Girls orphanage

Today we visited an orphanage for girls The girls come from all over Peru and stay until they are 18. When we arrived they all immediately ran over and held our hands. They wouldn't let go. Everywhere you walked both of your hands were held at all times.
The girls live in a compound surrounded by four large brick walls topped with barbed wire to keep others out. I felt like the poor girls were in prison but they were all so happy. They had dorms , a church, and a school all inside the four walls.
They performed various dances for us and had made all of their own costumes. In between the dance numbers the girls not performing would pull all of us on the dance floor and we all danced. We all had a blast.
We gave the girls all of the gear KUAC donated. Soccer shirts and sweats. I would love to go back and see all of the girls in KU blue. One of the girls asked me why blue is the favorite color of all Americans. I told her because it's the color of la Universidad de Kansas and everyone wants to be a JayHawk. She just smiled like she did whenever I spoke the rest of my crummy Spanish she didn't understand.
Tomorrow the clinic will open and I'll start seeing patients. There will be a student from OU who will interpret and two Marquette University nursing students working with me. Next week some general surgeons are coming and they have cases scheduled. The clinic the church built here two years ago actually has an OR that i will get to see tomorrow .My goal is to figure out how to set up surgery down here.

They also don't have any physical therapists here. The course director from Marquette's nursing school said there are so many stroke patients that need PT. I told her maybe I could convince some PTs to come down.


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