PS...don´t miss the pictures to follow

Plenty of crazy things have been a foot as of recently. Sadly I have not been able to inform any of my great experiences with my faithful followers. But alas, I have emerged from the depths of the jungle and have come out to battle the city of Pucallpa once more to bring you news from the chacra. To explain a little further, after finishing the campaign at km 8, my travel team and I took off to a new location - Tupac Amaru. A quaint little village way back in the jungle (the place where we had the medical clinic oh so long ago). Due to its semi-remoteness, we did not get to town very often (which is fine by me, I absolutely love the jungle). As I write to you now, we have just finished our campaign here in Tupac and are getting ready for Christmas break. (So it could be a good long while before you have from me again – but do not worry, I am thriving on my rice, beans and aguaje).

Almost 10 years ago, Tupac had a Adventist Church. Sadly the leaders all moved away and the church crumbled. There a man that has been keeping up the land of the church, even though there is no longer a standing church – just posts. This man has been praying for years that someone would come to revive the church. He was starting to get discouraged that God was not hearing his prayers, because nobody was coming to help. The crazy thing is that it is a law here in Peru that if nothing happens with a piece of land for 10 years, the land is up for grabs. When we came, the man was super excited because it was just 2 more weeks until the land would be up for grabs. God worked wonders and lead us here just in time to start building a church, before someone else stole the land. Over the past weeks we had our evangelistic campain (and tried hard to not get eaten alive by mosquitoes). Just last weekend we had many baptisms in the nearby river. My daily focus of this campaign was the same as last. To visit house to house teaching people about nutrition and the like. I have many great students here who are anxious to learn and now that my castellano is a bit better I can teach a little more and understand more.

I will have to admit that my experience here in Tupac has been way better than life in Km 8. Tupac is a little village deep in the jungle, meaning lots of trees, a river and lots of cool stuff. Km was the outskirts of Pucallpa, full of people, dust and motokars. Here in Tupac, my friends have taught me all kinds of things about the jungle (Jungle life is uber- duber exciting). There is one family that I have gotten to know especially well. Recently I have learned how to properly cut a coconut with a machete, without cutting of my fingers. Bloody coconut juice just is not the same. I have also learned a little better how use a machete in general. Machetes are the most practical tool in the world – my new years revolution will be to never be found without a machete.

And now for something completely different - I have learned how to fish with a net. This may sound easy, but is actually a little complicated - especially when all of the words used to describe this process are new to you. I did lots of nodding and pretending to understand, when in reality I did not really have a clue. When it came time to trough the net I practically lost my balance and almost fell in the river. But alas all was well and I did not fall in. It was a great fishing trip – I paddled the long dugout canoe up the muddy river. Upon returning back to dry land, we fried up the fish and my little stomach feasted for the first time on fishy goodness. That same day we also went out to the chakra (field) and feasted on all kinds of fruits – the best part of which was that I ate nearly 15 guabas – a true feast of fuzzy white goodness. Another day this same family invited me over and fed me rice, potatoes and …piranha. I was actually surprised how good this all was. Needless to say I have fallen in love with jungle life. Every day brings something new, exciting and unexpected. Each day there is something more to learn. It is great to wake up each morning, with the expectation of something great happening, but not know what.

Walla Walla University representatives here in Peru!!

Me and one of my study buddies

Thanksgiving!

There weren´t enough plates and silverware for all, so I ate out of a tupperware like container with my fingers, the food has never tasted so good.

Taken during our grand pineapple spree.

We were eating at least three pineapples each meal, three meals a day for quite some time. Sadly, the pineapple season has come to a close and hunting season will not open up agian until next November...

LOOK...LOOK!!!

A PINE tree!!!

I was overjoyed to find this little glimpse of the northwest behind my Tupac home. Who knows how this pine tree got here, but it made me happy everytime I looked at it. The only thing it is missing is snow...

