First Verse

2/21/11
Hello everyone.  Quick catch up to speed. Jana and i arrived in Lima, Peru on Sunday, February 20.  We are working with Javier and Mayra Bazan, on several different projects around Lima.  it´s been a busy last two days.  jana and i have major brain pains by the end of the day from trying to speak and understand spanish all day.  but it´s been good. yesterday we drove around and saw all of the places that solidarity in action works with, and where we will be working.  we started the day with circle time with hermana silvia and 5 girls from the university that also want to help volunteer. they decorated a bulliton board with our names, welcoming us. it was very nice. then we had circle time and we all introduced ourselves and what we do and so on... we then went to a primary school where we will be screening 900 kids for lice, flat foot, and whatever else next week. we will be there three days to get them all done. should be a challenge.  we then had some more cirlce time and a decorated white board (with our names on it of course) with some of the teachers and the principal of the school. everyone was very nice. we then went to an orphanage (kind of. there are 12 kids that live there, and more that are just dropped off during the day). it was there that i proceded to introduce myself as 'my name is liz. i am sick' instead of 'my name is liz and i am a nurse.' hehe. (the words are very similar) the 5 year old crowd made me more nervous than all the introductions we had already done that day. oh well. they forgave me. then we proceded on further into the town san genaro, which is one of lima´s largest slums (this is where we had been all day). we went up onto the mountainside, which the houses became poorer and poorer the further up we went. we finally had to climb in the sand to make it to a church where we will be screening adults for their blood pressure and 'wounds' and who knows what else later on this week. LAST we went to a montessori school where we will be screening for more lice i think. my brain hurt pretty bad at this point. we may be teaching english there. more to come on that.

so today we went back to the orphanage and got heights and weights, checked for flat foot, and screened for lice, scabies, and flouride deficiencies on 30 or so kids, ages ranging from 17 months to 9 years.  this whole process took about 3 hours. lots of screaming babies and wiggling toddlers. but very cute. happy to report that only about 10 kids had lice, one had scabies pretty badly, and a few other random ailments.  ok, more to come. off to an english class for adults.