I reread my first two posts and I realized that they are incredibly verbose. While I think it was necessary to use so many words in order to give the appropriate background for what my time in Perú will entail, I am resolute to use fewer words (and more pictures!) in this post. Hopefully I will be able to do so throughout the rest of my blog as well. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, right?
El Fútbol (Soccer)
Well, Perú lost the soccer game against Colombia last Sunday (0-1). Regardless, it was still a really awesome experience to go and see the game, as well as witness all the pride that the Peruvian people have for their national soccer team. They have at least a dozen of chants/songs that they all know and enthusiastically sing throughout all 90 minutes of play. This is a photo of the stadium right before the game started:
The stadium, called “El Estadio Nacional del Perú”, is huge. It seats 60,000 people, and it was sold out for the game.
El Trabajo (Work)
Things in the parasitology lab have been going well; I am slowly but surely learning the ropes. There are a lot of different parasites to know, so it can be overwhelming at times, but the people who work in the lab are very helpful. Here are a couple of pictures of the lab!
The parasites we work with range in terms of their means of transmission and the severity of the symptoms that they cause in humans. Thus, we have to be careful to keep our skin covered, as some of the parasites, including Strongyloides stercoralis (which I mentioned in my previous post) can burrow through your skin and enter your circulatory system. So, we always wear lab coats and gloves. Gloves are actually pretty expensive here, so sometimes we reuse them (there is a technique for doing this that the people in the lab have developed and perfected). However, the other undergraduate student working in the lab and I bought a few boxes of gloves for the lab so that we wouldn’t have to worry as much about reusing gloves, since we don’t want to risk getting a parasite because of our poor reusing technique! I look pretty disheveled in the following photo, but I just had to include it. I know my parents and brothers will get a kick out of it at least (hi Mom, Dad, Joe, and Peter!).
Mi Cumple! (My birthday)
I suppose that the only other big thing I have to report on is that I celebrated my 21st birthday last week! It was a little sad because it was the first birthday that I have spent away from my whole family, but Skype brings the world together. I had a nice birthday nonetheless. My friends at work brought in my favorite kind of Peruvian cake (sauco) and we shared that at lunch.
I went out to dinner with one of my Peruvian friends and then came home to celebrate with my host family. They made finger sandwiches and got a delicious chocolate cake to share!
All in all, it was a great week!
