My week started off great on Monday with my new job at the clinic. I now work in the outpatient portion of the clinic helping the technician Yovanna with charting, filing, registering patients, and the occasional injection or bandages. I like my new job because I finally feel like I am being useful because I am doing things that are very similar to what I used to do when I worked as a medical office assistant. On Monday I assisted Nely change the bandages for a woman who was in a car accident three months ago and is now completely paralyzed. Because she is bedridden and had been lying in the same position for so long the blood has stopped circulating to certain areas and she has developed tunneling ulcers. Although right now they are pretty bad looking, Nely explained to me that with proper care and cleaning the ulcers can eventually close over and heal. Unfortunately, the woman also had to receive a tracheotomy and will have to breathe through a tube in her throat for the rest of her life. It was very interesting, although somewhat terrifying, for me to observe but I'm glad that I had the opportunity to assist.
After the clinic Ashleigh, Neja, Ariella and I went to the Choco Museo for our chocolate making workshop. It was so much fun to get to learn about the entire process, from growth of the cocoa trees to fermenting the beans and then drying and roasting them to separate the husks from the cocoa nibs. It was also interesting to be able to try the chocolate in many different forms such as the nib before and after the roasting as well as tea made from the husks with some sugar added. We also tried hot chocolate in two ways: the first a spicy, traditional Aztec version with chili powder added and the second made the European way with milk, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves. the Aztec hot chocolate was quite biter and, even though I like spiciness, it was not pleasant tasting. The second hot chocolate tasted much better in mine and everyone else's opinions. At the end we each got to make our own chocolates using trays that had molds for us to fill. I made several with almonds and peanuts, a few with oreos, cocoa nibs, and coffee beans, a couple with salt, and one with cinnamon powder.
The next day Ariella and I went all around the Plaza d'Armas and found out tour information regarding the Sacred Valley and Arequipa. There are so many different travel agencies that it's hard to know which one to go with, especially considering that they all seem to offer similar tours and prices. In the end we settled on two different agencies and booked our Sacred Valley tour for this Thursday and our trip to Arequipa for Friday and Saturday of next week.
Today Zack and I visited the Qoricancha Museum which is actually underground and houses Inca ceramics and mummies. It was both interesting and freaky to learn that apparently the Inca used special "pillows" and bandages to stretch out babies' skulls as soon as they were born as a sign of social status. After walking down Avenue de la Cultura back to the Plaza we wanted to try and find the Fallen Angel restaurant we had heard so much about. We didn't know exactly where it was but there was a man on stilts promoting a club and he said that he would show us the way. We were highly amused following him through the streets and were surprised at his ease in waking uphill along the cobblestones in stilts. When we finally got there I wanted a picture with him and instead of paying him the standard one sol, as is custom here, he asked me instead for payment in kisses so I gave him a quick peck on the cheek. We didn't actually end up eating at Fallen Angel because it was quite pricey but we went inside to check out the decor and it was extremely unusual.
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