machu Picchu and Puno the week before the Arequipa mission so we didn’t really get to rest too much. These past 3 months have gone really fast because we’ve been so busy. The Arequipa mission was probably not my favorite. It was huge, it was all a blur really, and I wasn’t able to meet many people or able to get to know many. I got really sick, and I’m still sick, so it made it even harder to relax and focus on the mission, and the whole mission was really stressful. But oh well. I wish it was different, because I know some people had really enjoyed the experience, so I’m sure it was because I was so sick and stressed from traveling and working the past few months.

So, now we have a month to help out in the warehouse and get things ready to come home. I think we are both ready, as much as we like Peru it’s time to come home for awhile :) Anyways, it was about time one of us wrote a post :)

Catherine

Puerto and Colca

We’ve been busy the past month. In May we had two missions, with only a week to rest: Colca, which was freezing cold, and Puerto Maldonado, which was humid and hot. Chivay was beautiful, the landscape was gorgeous and the way people dressed was beautiful, unfortunately it was just so cold at night we were never really able to keep warm. Showers were absolutely the worse, because although they were warm, we would be cold and wet when we got out. It was a fun mission though, and a good group. My job here was to do Fluoride Treatment along with another girl. We went to a few schools, and over 2 weeks we did 500 children. It was fun, and it improved my Spanish a lot.

Puerto Maldonado was really different, it was hot, but mostly what was bad was the humidity. Nothing dried – our towels, our clothes if we washed them ourselves, nothing. There was a lot of rain and lots of mud and lots of mosquitoes. Even worse, they have some of the biggest bugs I’ve ever seen. It was very green compared to the rest of Peru, but I’m from Seattle, so I’m used to green. I expected bigger trees and monkeys everywhere…but it wasn’t quite like that. We saw some beautiful birds, tons of pesky butterflies, and a river otter, and lots of bugs. We didn’t go to one of the tours, and I guess on that tour you can see cool animals in the jungle but in cages…But it’s not really the same. This mission had some funding problems, which add tension in the group. People wanted to know what happened to their money, etc. It was mostly the fault of the municipality of PM not helping out, but a lot of people were upset, which changed the tone of things. Plus, once people got sick, they even got more frustrated…PM was not my favorite mission :P However, my job was sort of mixed. I was supposed to be a runner, but I wanted to do Fluoride again. We did about 200 (because we went to a big school). I also helped with interpretation for a couple of the doctors (Will pushed me a little bit and helped me) as well as Integrated Health. I think I was most proud of the fact that the second to last day, I interpreted one girl’s testimony from English to Spanish in front of a group of 12 or so, and they understood me.

We have been in Peru for over 4 months. We have a little over 2 months left, and 2 big missions left: the Arequipa Mission which is in 1 week, and the Arequipa Optical Mission, which is July 13th. We are still very busy, and we haven’t made very much progress on our research. We are only now making decisions on what we want to write about, and trying to come up with questions to ask people. Problem is, June is sort of shot, can’t interview people in June, all we have is like 3 weeks in July to get things together. But, it’ll work out.

BTW, sorry I haven’t written in something like 2 months. I takes time and concentration. Now I have a computer (thanks to my mom) and so I can type blogs any time I want.

Catherine

One More

Last album from Puerto Maldonado!!!

Clinic Puerto Maldonado - Pueblo Viejo