Día uno

"Alpacas for Days," our new team name (as I, Kirk, have christened it) has arrived in Bolivia. After a long night sleep, we were up and rearing to go for rounds at 7:30 am. Although they weren't really interesting and the interns who run them are Brazilian, understanding their accented Spanish was a little difficult.

However, that didn't stop us from eating breakfast and heading back into the hospital for more. Four of us, excluding Elizabeth, went to "fisioterapia," with the PT Sulma. She was a wonderful soul, willing to work with our limited Spanish. She even gave Nicki a full on massage! We had one patient all day, an old lady with a fractured radius. She had a small granddaughter about 9 years old who, after a couple minutes, started asking us all about English! We taught her probably 20 words, most of which she mastered after a couple minutes practicing. 

After a nice 1.5 hour siesta, we headed to an all boy's orphanage and painted, cleaned, and entertained the boys. Despite their snotty noses, the boys were all very willing to play with the jump ropes and spinning tops that we brought to them. They were all so adorable and wanted to be spun around so much that we might have fallen over if it happened any more. 

That details a rather normal day here at Hospitals of Hope. Most of the other days to follow will be very similar in layout. Rounds, breakfast, shadowing, siesta/lunch, orphanage, dinner. The pace of life in Bolivia is ssssllllooooooowwww, so we have plenty of time to hang out and nap, which us jet lagged people love.

¡Dios les bendiga amigos!
Kirkie