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