Our Project!

Here is a picture of Nick and I at a restaurant overlooking the Plaza del Armas...yummy pizza time.

Hey guys! Just a quick update... We started our volunteer project this week. We are at an orphanage called Madre Teresa. It's a home for mentally and physically disabled children. We walk about 20 minutes every morning to get there... and when we get there we dive right into changing the children out of their pj's! There are about 20 children there, ranging from baby to about 10 years old. The majority of the children are in wheelchairs and are unable to speak. Madre Theresa attempts to provide all they can for the needs of these children, but it's still only the bare minimum. The wheelchairs are in poor conidtion, they sleep in worn-out cribs and beds, the toys have seen better days, even the staff are not equiped with what they need to do their job. It's really eye opening, and we wish we could do more to help!

We are there in the morning and do physical therapy with the children for about 2 hours, before lunch. The rehab room is nothing more than a few mats on the floor and a few blankets over them. Nick and the other PT do the best they can to direct the rest of the volunteers with proper exercises for the kids, but sill there is no equipment besides a rickety set of parallel bars which only 3 of the children are able to use. I will let the newly licensed PT explain the situation to you... The mental disabilities these children face make it extremely difficult to help them with their physical disabilities. One of the biggest needs is educating the nurses there on positioning, so the kids, especially with CP, don't develop contractures. We are also looking into buying some walker-type devices for the kids at the nearby market (see below). We've found the experience to be both very rewarding and extremely sad. We are supposed to be changing projects in a week or so, but we are going to access where we are needed most and go from there. The other PT student is leaving next week, so we may end up staying where we are to fill the need for a PT at Madre Teresa.

The kids are adorable and incredible! They greet us every morning with smiles and hugs! I think we all have our favorites though... mine (Christine) is Judith... she is like a small Buddha. She is chubby and blind and only speaks her native tongue, Quechua... they don't know how old she is, she looks to be about a year.. but we guess she is 5-6. At PT I work with her on sitting up straight and strengthening her back and neck muscles... she tends to just rest her head and neck on her cute big belly. Nick and I both wish we could record her laugh... she cracks herself up all the time and just starts howling.. (she sounds like that adorable baby on YouTube). Sometimes you can get her to say "Ma-Ma!!" and she just yells it and then laughs so hard that she sighs and takes a deep breath. I want to keep her.

Nick has his favorite... he didn't pick him but he picked Nick! He is maybe 4 years old, and has short gut and some brain lesions... this is all we know because of the lack of medical records on these children. Nick is working on his walking at PT, but when he is not working he just scoots around and smells Nick's shoes and pants and cuddles on Nick. He is adorable... and is always very trendy! We will post pictures of our favorites when we can!

We are getting ready for our big trek to Machu Picchu!! We leave at 4am on Saturday (sorry to Nick for having to put up with me at that hour) and we hike until Wednesday. We are really excited for this trip and we can't wait to show you pictures of one of the wonders of the WORLD!

Today, we went to a market called El Molino that everyone has been raving about! We were shocked when we got there, this place is CRAZY. It's like the wal-mart of Cusco... but not as lame as wal-mart. They sell everything from Northface jackets to boot-legged DVD's!! Nick picked up a Northface Jacket for about 20 US dollars... and I found myself a nice little tweed coat! :) They have EVERYTHING and more... we look forward every trip we will take there in the future.

We will be creating a Picassa site as soon as we get back from the Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu so you can see more photos, it's kind of hard to post many of them on here...

Take Care!

Nick and Christine