Really Exciting News for Awamaki Health!

We are really excited here at Awamaki Health as one of our volunteers has just secured us funding for a year! Kelsey has been here for nearly two months and her mother works in a high school in New Jersey. Each year, the high school sponsors a project/organization. Kelsey put together a power point about us and we are now sponsored by this school for the next year! All of the fund raising they do next year will be to the benefit of Ollantaytambo and the surrounding communities! I am just so psyched about this. We will be able to fund a full-time janitor, get our resource room for women organized and started as well as buy some much needed supplies and equipment!

I don't know how much money will come in throughout the year, but every little bit helps!

Another funny thing happened at the clinic yesterday. Yesterday and today were slow days at the clinic due to the Inti Raymi festivals in Cusco. So we decided to take advantage of the quiet and lack of patients to do some major cleaning. I don't think anyone had cleaned some of the rooms since we did in March. Anyway, this time we actually had some of the Posta staff helping us clean. We all were cleaning and chatting. I was talking to Eloy, a medical assistant who has worked at the Posta for years and years. We were commiserating together on my quickly approaching departure date. Talk turned to children and he was asking how old I was and when I wanted to have kids. So I told him I hope to have at least one biological child and then adopt after that, most likely.

He asked if I would like to adopt a child from Peru, and I said, sure, I would love to. He then asked if I wanted a boy or a girl. I said I would probably prefer a boy. He made sure I would need all the papers so the child could live with me wherever I am and not just as a sponsor here in Peru. I was like, of course I want the child with me. So then he proceeds to say he will start looking for a little boy for me for when I return next year!!! Can you imagine if I come home next summer with a little Peruvian baby! It would make nursing school a bit more complicated, that is for sure. But truthfully, after watching everyone here go about their lives with their babies strapped on their backs, I realize how ridiculous we are with all our toys and strollers and "stuff" for our babies. These kids have great childhoods without the newest and best baby things. Really puts life into perspective when you live in a culture that lives simply but extremely happily.

Anyway, I have only 2 days left in the clinic! We will run the chocolatada breakfast like normal and then I will work on Monday. Tuesday is a festival here: Ollanta Raymi. There is a big drama that acts out the history of Ollantaytambo against the Spaniards in Quechua near the big ruins. Then Wednesday is a packing and goodbye day for me. Thursday, I am off to Cusco, to Lima and finally arrive in Indy at 1pm on Friday.

We are going to do an appetizer and cocktail party tomorrow night at the rooftop bar at KBs. Then we are having a joint going away party for Dr. Arnaldo, Emma and myself with everyone from the Posta and the health volunteers. Saturday will be the last pizza party I have to attend here (thank God, so ready for good pizza when I get home). Will probably party at Porfi's on Saturday night and then Pisac markets on Sunday. Busy last week!

I have to do my going away lunch at my old host family's house as well as at Hallie's old host family's house. They have kind of adopted me too!

It will be a great last week!