oops

well guys I forgot to update this blog for the last month or so, but I will put up a picture of machu picchu to make up for it. It was everything I expected it to be, beautiful hike for 4 days with great friends, amazing place, just awesome awesome awesome. Have wanted to do the inca trail for so long, it was just surreal finally sitting in MP looking around... straight up kid in a candy store. Finally can cross it off the bucket list, who knows what will be next. the great wall and the pyramids still call my naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame



flying back to the USA later this afternoon, crazy that 3 months went by so quickly. What a wonderful time down here, I may be addicted to this little 3-6 month volunteering gig. so cool to really get to know a foreign culture and have a "home" abroad, just so much to learn and experience thats so different from back home. Cuzco, and peru in general, truly is an awesome place

Really looking forward to seeing the (growing!) fam and all my U.S. friends, let the good times rollllllllllllll

N

hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahah

HEY GIRL LEMME PULL YO TEETH

So i have talked on and off with some of you about my new dental clinic placement, where I have been working about 3 weeks... it is awesome. There honestly could be no better placement for me, the time has flown by and I have loved it. My first day went like this:

8:00 AM - Show up and meet the staff, consisting of Dr. Yvan (the head dentist) and five dental students who are one semester shy of graduation. Dr. Yvan was a former professor at the dental school, so he loves to teach and explain everything to me. Uhhhh ship it

8:30 AM - Start to chat/get to know the dental students as I shadow/watch them work on patients. 3 pretty Peruvian girls (triple ship) and 2 peruvian guys who love to joke/mess around/generally act inappropriately. Ummmmm this is my favorite environment, I CAN SHINE HERE



Carlos y Dani, the aforementioned jokesters, finishing up some paper work

8:30 to 10:30 AM - Shadow the students as they drill and fill cavities and pull teeth. The clinic is in a lower income part of cuzco, so everyone who comes in pays with Seguro, the Peruvian version of social security. It costs $2 to pull a tooth, uhhh what? A tube of lidocaine is 33 cents down here, uhhhh what? Regardless of how cheap that is, many people still can't afford it, so pretty much 99% of fillings are done WITHOUT NUMBING MEDICINE, uhhh what? The people just sit there like champs, we drill until we get pretty close/touching the pulp and they just deal with the pain. It is insane. Little girls, teenagers, old men, old women, you name it. No numbing, just sit em down and drill. LOCO



Jacquelli and Miriam bringing the pain



The lovely extraction chair, straight out of a 1970's horror movie



The "filling" chair is a little more high tech. J wanted me to delete this picture since she "looked ugly" because her brow was furrowed, confirming the fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE, in any country or culture, to take a picture of a female that she actually likes

Seguro covers extractions but not root canals, so if the infection is really deep, its yank time. They get one tube of lidocaine for that, so we numb them up and pull out the bad guy. It is so funny down here, there is no pampering whatsoever. We numb it, pull it, give them the tooth in some bloody gauze (everyone wants to keep their teeth), stuff some more gauze in the new hole they have in their gums, give them a day or two worth of pain pills, have them sign some forms, and theyre gone within 2 minutes of us getting the tooth out. Let the good times roll, have a great day homie.



OPEN WIDEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

They have offered to let me drill/numb/pull but I have kindly refused as U.S. dental schools look down on untrained people performing irreversible procedures (makes sense). So my role is strictly observational to learn, and then other small things like mixing compounds/grabbing tools/holding things/doing anything they need help with to speed up the process. You could call me a semi-worthless peruvian dental assistant I guess???

10:30 to 11:00 AM - So after we were finished with all our patients on the first day, the girls go out and buy some fresh avocados, tomatoes, and onions and make this huge bowl of fresh guacamole. We all sit around and eat guacamole on bread (typical snack here) and drink coffee and talk about life. Are you kidding me? I am just thinking uhhhhhhhh this is awesome, how could this get any better?



Empanadas have become a daily snack favorite, dos con pollo por favorrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I kid you not Dr. Yvan then looks at me and asks if I liked to play cards. I start to laugh and say of course, and he then informs me that they like to gamble with a bit of money when they are playing, would that be okay with me? HAHAHAHAH YES THIS IS AWESOME

11:00 to Noon - Gamble with my new friends playing this peruvian card game that I constantly get hustled at. I am down probably the equivalent of a few bucks, playing for only ~25 cents at a time, OWNED. I have won the last few days though and am making a comeback I think

They also all only speak spanish, so I still get great practice. They love when I teach them english words and are all super interested about life in the US, so I am gonna bring in my computer one of these days and show them a bunch of pictures of NC/Cali/UNC/My travels etc.

