El Progresso Re-visited and the New Year in Pacasmayo!

So last Thursday all of us went back to El Progresso to hand out flyers to the community informing them of the upcoming free medical campaign. You can see on the flier that the medical campaign will take place on the 6^th of January. This is essentially what all of our medical training has been preparing us for. We will be recording history and basically triaging patients for the doctor(s) we bring. As we were handing out flyers, we got a better look at the neighborhood. It is difficult for me to imagine living as these people do. They really have the definition of a “hard” life.  For this reason, I am all the more excited to have the opportunity to provide medical care to this community. This is most definitely a service that they otherwise would not have access to. I simply hope that we can make a significant positive impact.

After handing out the flyers, a few of us went to Apiat. It is a large store that is surrounded by an outdoor marketplace. There were tons of people there that congested the streets, with venders selling practically anything you could imagine. Lots of the merchandise was related to the New Year celebration, including fireworks and yellow underwear. The yellow clothing is a tradition in Peru that claims one will have good luck if one wears yellow during the New Year. Once we entered Apiat, we suddenly became dizzy from all of the shoes. I have never seen this many high quality shoes in such a small area. The smell of leather almost made us nauseous. It should go without saying that street food was definitely had during this occasion: the best churros ever! (wish I had a pic)

We left for Pacasmayo on Friday the 31^st to celebrate the New Year. Luckily at the last minute, we got a hotel that housed all 30 something of us and it was one block from the beach. That night we went to a beach party that had plenty of loud music, dancing, and drinks. We made it just in time for the count down and it was crazy, unfortunately I forgot my camera so you will have to use your imagination. After the long night, our plan for waking up early in the morning for surfing was quickly forgotten. Instead we lazily got up and spent the day hangin’ out on the beach where we all proceeded to get badly burned. HAHA, oh well, it was totally worth it. Finished our 2 night trip by getting sum beautiful pics of the sunset at Pacasmayo beach. Had a great New Year