A snap shot of the travel group soon after nearly tipping over 50 bazillion times in the tipsy dug out canoe

Welp here we go...anther week has passed. Turns out that with November showers comes pineapple season and the gang at Km 38 harvested 150 pineapples in just under 4 hours, the crazy thing is that they only harvested about a fourth of our field. Oh the great wonders of living in the jungle. Also, I have gleaned pictures of clinic from the Canon cameras in the wild jungles of Peru... so look and don´t get stuck...

Another part of clinic, after collecting kids height and weight, we check this little chart to see if they are malnourished.

The village center...the local futbol field...aka my new front yard (my little house is just of to the right outside the pictrue margin...see look, there´s me waving)

More stitches!

Tara, Melanie, Me, Lauren and Doctor in our quaint little pharmacy

Sopla!

In the early morning hours of clinic...taking blood pressures to make sure people don´t keel over dead before we can help them.

Me stiching up a ladies foot after Doctor removed a golfball sized tumor.

The blue building in the back is where we held our clinic, this is the kind neighbor lady that cooked for us each day. Here is a typical meal of rice, beans, chicha morada and boiled platanos.

Our little well, that we haul all our water from...you just have to be careful to not fall in...

Triage!!! This is my friend Teresa, notice that I am about to prick her with a needle to get her blood glucose reading...yet she is still kinda smiling.

Our temperary pharmacy out at Tupac.

One night after clinic we decided to play King Elephant. So here is a group of us with all our little animal mimicks. We had everything from racoon (me) to walrus, rock fish, frog, tiger, rabbit and elephant. hehehehe....

Just in case any of you at home are freezing right now, don´t worry. It is still roasting hot here. As I am writing this there is sweat pouring off me (and all I am doing is typing at a computer, only my brain and my fingers are working, I shouldn´t be sweating so much. Ah, but so is life in humid lands). It seems weird to me that the weather has changed back in the states, but yet here it is still the same roasty-toastyness. (Just today I thought of frying an egg on the pavement, but there wasn´t any nearby, so I just left the egg all by its lonesome and ate mangoes instead). But no worries, soon rainey season will be here and then the temp will drop a little bit.
To wrap up out campaign at Km 8 we had a mass wedding, more baptisms and final goodbyes. But early Sabbath morning I had one of my best experiences yet here in Peru. There is a family here in Nuevo Amazonia that I have become quite good friends with. It is a young couple, Jhon and Fresia and their little two year old daughter Carlita. As we were chatting it came up that the weather was and and that it would be sooooo nice to go swimming. Then they discovered how much I love to swim, so they declared they needed to take me to their favorite swimming hole. Bad news was that I was to leave the next night. But no worries, we decided that we would go out to the lake at Yarina Cocha early in the morning and get back in time for church. So that´s what we did. They came at 6 Sabbath morning and picked me up and their motorbike. The 4 of us spent the next twenty five minutes on their little motorbike journing out to the lake. As we got closer we passed a bunch of mango trees , so we stopped and picked a big bag of mangos. Upon arrival at the lake we feasted on our harvest and devored the whole big back of mangoes (I think I ate 4). Mango was the main course for breakfast, but Fresia had also brought some Arroz con Leche, so we packed out tummies with that. Then due to the sticky factor of our fingers and faces we splashed into the murkey wáter for a fun swim and a good rinse off. We spent the next hour chillin at the lake and then headed off to the mango trees once again to collect more to take home. Going back we had four people on the motorbike, plus a back pack and a big bag of mangos, what great fun. In spite of all the fun we had, we still got back a good half hour before church started at 9.30.
Saturday night at about 10.30 we packed up all of our possesions, stufffed them in the back of the truck and took off for Tupac Amaru (the location of our next campaign). It ended up being a late night, but all was well and we got up early the next morning to set up for our medical clinic which started at 8. I was absolutely stocked for clinic week. This clinic wasn´t quite as busy as last clinic seeing as our location was at a small villaje deep in the jungle, but we still kept busy during the day. I did lots of triage, which is lots of fun. People have all kinds of crazy stories to tell. The greatest of which is the wacky internal fever that people get when they work out in the sun and don´t drink any wáter.
We only had two surgeries this week and I was the lucky nurse that got to assist in both. The first patient had a grape sized cyst on his upper thigh. The second was removing a golf ball sized tumor from the top of a ladies foot. It was great to have these random surgical interruptions in the midst of all the triage, taking blood pressures, giving out medicines from our pharmacy and all the other randomness of clinic week. Thursday night I stayed up half the night watching over a young 20 yr guy that was super sick. We had him hooked up to an IV and kept watch on him throughout the entire night. The good news was that by the next afternoon we were able to send him home. Friday afternoon we packed up the pharmacy and all our medical stuff and sent it all back in the truck to our base at km 38. Thus terminated my second clinic and began my second campaign. The nurse squad will be living in the quaint little jungle village of Tupac until the middle of December.
That is the 90 sec wrap up of my most recent Peruvian life. I haven´t been eaten alive my mosquitos yet or poised by jumping tarantulas so all is well. Chau for now!
(If the photo gods and computer gods smile upon me I should have pictures next time I update my blog)
=)