It was super funny the other day, we were listening to this english song on the radio and they were all curious about what it meant. Its some song thats popular down here where a guy catches his girl cheating on him, and the song is just filled with F bombs and cursing and calling his girl a whore and crazy stuff like that hahaha. So they are like "nick what does this mean? Sing this to us in english" and I was just cracking up saying "well friends he called his girlfriend a dirty girl... he is very mad... she likes many boys..." hahaa

So work is great, put in a lot of shadowing hours which will be good for dental school apps, and also learning a ton in general about the peruvian/3rd world dental system



Just another day at the office

I have done a ton of things since the last update too, like go to lake titicaca, first soccer game, random travels, and a bunch of stuff in cuzco, but I am the worst and didnt put it on here. Maybe one day!

Lima on monday to meet up with friends, then northward for a week before returning to cuzco on the 15th or so. Will feel weird to be joining the "backpacker" circuit for a week like I usually do and staying in hostels and stuff, haha!

Love,
N

the salvation of salvacion

So I jumped on a bus to salvacion on Friday afternoon with the crew, it takes about 4 hours to get there from Atalaya



So we arrived and Fidel (the only guy who works there) had NO IDEA we were coming (standard Peru). So the boys took care of dinner and we managed to cook... bowls of white rice YUM. Professionals.

Mario and I had pretty nice digs here, with our own separate room baby:



The schedule here was similar, where we would work in the morning and then have afternoons free. So I spent the week taking hikes, looking at animals, cutting the grass with a machete (kill me), making gardens, planting trees, and gambling with Lluc, Didac, and Mario at cards. Sick LIFE



Ans (lady from canada) eventually took over the cooking duties since white rice wasn't cutting it, here is mario and lluc chowing down (how much does lluc look like matt cato? Gator shirt and all... even though he had no idea who the gators were)



Heres Danny and Ans and I on the other side of the table. It was so funny have Ans, a 60 year old woman from canada, and then 5-6 young guys in the jungle. She was our jungle mom and loved cooking and taking care of us:



We had a lot of free time in the afternoons, and we all were always hungry, so we would just head into town and buy a bunch of snacks and sit on the curb like it was 1950 or something:



Then we would head to the river to wash up since we all were usually super dirty from the morning work. Pretty sick to be out there in the middle of nowhere in virgin jungle without a building in sight:



One night the 5 of us decided we wanted to go find crocodiles in this nearby lagoon. So we headed out about 11 p.m. and hiked through the jungle towards this lake. There were some home made boats so we loaded up and went on the search (people later told us this was very dangerous, but we were five young men with machetes = invincible). Didac and Mario on the hunt:



We ended up seeing some crocs (or caymans or alligators or whatever they call them down here) 10-15 yards out but had no exciting boat attacks or anything. But I took a picture with my camera on night setting and realized we could draw things with our headlights, which led to basically an hour of this:



We decided to make a little present for Fidel (above), and then just messed around. Turns out a camera can entertain a couple idiots for a loooooooooooooooooong time:




Anyway, as I'm sure you can see, we all were very similar and became pretty good friends. I am gonna go see Mario in Lima in a few weeks, and then try to go to the running of the bulls in spain with lluc and didac later this year (they live like 4 hours away). Danny lives in remote remote remote northern canada, so I'm not quite sure how I will make it up there yet.



So we had a sick week there and then Mario, Danny, and I headed back to Atalaya. Turns out the day before a bus had gotten flipped trying to cross the river (no bridges to salvacion, you just drive across the shallowest parts of the river bed) because of the strong currents from the rain. Therefore the new bus wouldn't come to get us, so we ended up hitch hiking in the back of a pickup truck to get home. It was a great ride... until it started pouring. So we rode in the rain for like 3 hours and finally made it back, just a little wet:




Then I kicked in atalaya for 2 days with some of my friends from Cuzco until I returned to civilization. And thats the end of the jungleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, great experience!

jungle lovin

so after the first or second night, I wake up feeling something pawing my face/head. I open my eyes to find this:



The reserve has two "pet" monkeys (Chico and Paula) that they rehabilitated a while back. The monkeys aren't caged or fed or anything, but they are very social animals and stick around the reserve/nearby jungle because they really love people. It rains every night, and the monkeys get cold and want body heat, so they will just lift up the mosquito net and come in.

Notice how dirty the collar area of my shirt is. Its because Chico always wants to be with people, but he is lazy and doesnt like to walk, so he just climbs up and rides on your head/shoulders. So I was walking through this really flooded/muddy part of the jungle, and the monkeys dont like water, so he climbed up for a ride with the dirtiest paws ever.

