Pediatric Hospital, Jesus Statue and the Market

Friday:

In the morning I volunteered with the physical therapist. She gives massages and helps the long-term patients regain strength. Rachel and Allison also volunteered with me. Rachel taught me a lot about IV solutions, nursing terms (I know what NPO means!) and the different tubes nurses put into patients. I am even more excited for nursing school after learning about all of the different things nurses get to learn how to do. Allison is fluent in Spanish so she was able to translate for us. One of the patients had a herniated disk, the other needed respiration therapy.

In the afternoon, 6 of the volunteers went to a big hospital in downtown Cochabamba. It was huge compared to Hospitals of Hope! HOH has a connection with an organization that houses parents of the sick kids, kind of like the Ronald McDonald house. They make bread to raise money for the families. After that we got to visit with the sick kids. This might have been my favorite part of the trip. These kids had different types of diseases, but you could see how much it meant for them to have us come and read and play with them. The minute I walked into the pediatric floor, I felt this excitement and peace that is hard to describe. It was as if God was telling me that this was my calling. My heart breaks for sick kids. I can’t wait to be able to minister to sick kids through nursing. Even though it was for a short amount of time, today I got a taste of my future in pediatric nursing.

One of the girls, Juana, broke her arm. She had an IV so I think she might have injured another part of her body. Anyway, she is 11 and wants to be a teacher. We read some books together and talked about her interests. She is a Christian and goes to a large house church in the city. I also got to read books to a patient who was severally handicapped (couldn’t talk) and another who had some sort of head injury. Kids are the best. They were gracious with my limited Spanish and were thankful for the little time I spent with them.

In the evening, we played Anomia and Uno with the volunteers. Anomia has been quite popular in Bolivia—thanks mom. J Wheaton and two of the independents went on a 5-day vacation to the salt flats, so we only have 10 volunteers now. It was nice to have a smaller group, but we miss them! 

Saturday:

I was incredibly touristy today. In the morning we went to a nice restaurant that had Beyonce music playing. It felt like the U.S! Then, we walked to the statue of Jesus in Cochabamba. He is literally and figuratively looking over this beautiful city. We took a gondola up to the statue. We took lots of pictures and admired the huge statue. A Bolivian approached me (totally stranger) and asked if I could take a picture with her mom. They just wanted a picture with a white person! It was so funny and weird! For us, it seems strange, but white people are so rare in Cochabamba I suppose my presence was monumental.

Lydia and I

The whole group!

Whole group, again

Neco and Rose

This Bolivian family wanted to take a picture of me because I am white and blonde and that is very rare in Bolivia. So thankful Allison stood behind them and took this picture. 

While walking to the market with Rose and Neco, we stumbled on this water feature. They nonchalantly mentioned that this was the middle of South America. So folks, I have been at the center of South America. Pretty cool!

Center of South America

We then went to the market where I scurried around and tried to get gifts for everyone. Some of my purchases include a llama sweater, llama socks and a scarf. I also got some illegal DVD’s. In South America, it is legal to sell pirated movies. So there are millions of movies on sale, a lot of them aren’t even out on DVD in America. They are also incredibly cheap. I bought 11 DVD’s for the equivalent of $4 U.S. Pretty crazy! Watch out family, we now have all three Toy Stories. J

Today was incredible! The more time I spend in Cochabamba, the more I love it. The people and country is beautiful. God has been teaching me so much. I can’t wait to write more about what I am learning.

Hasta luego!