Que Pasa!

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Hola mis amigos!

Had great luck with placement this morning... Sarah and I went in for 8am with great intentions of watching all of the operations that we're on this morning, but when we got there the doctors told us that there wouldnt be any scheduled for today or tomorrow because of the festival of light that is tomorrow! So it looks like we're having a 4 day weekend, whoop!

I was on the paediatric department last week but decided to swap to surgery this week because they are very protective of the children and there wasn't much for me to do except watch and try to understand the very fast spanish of the ward round. There was some weird and wonderful stuff on the paediatric ward like malaria, TB and a very unusual cardiac anomaly. Surgery was good this week, saw quite a few operations and they started to let me assist and draw drugs up so think i'll spend another couple of weeks in surgery before moving on to another department in the hospital.

We went to see lots of ruins surrounding Cuzco last weekend which were very impressive. We went to Pisac on saturday which is about 35km away from Cuzco. When we got to Pisac we turned down the offer of getting a taxi to the top of the ruins and then walking down (thought it would be good training for the inca trail) but as we started walking up what only could be described as a mountain we realised why no-one else seemed to be walking up! I had a look to see what the guide book said about the walk as we struggled up, gasping with the altitude to find that it was described as 'undeniably grueling' and 'steeper and harder going than the inca trail'. It was well worth the walk up though as the ruins were amazing, with all the forts, houses and places of sacrifice at the top. There was a peruvian film crew at the top of Pisac who wanted to have their photo taken with us, the locals definitely see us as a novelty!
After our huge trek on saturday we decided to stay closer to Cuzco on sunday and saw 4 ruins - tambomachay, pukka, qenqo, and sacsayhuman. They were all much smaller than Pisac so we could take them at our leisure and we also went horseriding between two of the ruins. The last ruin sacsayhuman seems to be the most important ruin near Cuzco and is where they sacrifice a llama for the festival of light (tomorrow). We're going to head up there tomorrow but not sure i want to watch the part where the llama is sacrificed!

There been festivals and parades every day in Cuzo for the past couple of weeks. The best one we've seen so far was on monday, where they projected a huge display telling the story of the inca's onto the church in the main square. It was amazing, i have a video clip of it that i'll upload once i'm home. I was amazed they have the technology to do something that fancy!

I better go as we need to go collect Rohan from the hopital as she wasnt told to leave like we we're this morning.
Will try and write again soon!
Lots of love Claire xx

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