Cuzco and Big News from GW

The big news of the week was my conversation with Dean McQuail at George Washington Medical School last Thursday morning. I still can’t believe what she told me, “We have a spot in our class for you.” On so many of my morning runs, I’ve imagined how it would be to be accepted someday to med school. Now that it’s actually here, it feels so surreal. One of my professors at the U told me this week, “Divine intervention does work.” I know that the Lord had something huge to do with this. It’s an answer to so many prayers. I found out my first MCAT scores here in Peru two years ago and felt so discouraged and doubted whether I would ever be able to go to medical school. So now I find it somewhat ironic that I found out that I’m accepted here in Peru exactly two years later. I get back August 9th and have to be at GW for orientation August 20th. So it’s going to be a crazy week when I get home. But as you can imagine, I’m extremely excited.


I spent the 4th of July on a bus from Arequipa to Cuzco and met Brittany and Sampson here yesterday morning at 6am. Yesterday Eagle Condor took us up to their school, 45 minutes above Cuzco and asked us if we could prepare health classes about hygiene for the students. And tomorrow we are going to check out Southern Cross’s Sunflower House, an orphanage for street children an hour outside of Cuzco. Paul Evans wrote a book about this place too. There seems a myriad of options here and Sampson and Brittany seem really excited. Above is a picture of Sampson and me on the road up to Eagle Condor in front of a pack of alpaca and llamas. And the second picture is of the Sakantay School that we collected school supplies for.


Cuzco is a cobble-stoned, quaint city, surrounded by beautiful forested mountains on all sides. It is South America’s oldest continuously inhabited city and its history is spectacular. Yesterday we went to Qorikancha, which was once the richest temple in the Inca Empire. The Inca stone foundation still exists. When the Spaniards conquered the Inca they built their church on top of this Inca temple. So there are literally many layers of history within the church’s walls. The most impressive thing for me was how the Inca’s stones fit so tightly together. This is a picture next to one of these walls with the sunset of Cuzco in the background.


I spent most of the week in front of my computer writing up our analysis report for Fondesurco, the NGO we’re working with. It has been a ton of tedious work, but such is research. I’ve loved being in Arequipa all week- the weather is perfect with 70s during the day and 40s at night. Arequipa is known for El Misti, a 20,000 ft. active volcano that towers over the city. This is a picture of the crew with Kirk last Monday with El Misti in the background.