Saturday, June 23, 2012

Project, soccer, off to Cusco-topia

Sorry I haven't blogged! Didn't think anyone really read this thing. :) Well we're out of Trujillo and back in Lima for the night. Our work is finished. The project in Trujillo went really well and I had so much fun doing it! Throughout the two weeks in Trujillo we went around handing out Adolescent Risk Behavior surveys to schools. We'd go into a classroom, introduce ourselves, and then hand out the survey and answer any questions the kids might have. I wasn't too good at the answering the questions part at first because of my spanish, but I soon got better and could communicate using the few words I know or just pointing and hand guestures. I really wish I'd known more Spanish especially in the classroom setting so I could get to know the kids and the teachers more. Anyways, we handed out this survey on behalf of the University of Utah combined with the University of Cesar Vallejo. It was a lot of fun getting to work with the med students there. They joined us on one occasion to hand out surveys and another to help compile data at the end! They were so fun. We even ended up going to a Karaoke Bar with them last night as a final goodbye in Trujillo. It was a blast! Nothing like seeing us Gringos try and sing in Spanish and them singing Whitney Houston's "I will always love you". Definitely a blast!!

We entered data into the computer A LOT! We'd spend hours upon hours doing it each day. It was nice to have the med students help out the last day so we could finish compiling the data! About 2,500 surveys done in all! It'll be interesting to see what the results hold and then we'll go from there! Despite all the work, we did have some fun! I FINALLY got to do my favorite thing in the world: play some soccer. One morning when we weren't at schools we went to Huanchaco! It's winter season here in Peru so guess who was at the beach?! NO ONE. haha It was fun though. We asked a guy with a restaurant if we could borrow a ball and started a small game on the beach! Playing soccer on the beach is HARD. Definitely got a workout. But that was just with our group which was fun. Then we took a break for a while and then ran over to a soccer court on the beach! Reminded me of my futsol days playing on the hard ground! I was so excited about it! And I got to finally show some Peruvian's what I'm made of! We mixed up the teams and in the end I ended up with four Peruvian's on my team. At first I was shocked that they were nice enough to give me a chance and pass to me. Then I proved my place as a valuable asset on our team :) 2 out of our 3 goals! And I schooled some kids as well. It was so much fun!

I also got to play some soccer after we were done taking surveys one day. A little boy, in my head I called him Chancho because he looked just like that cute little boy on Nacho Libre, was left at school from the morning session and playing with a ball looking all sad so I went and played with him for a bit! Sure enough people gathered and watched the Gringo who could actually play. haha It was so fun! I love how much the people here LOVE soccer. It makes me feel at home. The city and the honking horns may not be familiar to me, but at least there's still soccer :)

Tomorrow we head to Cusco!! Talk about tourism city of Peru. I'm super excited though! It'll be fun. For reals though whenever I think of going to Cusco I can't help but think of the movie Emperors New Groove. "Welcome to Cusco-topia, my ultimate summer get away... complete with waterslide ;)"

Pictures of everything on my facebook!

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