My friend Rosa and a few of her kids. She, without fail always has a smile on her face and is just someone who is genunely happy about life.

This was part of my breakfast this morning! PAPAYA!!

I just have to say that I love living in a tropical country, this morning for breakfast I had a bunch of guaba, watermelon, papaya and 3 big mangos, plus a little potatoes and eggs. Normally we do not get this much fresh fruit, but since it is practically the end of the campaign all of our friends are bringing us tokens of gratitud. So right now we have tons of free fresh fruit and I am absolutely loving life!

This is Dora. I would have to say that she is one of my best friends here in Nuevo Amazonia. She was baptized two Sabbaths ago. She owns a little store and we buy much of our food from her. She is the one who taugh us how to make empanadas and also loves to share her Chichamorada (a delicious drink make from purple corn)

Lauren and I with a young girl from the community

A few of my friends who shared a big watermelon with me!

Aqui esta mi estudiante Jovana y su hijos. These kids have come to every night to the meetings for the past 3 1/2 weeks. They have tons of energy and just have a truley happy look at life.

One of our friends sewed these shirts for Lauren and I on a little foot peddle powered sewing machine.

Your eyes are fortunare enough to be looking at a marvelous sight. This wierd long delicacy is in fact the wonderful fuzzy cocoon like Guaba. The white part is the only edible part and must be chewed off the little black seed. Nothing like a fuzzy butterfly snack in the midst of organizing the pharmacy.

The medical abyss...at the beginnig...

Me and my buddy Elvis at one of the evening evangelistic meetings.

It has been many a day since I have been in town, my deepest apologies to all of my devote blog followers. I have miserably failed you all in consistently updating my blog. But get used to it, because we have now practically finished our campaign at Km 8 and in about a week will be moving out into the jungle to start our next campaign. But anyways enough of these announcements and now for a recap of my life… or as it is said – and now for the rest of the story…
My team has helped build up quite the church group at Km 8. We baptized close to 40 people over the past two Sabbaths in a little dolphin swimming pool and will be baptizing many more after a mass wedding on the 22 of October. Last Saturday night, the nurse squad moved back to Km 38 for a week. Thus began our crazy quest of organization. We worked like mad to turn a messy room that liked to think of as the medical abyss, into a neatly organized pharmacy. We spent many an hour in our little medical cubby hole, but after sweating enough to mop the floor, we finally are about done and now I feel comfortable calling our abyss a pharmacy. (We are doing all this prep because soon we will be starting our next campaign which will begin with a weeklong medical clinic.) I have also spent lots of time translating Bible stories into Castellano for our kids meetings during the next campaign. It has also been a blast to be back at Km 38 because we have an oven here…which means that I can bake cookies and other delicious munchies each and every day. Another great thing about baking goodies is that they have to be eaten quickly or else they will be devoured by ants. What a crisis.
Actually the ants have now moved up several inches on my hate list. I have been rationing out my beloved ABC almonds lovingly sent to me by my father (Almonds cannot be found down here…sad thing it is) Bad news is that the ants chewed their way into all of my almonds - the nasty little critters. Not too big of a deal though, I simply roasted my almonds in the oven to kill all the little buggers. Then I carefully hung them up in a safe place and sprayed the surrounding area with bug spray (which kills the ants instantly and prevents them from returning), but then to my horrible discovery this afternoon, the ants had braved all odds and had fought their way through the clouds of bug spray (with 49% deet) and were again munching happily on my almonds. Thus war began and I roasted them once more. Now I get to enjoy my twice baked ants and almonds in one big smorgasbord.