So most every morning I would wake up to this:



Its really weird having "pet" animals that are so smart. If they are cold, they just use their hands and tuck themselves under the blanket. If they want food from your plate, they will sneak up behind you super quiet and dart in and grab a fistful. If they want something, they will just open cabinets/jars/boxes/all sorts of stuff. They are crazy playful and were really fun to have around!

So my work the first week consisted of all sorts of stuff. I walked through the jungle a lot with Mario (old guy from a nearby village) and learned all about the jungle farming. He would pick everything we could eat and show us how they grow it and how to plant it. I learned a ton about Pina (pineapple), platanos (bananas), yucca (jungle potato), and all sorts of medicinal plants.

One day I did various things around the reserve, fixing loose rocks in the stone path, digging up worms for the compost pile, clearing wood from a tree they had cut down, painting signs for trees they wanted to mark, and other random things like that.

Another day, Mario (my peruvian roomate from Lima), Alvero ("Monitor" of the reserve from Sevilla, Spain), and I made a new trail one day to the top of the small waterfall. Its so pretty outside that no one really uses the showers, we all just bathe in the waterfall. Its cold as a mother but so is the shower, so its easy to just jump in and get it over with. It feels really good in the afternoon after you have been working/sweating all morning.



So our new "trail" had the simple goal of climbing like ~40 ft up to the top of that waterfall. By the time we were done, getting from top to bottom would took almost 50 MINUTES. Our "trail" also involved some pretty serious rock climbing, climbing up and down ~70 degree slopes, and using trees to literally pull yourself up the mountain. It was so difficult that a lot of people from the reserve couldn't do it/gave up right away hahaha. But it did make me feel like rambo, hacking away through this super dense jungle with a machete and surveying the land looking for the best path.

So typically we would wake up at 6:30 or 7:00, eat breakfast at 7:30 or 8:00, work until lunch at 1:30, and then have the afternoons free to do whatever we wanted (lots of hiking/reading/exploring/swimming). Gloria is the boss and chef of the reserve, she is awesome and has lived in the nearby town her whole life (the nearby town has like 40 people).



That parrot in the picture is Polly, another of the reserve "pets" that can say Hola. Lunch in Peru is the biggest meal of the day, so we usually start with some type of vegetable soup, then when we have eaten that and cleaned our bowl, we file back into the kitchen and Gloria gives us some rice/beans/chickpea type goodness. The food was actually really good I thought, maybe being a vegetarian wouldn't be so hard after all!

So that was the first week, where we only had 6 people on the whole reserve. That Friday, 18 new people were showing up, so Lluc, Didac, Ans, Mario, Daniel, and Kyla (a girl who arrived mid week) decided to clear some space and head to Salvacion, another reserve about 4 hours down the road. Pictures from that on the next update!

PS - Sick again so I have lots of computer time, dont get spoiled with all these updates! Nothing serious this time, I just wore myself out with a lot of bus travel/no sleep for a few days. Then of course the morning I get back to Cuzco, my friend Tim was leaving the next morning, so I did some sightseeing with him and hung out talking pretty late. But I am sleeping and resting lots, so I should be back on the grind soon!

hey guys wheres the electricity and hot water haha no seriously where are they

Let me preface this post by sharing my new favorite song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN2AdOjI4FI

I was in a cab riding ~45 minutes back to the reserve one day last week, and our driver literally had one cd with only that song on it. Clearly everyone else in the cab was ready to die after 10 minutes but I jammed the entire time and refused to let anyone turn it off

Jungle Arrival:

The bus from cuzco that heads to the jungle leaves on Fridays at 5:30 AM, kill me. A bunch of my friends were leaving for a long trip that same Friday, so they wanted to have a big house party and go out dancing on Thursday night. Do you see where this is going? I scheduled a taxi to come pick me up at 5:00 AM and decided I would just go bender status for the night, come back at 4:30, pack my bags and then crash hard on the 12 hour bus ride

All went according to plan as I had the time of my life dancing to all the terrible club music that I love and everyone else hates. Around 4:00 I walked some friends back to their house (gentleman), then strolled home planning for a little nap. Im walking up my street and I hear "Nick?" from a taxi driver waiting in front of my house, strange. I ask him what time it is and he says 5:30 uhhhhhhhhhhh what

I don't have a watch down here and apparently the people I asked had sweaty eyes or something because they were an hour or two off. I sprint upstairs, throw a ton of crap in my backpack (I had luckily packed some before), and run back to the cab apologizing profusely. Our night guard was laughing hysterically the entire time, thanks lucas. The only thing I forgot to bring? My rainjacket. For the rainforest. In the rainy season. YEA

Luckily everything is late in Peru and when they say the bus leaves at 5:30 it sometimes makes it out of there by 7:00. So I make it to the bus, promptly pass out, and wake up more or less 11 hours later when they poke me and tell me to get off, its my stop. SKILLS

Jungle:



Awesome place located near the Manu Reserve. To get there, you have to cross the river on this:



When I arrived, a bunch of volunteers were taking the same bus I was on into a town farther down the road, so I just threw my bag in the bushes and went with them for a while. That meant that my first river crossing was in the dark later that night, in the pouring rain, with my hiking backpack on. Day 0 and Im not missing that rainjacket at all!

