These past couple of weeks has been absolutely amazing. It is hard for me to believe that I left the US only a little over a month ago. It feels like I have been here a lifetime and I feel more and more at home here with each passing day. I have truly found my niche within the many projects that our volunteers do here. My favorite days are the ones spent in the hospitals shadowing the Obstetrician/Gynecologist in the morning and hanging out with the medical interns in the afternoon. My relationships within the hospital are growing quickly as I am becoming better and better friends with the medical interns. I have also formed a great relationship with the Gynecologist, Dr. Ricaldy, who now expects to have me observe him daily and seeks me out when I am not waiting in his office in the morning. Dr. Ricaldy is also head of the hospital so I am learning more and more the amount of work that goes into running such an organization. When I am not in the hospital I like to spend my mornings at Zapatitos loving on those sweet boys and learning innumerable lessons from them. I am learning that it takes more than a home to heal childhood wounds and hence I am learning to be patient with God and trust in his healing powers.

I feel so settled here and have already begun to dread leaving. I know that there is so much at home and school to look forward to but I feel so much of my heart settling in to stay. I am not sure when I will return here but I know that I will eventually. I have been planning to take a year off after undergrad before going beginning Medical school and I will hopefully be able to return here at the beginning of that year for at least two months and hopefully more. I just love the Bolivian lifestyle. Their relaxed time schedule, their never-ending hospitality, and their work ethic. These things bring out the best in me and I am going to be very sad to lose these influences in my life. In the meantime, I am going to try to enjoy my last week and as much as I can and to soak up as much of the Bolivian culture as I can.

PS Thank you Myvy Ngo for that last post. Miss you!

Llamas, Alpacas, and More!

Today I not only took a picture with a llama, but I also kissed one and spit on one. It was crazy but so awesome. By the way the Westmonters are so darn AWESOME!!! I'm going to go eat a llama now! Peace yo!

When Invisible Children Sing

     I would really really really really really love it if any of you have free time if you would read the book When Invisible Children Sing by Dr. Chi Huang. It is about street children in La Paz and so much of it is really on par with the things I've seen and experienced being here. It not only perfectly captures the Bolivian culture but also so accurately depicts the lives of the kids living in the orphanages that I am working in and especially the lives of the people living in the plaza. Multiple times while reading it I have been brought to tears because it so perfectly matches the things I have witnessed.
     While working at the orphanages and talking to the teenagers in the plaza I have heard some of the most heart-breaking stories. One of the little girls, Ruth, who lives at CDA 1 is there because her mother is in jail for repeatedly trying to sell her. The worst part is that when her mother finishes her 3 week stint in jail Ruth will be returned to her. One little girl is called Sustantivo meaning survivor because her parents threw her out of a window in attempt to rid themselves of her. The arms of the teenagers in the plaza are unabashedly covered in scars and their skin boasts of untreated burn marks from lighters. The boys at Zapatitos just want to be hugged and touched and loved. Upon arriving there they all climb on you and if you sit down on the ground you are ambushed by a dozen boys who want to sit in your lap or hold your hand. When one little boy got hit in the face with a ball and was crying I kissed his forehead and he instantly stopped crying in surprise. The look he gave me led me to believe that he had never experienced this type of affection before.
        I ache so deeply for these kids who grow up with such little resources yet such big hurt. As I'm sure everyone who has spent time in orphanages has experienced, I am having to learn to feel these things yet to not let them destroy me. To let myself be molded and matured yet not hardened. To continue to trust fully in the Lord while still questioning Him about the existence of this hurt in the world. And most important of all, being an avenue for God's grace so that each and every one of these kids can feel loved even if only for the four hours a day I am there. I have to trust that the Lord is using me and that I am fulfilling his purpose because otherwise it feels all too cruel to be yet another temporary presence in these kids lives and yet another person who will ultimately leave them. It is all this and more that daily runs through my head and daily I am so grateful for my faith in God because with this faith I am free. I am free to offer these hurts to Him, and to know that I could never be enough to heal the aches and pains of these children, only He is. So, with this knowledge and faith I know that my only responsibility is to daily show up and give Him my best and the more I trust in Him, the more effective I can be.

El Lago Titicaca

            This has been a crazy but amazing week. During last weekend I traveled to the tiny town of Copacabana, which is on the shores of Lake Titicaca and we stayed at a really nice hotel right on the lake for the equivalent of 7 American dollars. Sunday we took a two and a half hour boat ride out to Isla del Sol and hiked from the North end to the South end, about a two-hour hike. It is so incredibly gorgeous there, the Andes sprawling right behind this giant body of water (about 8,000 square km) will take your breath away. The bus ride to Copacabana from Cochabamba took in total about 12 hours and took us straight through La Paz. La Paz was this crazy, huge, sprawling city that just emerged out of nowhere. It is the Parliamentary capital of Bolivia while Sucre is the traditional capital so it was interesting to get to see such an important Bolivian city.

Being in Bolivia even furthers my love of traveling. I can’t imagine a life that didn’t involve seeing the world. Every time I get a taste I just want more and more. I love the people that I meet when I travel and I love hearing their stories and their lives. Just today I spent two hours talking with a medical intern from Brazil and hearing about a life so different from mine absolutely fascinates me. We had to speak in Spanish the whole time because his English phrases were limited to “Hi my name is” and “How are you?” and my Portuguese is limited to none at all (although he did teach me how to say Christmas, which seems like an odd word to have learned in the middle of July). But I just love learning about other ways of life and traditions. Whenever I’m in another country I begin to worry that there won’t be enough time in life to see everything I want and in fact, I want to see absolutely everything so it is pretty safe to say that I won’t be able to accomplish that in one lifetime. I wish I could spend a year in the Altiplano of Bolivia on a llama farm, I want to live in a city in Brazil, I dream of skiing in Chili, and I would love to taste coffee in Columbia. I want to know every part of South America by heart and even then I would want to see and know more and that’s only one continent. Having come here completely alone and having everything work out so perfectly has given me so much confidence and I feel as though there is no part of the world that isn’t manageable. I just have to have faith in the fact that the Lord will give me the time and the resources to keep doing trips like this for the rest of my life.

The rest of the week has flown by in a blur. On the 4^th we celebrated with a barbecue, smores, and fireworks and listened to the most American-loving country music possible. Yesterday I went to a children’s hospital in Cochabamba and spent all afternoon hanging out with a little boy and two young girls who were long-term patients. Today I had the opportunity to shadow the Gynecologist at the hospital, which was actually surprisingly interesting and then this evening a group of us went to see Spiderman with a couple of Bolivian girls that we have become friends with. I have just continued to love every minute of being here and am already dreading returning home in two and a half weeks.

I just feel so passionate about medicine and the path that I am taking and I am so glad that I have gotten to be here and work so closely with the doctors. I am unsure at this point what type of medicine I want to do but I am confident that I am on the right track. I really am just excited to see where it all takes me and am so excited for the experiences that haven’t happened yet in my life.

"For you created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful I know that full well"

-Psalm 139:13-14

La Paz