Lots of craziness this past week. We are in the heat of our Evangelistic campaign and many have already decided to be baptized. It is so amazing to think that just 8 weeks ago my team was a complete group of strangers to the invasion, but then over though a few weeks of studying the Bible with people, visiting them in their homes for health lessons and just being their friends and now we have a booming church of about 100 (50 adults and 50 kids). It has been a pretty cool transformation. We have two more nights of the evangelistic campaign and then just next week of teaching health classes, then that is it for our mission here at Km 8 and we will be off to a new location.
Last Sunday, Lauren and I were invited by a lady to learn how to make yucca empanadas (yucca relleno) in her house. We willingly abliged. The first task was to peel the yucca. So we grabbed some big knives, kinda like small machetes, and started literally hacking away at the outer peeling of the yucca. They taught us that if you hack at it just right the peel quickly slips off rather that slowly peeling it around and around like you would a cucumber. Then we boiled the yucca until it was squishy. Over the next hour and a half, we joked around as we make our little yucca pockets and filled them with purple olives, garlic, little peppers and a few other native vegetables. After sealing up this little pocket of yumminess we fried them in a little pan over a fire. Then came the best part - we actually got to eat warm-freshly-made-Peruvian-yucca-empanadas! I must say they are quite delicous. We also learned how to make Chichimorada (a purple corn drink, that is very typical of this region of Peru) and Cocona Juice (a drink of a yet another wierd orange-tomatoe looking fruit) It was a crazy cool experience to be in a little house, with our Peruvian friends, learning how to make Peruvian food, joking around and also cooking over a little fire. An even better part is that she invited us back next week to learn how to make potatoe empanadas! Mmmm....Our chef, Dora, has become a great friend of Lauren and I. She always greats of with a big hug and a kiss on the cheek, we visit her often becuase she owns a little store where we like to buy our food from. Eduardo has also been studying the Bible with her and she has decided to get baptised this Saturday! Yet again it is amazing to see how God as worked in this community over the past 8 weeks.

Me, Andrew, Melanie and Kevin checking out our jungle backyard

Lauren and I in the wilds of the Peruvian Jungle

Manzanitas! These mini bananas are packed with all the flavor of a normal banana, but yet are bite-size for your convenience.

