Bienvenidos a Bolivia!

Hello everyone! This is my first post since arriving in Cochabamba, sorry for the delay! So, what have I been up to the past few days I've been here? Well, let me first tell you about the plane ride. I had just about a thousand connections to get here (DEN --> Dallas --> Miami --> La Paz --> Santa Cruz, then had to buy a ticket from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba) so that was a little crazy, but God has already been showing me his sovereignty over my situation. Thank you all so much for your prayers. I was a little worried when boarding the plane to Bolivia since this was my first time truly flying alone to a different country. Having an internal freak out as I got on the plane that my Spanish was going to be sucky and that I somehow would not be able to relate to the bolivianos got the best of me for a few minutes, but then I ended up starting a conversation with the lady in the seat next to me in Spanish, who turned out to be a Spanish professor (Flora Terran) at CSU and was making her way to Cochabamba herself. Flora ended up being a huge blessing to me - she ended up telling me a lot about Bolivia and the Quechua indians, and even stuck with me as I went through to get my visa and got stopped at customs because of the medical supplies I was bringing, and helped me buy my ticket to Bolivia, change my money, and waited with me until the people from Hospitals of Hope (HOH) came to pick me up from the airport. It's funny how sometimes God surprises you in the ways you least expect it. I know I would have been really worried when I got to Santa Cruz if Flora would not have been there because I could not get a hold of the people who were supposed to pick me up until the very last minute. Another randomly awesome answer to prayer was that even though I got stopped at customs (some insulin syringes, chest tube supplies, meds, and sterile instruments had been donated to me - thank you to Dr. Button Family Practice!!! :)), I was still able to get through with all of the supplies. The lady searching my things took out all of the syringes, told me I could not take any of them because I was not a doctor, then told me I could only take 10 of the packages. As she was saying this she shoved them back in my bag and then just let me leave. HAHA! I didn't question it. If that wasn't God I don't know what it was.
   So after I got to the Cochabamba airport, about 7 of the other students volunteering with HOH came and picked me up in their trufi (the Bolivian word for van), and took me to the guest house we are staying at, which is in Cotapachi, a sort of suburb outside of Cochabamba. After being worried about being left in the airport to die, seeing all of the HOH people come in with their scrubs sure was a site for sore eyes! haha. After unpacking, we ended up going to visit a nearby hospital where some of the students went to a burn unit, and a few of the others (me included) visited the pediatrics unit where we played Uno with a girl who had just gotten her appendix taken out. I wasn't sure what exactly we would be doing that day, but even playing a simple game of Uno seemed to mean a whole lot to this little girl. We taught her the rules of the games and soon she was sheepishly smiling and laughing at us. The Bolivian hospitals are nothing like the US ones for those of my medical friends who are reading this. I'll elaborate on that later after I have spent more time in the HOH out in Vinto, which is another suburb of Cochabamba where we spend most morning Mon-Fri 9-11:30 shadowing and helping.
   WOW there is a lot to say, I will have to update more so that these blog posts aren't a thousand pages long! The next day we had some free time in the morning, so we took a couple of trufis to a national park (Parque Pairumani) nearby, and followed an irrigation ditch/river up a ravine. Some boys from the orphanage that HOH volunteers at were also there, and they led us up another greener ravine. The area of Bolivia we are in is very arid and dry, but also at a high elevation (8,300 ft in the city), so I was embarrassingly pooped at the end of our hike. It was beautiful though! In the afternoon we went "babywashing" in one of the town squares. Apparently this is a ministry that has been happening for almost 12 years now - a local church comes every Saturday to set up 3 washing stations, and the Bolivians/Quechuans line up their toddlers and babies so that the volunteers can bathe and dress them in clean donated clothes. Some of the kids had lice, and all of them were very dirty, but excited to splash around. It was awesome seeing how such a simple thing could be a blessing to people. After the washing all 9 of us HOH volunteers crammed into a tiny 4 door with 2 of the Brazilian interns that come do rotations at HOH, and drove us to their house for a going away party for some other interns. After trying literally the most delicious brazilian style fried steak I have ever tried, and attempting to sing some songs in Portuguese, we finally decided to head home.
   I think this will have to suffice for an update for now, but I will be posting more often. Again, thank you all so much to those who have been praying for my safety and this trip and for those who donated. I seriously cannot do this without you, and it has been so incredibly encouraging to see how you all have stepped up to support me and how generous everyone has been. It has definitely taught me a lesson in what generosity means and how I can practice that better in my own life. I am so blessed to have the opportunity to be here, and the adventure has only just begun!