Miercoles y Jueves

Wednesday morning we attended a conference during which some experts in environmental and occupational health were trying to revise their policies for the use of asbestos. Unfortunately, everything was in Spanish and when they arrived they separated me, Christina, and Sarah to 3 different tables. At my table it was helpful that they were editing on a large projector, because then I could at least make out some of the words... well at least the words that were similar to English. Even though it was interesting to see how each group worked together to edit a couple sections of the policy and then at the end how all of the groups came together and shared, it was still a long four hours.

There was no work for us to do in the evening, because our water samples need to incubate until next Monday so we were given the afternoon off. With our free time we decided to take the Metropolitano (the expressway bus system that I mentioned before) to the cities historical center, Plaza San Martin y Plaza Mayor. There was a nice pedestrian mall connecting the two plazas. About 80% of the shops were for shoes...and not just different shoe stores, but the same stores repeated on every block (and even 2 on the same block). If they didn't have your size in one store you could just walk a couple feet down to the next store or the clerks would even run to the next store to see if they had the correct size. After a couple of tries (or many) Sarah finally found a pair of shoes in a size 9 1/2. I think I will be completely out of luck here, because I wear a 10 - good thing I remembered to pack mine!

Wednesday night we met a friend of an M4. Her friend, also Christina, moved back from the United States to Lima at the end of junior high. Christina and her friend, Andrea, met us for dinner and a drink at Larcomar (the mall on the ocean). Christina works as a child psychologist and Andrea is home on summer break from Norway to work on her Master's thesis in "the public perception of hydrocarbons as an alternative energy source"... I'm still not quite sure I understand what that means... They are both very fun and open (and speak excellent English). Andrea invited us to a Pisco tour with her friends this afternoon. Pisco is a type of liquor made in Pisco, Peru. They are very proud of it here, even though the Chileans are trying to claim it as their own. The Pisco tour is kind of like a bar crawl, where the group travels to different bars and restaurants and at each stop you have a different drink made with Pisco. It should be fun to meet more people. Later we are meeting Dr. Osorio, director of DIGESA, to see the largest water fountain in South America (I think?). Then this evening, Christina's boyfriend plays rugby and they are having an initiation for the younger members of the team and invited us to go watch. Should be a busy/fun afternoon!

We have also joined a beautiful gym and yesterday we started work at Hospital Cayetano Heredia. Both deserve their own entries so more posts to come in the very near future.... but now it is definitely time for lunch!