Just outside the fence at my home at Km 8

In the United States, Canada and many other places in the world are found pine trees. On these luscious evergreen trees one can find little brown pricklies called pine cones, which are typically not edible unless you are a squirrel or chipmunk. However, here in Peru there is a lack of pine trees and therefore no pinecones. But the good news is that in this far away land, one can find abundant Aguaje. This odd fruit highly resembles a pinecone in its appearance - it has the same shape and color. This fruit is definitely not my favorite due to its lack in flavor. This fruit consists of a large seed with a little bit of flavorless yellow paste. Very odd. If Pluto were still a planet, I would say that this fruit was from Pluto.
This past Saturday night I experienced my first Peruvian Social. These Socials are very common down here in the Southern Hemisphere. These events usually last for about 3 hours and are full of laughs, fun, and exercise all centered around completely pointless games fueled by equally pointless music. If any of you have ever taken part in a South American social you will know what I am talking about, if you haven’t you just need to experience one. They are quite unique and can only best be described at crazy confusion and lots of running around in circles.
As September presses on my team and I are nearing the end of our campaign here at Km 8. To end with a big shebang, we are doing a two week long evangelistic series of nightly meetings. Each meeting is about 2 hours long and full of singing and talking about different bible topics. My main task is to keep the kids occupied during the adult meetings. We do fun songs, tell a Bible story, learn and memory verse and then let the kids color a picture relating to the Bible story. Each kid gets two crayons to color with and may exchange their crayons in the crayon bag for different colors. It is a fun task to color with about 50 kids who are all jabbering in Castellano, wanting this obscure color or that. I only know the basic - colors in Castellano- red, green, blue, black…and it is oh so confusing with 50 kids requesting weird little shades of light rays. Needless to say the meetings are going well. The funniest part about the meetings and any meeting or church service down here in Peru is that it is not unusual to sing the same song three or four times during one program. In one song service we might 9 songs, but only have 3 or 4 different songs. Yet everyone seems to love this odd repetition. It doesn’t seem to matter that we sing one song, then another, only to return to the first song again, and then maybe again. With doing these meeting nightly I have many songs stuck in my head and am constantly humming them.
Welp, thanks for tuning into the Mindy sometimes-weekly-news-flash. Things are busy here with teaching my classes in the homes and for the community, planning classes, cooking meals, cleaning, eating Papaya, doing a evangelistic series, drinking water to keep from melting in the heat, learning Castellano and much more. Life is great as a Peruvian!
You know you are Peruvian when…
Your skin is darker than that of those who live here.
You prefer to ride in the back of a truck because it has more air-conditioning (the wind).
You prefer to use a hole in the ground for a bathroom, rather than use a toilet.
Your sleeping schedule resembles that of the sun rising and setting.
You get sad if you do not eat lentils and rice every single day.
However, you know you are not Peruvian when you see a parade in town, but everyone (including the parade participants) is more focused on the group of white people (me and my friends) as that is walking down the sidewalk.

This is how I shower every morning. I use maybe 5-7 cup fulls. Its fun, try it sometime!

Life in an internet cafe!