So there were six other people there when I arrived: Lluc and Didac from cataluna in spain, Laura from argentina, Dana from australia, Dani from barcelona, and Ans from Canada. So I got a ton of spanish practice for that week, which was really good. They even taught me some Catalan words, which is kinda similar to spanish but not really. tightttttttttttt

I settled in the dormitory and crashed hard



My new digs: I hung up stuff to "dry" but it is borderline impossible to dry anything out there. Between the humidity and the pouring rain every night, I just gave up and was damp. Yes, my clothes smell wonderful now.



Without that mosquito net, I would have been dead in one night. Unfortunately for me, I am super tall and fall asleep in a ball, but usually wake up stretched out on my stomach. This means that most mornings I would find my feet OUTSIDE the net. Ill snap a photo later, just picture chicken pox from the ankle down. sexy?

Anyway thats all for a bit, ill post more later. Gonna go finish laundry/washing shoes, buy some random stuff I need, watch the superbowl with some friends, and then get ready for the new dental placement tomorrow morning

HASTA LUEGOOOOOOOOOO

The rest of my day!

So I'll give you that good good on what I do the rest of my day after work

So around 12 I pack up my stuff and say goodbye to the nurses, today was Cirilia!



She is really great, I call her my novia peruana (peruvian girlfriend). She is a true general, she regulates on patients all day and runs thing with an iron fist, BOSS. We talk a lot when it is slow and she gives me all the cuzco tips. I built our "door" that you see in the background the other day so we could stop people from flooding in, hahahaha

Here is a picture of the front of my clinic, this is when I was leaving at noon. When I arrive in the morning, there is people filling the courtyard waiting to get helped!



Through those doors are two big waiting rooms, Triaje, Topico, a couple obstetrics, two dentists, a lab, x ray place, and a bunch of doctor rooms. Centro salud de ttio, BALLIN OUT

Today we had our resident homeless/alcoholic guy stumble into triage and ask to get helped. I told him he had to go pay at the front office and get a little receipt before we could help him (little piece of green paper in our case). He stumbles out and much to my surprise he comes back with one and we are about to help some cuts on his legs, when a lady pulls me aside and says he just reached into the office and grabbed someone elses paper hahahahaha. Drunk, yes, clever, yes. We helped him anyway, he deserved it!

So then I cab back home to eat lunch and usually see this waiting for me:



Lunch with Carly (Virginia), Sarah (Maryland), and Peter (UK). Today we had like a egg/vegetable scramble and some rice with like fried corn kernel type things and pineapple juice yEAAAAAAAAA

Then during 1:00 and 4:00 I usually read ESPN for a bit, go chill on the roof if its a nice day, and do my spanish homework before class. Occasionally I sneak in a 3 hour nap as well.

Then its off to spanish from 4:00 to 6:00, and we actually have a field trip today!!!! I am just as excited as I used to get for them in elementary school. Yesterday we were talking about chicha, this peruvian homemade fermented corn drink and we just asked our teacher if we could go get some. She insta said yes, so we are going to a typical peruvian restaraunt and drinking some chicha instead of reading books in class, uhhhhhhh ship it

Then after class its back here for dinner, after that we will usually play cards or walk around the city or go grind to techno music in bars or take salsa lessons or have house movie night (contraband market by our house has 1$ DVDs, we have like 300 movies in the house) or just hang out on the roof. Rough life!

Tomorrow I leave for the jungle at 4:30 am, no electricity out there so no internet or anything like that. Can't refrigerate meat as well, so I also get to try out being a vegetarian for 2 weeks! Bathing in waterfalls, watering and moving all these jungle plants, charting animals (seriously hahahaha), playing soccer and teaching english at these small jungle schools in the middle of no where, all that good stuff. Im pumped!

Ill take lots of pictures for when I get back, HOLLA

ps - here is a picture from our house on a tour last weekend. These are my good friends, but everyone but Sarah already had to go back, and Sarah leaves friday. Sad life. The first cycle of housemates is complete, and we just got a new shipment of like 6 people hahaha. Let the games beginnnnnnnnnnnnnn