One of the newest, biggest, greatest changes to my past few days was the arrival of 3 friendly people from They are ere for about a week to host an eye clinic for all my new Peruvian buddies. I was fortunate enough to assist with this new element of my Peruvian life in the midst of visiting all my families and teaching all my classes. The mission of this clinic was simple – just to fit people with glasses. When ever I had free time I found myself rushing over to the refracting area to help out. With this job I would start out by greeting the people with a harty-cheerful Buenas Dias! Then would explain to them that I needed to look at their eyes with a spiffy little flashlight. After this quick observation I would explain if tey had cataracts or pterygium and what this meant. Then the fun part began. People could choose between either glasses for reading or glasses for distance. Depending on their desires I would hold up prescription refraction lenses to their faces until we discovered the perfect prescription for them. The joy of it was that people got so excited at the first bit of improvement. Then their joy would increase ten fold as I increased the magnification in 50 sector increments. In no time at all we would find the perfect refraction and they would receive their new glasses. I was instantly rewarded with beaming faces. It was amazing to see people come in tired, groggy (not quite sure if this is the right spelling for this word, but it rhymes with froggy, so it should be spelled similar, eh?) then see people walking away with overpowering smiles. For the first time in a long while they could see once again. They best part was that a great percentage wanted glasses so they could read their Bibles. In all we were able to give 857 people glasses. The funniest part of clinic was when I accidentally switched up some words when talking to one lady. Instead of asking if she wanted lentes (glasses) for reading I said lentejas (lentils). After a quick look of confusion, a little laugh and a quick refraction we got this lady her spiffy reading lentils. What could be better?Great experience of my week volume 2 was a quick snipet of my life during rainey season. The other day it poured all night and all day, which is great, I love rain. However, the tricky part is that our little bucket shower area is completely exposed to the heavens. We have to roof, meaning when it is raining (pouring in all actuality) there is no possible way to keep a towel dry. But alas I wanted my cold refreshing shower, so I donned my swimsuit and fearlessly entered the land of pelting raindrops. In spite of the cold I quite enjoyed myself as I showered in the rain with collected free rain water. When finished I slipped across the muddy clay to the wonderfulness of a dry towel. (So, Uncle John Schreven I have a fun task for you. Next time it rains collect about a liter and a half of rain water, then put on some colorful swimshorts, go outside early in the morning with your little soap bottle and take a shower. Aunt Kim, this is where your job comes in… you get the fun taking a picture to show to me at some point in the future).
Highlight #3. We are entering Papaya and mango season. How could life not be grand? Some of the papayas are Basketball sized and oh so wonderfully delicious. If chocolate were a fruit it just might be a giant ripe papaya.
Smile breaking activity #4 was a grand jungle adventure trek excursion journey quest ma-bober. The nurse squad was fortunate enough to return to Km 38 the other night. A few of us took this great opportunity to trek into the back 40. To me it was the most wonderful thing ever to be out and active again, to be clomping along a little jungle trail. Sadly we didn’t see any monkeys, but I heard birds and was attacked by an evil thorny bush. But after a quick battle with a machete the little bush quickly lost his life. And we rudely left its corpse to wilt in the jungle heat. With only a few battle scars and some bug bites to match I would call this trek a successful venture.
New Activity #5. We put on our first church service on Sabbath. We had a fairly good attendance – around 100 in all. My task was to lead out with Sabbath school for about 50 kids. It was difficult work, but people enjoyed it and are excited for next weeks service. To make it a perfect Sabbath our little crew splurged on haystacks. (We thankfully found little corn chip like things down here after an arduous search) We had great fun introducing this Adventist American food oddity to our Peruvian team members.
As far as my pictures go, I decided it would be a good neck excercise for all of you to twist your head sideways as you observe first hand a bit my life here. Hehehehe....or maybe I am just trying to help the masouse (people who rub backs...not sure how to spell this word) industry. Have fun!

This is a fun picture from when we were practicing IV´s. Notice the big needle in the front of my elbow...

YEAH!!! Free water....what could be better...noticve the grand size of the rain drops...a bit similar to the lemons, ya?

Welp...this is us practicing our grand firday night ritual of goruging on Popcorn and fruit.

A close up of our group after church on Sabbath. The three Peruvians are the bible workers on our team.

Our Km 8 group eating haystacks for Sabbath lunch. YEAH!!!!
Peoples up the left side and down the right side - Brittany, Melanie, Edward, Puma, Josue, Me, Lauren and Matthew)

Working at the refraction table...helping eyes see better (or worse if it is the wrong refraction) 2 eyeballs at a time.

Repair time on some glasses during the eye clinic

The activity of my days has slowed down a bit. My daily rountine is to traverse across Neuvo Amazonia stopping at different peoples houses to visit with them and teach them about nutrition and hygiene. I have a pretty good are ato cover so I tend to walk at a pretty fast pace. Everyone down here thinks I am so funny for walking fast with big strides.
I feel as if I am pretty acoustombed to Peruvian life. Where we are living right now at km 8 there is no running wáter. This means that we have to buy all of our wáter for cooking, drinking, showering, washing clothes, etc. It seems like such a silly thing to spend money on, but it is definietly a necissity. I was overjoyed the other day when it started raining super hard. I quickly grabbed all the buckets and contianers that we had and set them all out to collect free wáter. Another great thing about life down here is that giant papayas can be bought for the equivalent of 30 US cents. Papaya season is about 2 weeks away and I am oh so excited. Another reason I think I am becoming Peruvian is that the other night our group decided to taste a bit of American cultura and eat supper at a Pizzaria. We delightfully enjoyed our pizza until the bill game and we realized that each slice of pizza came out to about $1 US. Normally this would not be considered a ridiculous Price, but for here that is super duper expensive. That is almost a whole days worth of food (and I had 3 slices - no food for 3 whole days…aaahhh). One other funny thing that has been happening to me over the past few days is running into random tables in the dark. You see, where we are living now there is no electicity. The sun goes down soon after 6 leaving lots of time to wander through darkness and run into things. Me, being to cheap to use my flashlight batteries and preferring the adventure of exploring in the darkness, have found myself colliding into random tables and chairs that were not there earlier. My legs have random bruises to remind me of my clumsiness. Funny how my I am still just as clumsy even here in a different hemisphere.

This is a picture from clinic a few weeks ago. Each morning we would arrive to see at least this many people lined up outside, waiting for medical attention. Each day we would help about 150 patients - busy, busy times, but oh so fun.

This picture is from a few weeks ago, but here is Lauren and I in our little triage rooms during clinic - the blue sheet is our dividing wall between the rooms. (if you look closely you will see that I have scooby-do scrubs on...isn´t that exciting?)

A few of us walking out to the main road to catch a taxi.

(I am in the blue with the green pack)

Melanie, Me, Lauren, Josh and Brittany.

(The nurse squad with one of our dental friends)

Our team of 5 in our house at Km 8

(Left to Right: Lauren, Brittany, Matt, Me and Melanie)

Only in Peru...

-Allow at least 3 times as much time as it should take to get anywhere or do anything.
-Speak Castellano and not Spanish (Spanish is spoken in Spain)
-Eat fruit that resmebles forg eggs, cacoons and other typically non-edible ítems
-Lick your plate after every meal to coserve wáter when doing dishes
-Burn all your garbage in a hole behind your house
-Find glowey bugs (fireflies) that turn off when you try to catch them. (In all my quests of catching glowey bugs I have never suceded. I will think that I have one only to find that he magically has dissappeared) However the battle is not yeto ver between me and the glowey bugs
-Find lemons the size of something that could only have been grown in Texas.
-East rice all the time
-Cook rice with a plastic bag in the pot (this actually makes the rice a lot more delicious, I will teach anyone that desires to know the secret to cooking rice in the Peruvian fashion)
-Tie a trailer to the bumper of the truck because there is no hitch
-Find people with typewriters on street corners to type letters for the general public
- Do you find a family of 5 squishing onto a motorbike to go to school each day

Here is our little kitty and monkey back at Km 38. Just a few days ago Lauren, Brittany and I decided to back some banana bread and some cookies for a going away party for Dr. Fillman and Mary and also for a team members birthday. Normally when you are backing you leave cookies out to cool right? Well this is what I did, but I forgot about my little monkey friend. At one point I turned around to find George sitting on the pan of cookies, quickly stuffing one in his face and looking at me with his little innocent monkey look. After a good spanking I spent the next while keeping guard over my cookies. No way was he going to get any more of that beloved delicacy.

This is a picture of the house back at Km 38, notice the beginnig of the jungle. I love having the jungle in my backyard. Sadly, not that I am living out at Km 8 (the health class location) I will only be visiting Km 38 every few weeks. My junle treks will only be a special once in a while treat.

This is the biopsy I assited with. The melanoma on this ladies face was about the size of a silver dollar coin. We removed a small sliver of it for the biopsy. Since the surgery was on the face, we couldn´t use epinepherine in the lidocain, so there was lots of blood. My main job was to clean up all the blood so that Dr. Mike (sitting down with the scalple in this pic) could see what he was doing.