Hola from Peru! Northwestern's annual Student
Academy Audiology humanitarian trip to Peru is officially underway. A little
about our trip: once a year, a team of student clinicians from the Doctor of
Audiology program at Northwestern University travel to Truijillo, Peru for two
weeks. During this time, we give a seminar to share our knowledge about
audiology with the local healthcare professionals who currently provide hearing
health services, but are not specialized in the field of audiology. The
majority of our time is spent in local schools teaching school children from
kindergarten through high school about the importance of hearing and hearing
health. In addition to this educational outreach, this is the first year we
have the resources to conduct hearing screenings for both school children and
senior citizens! We are very excited to introduce this clinical component into
our outreach, and hope our efforts this year will help expand the annual
services we offer to the citizens in Trujillo.
Now that we are settled into our host family's home in Trujillo, we will be able to keep you (our supporters) updated throughout our time here. So, without further ado, meet our 2016 Vive Peru Team!
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| Jennifer Phelan, AuD Shannon Switzer, Third Year Graduate Student Gregory Horton, Third Year Graduate Student Clare Furuta, Second Year Graduate Student Jenna Browning-Kamins, Second Year Graduate Student |
Saturday, August 13
After carefully packing our audiometers, otoscopes, and bug spray, we flew out of Chicago on Saturday evening and arrived in Lima at 5:30am.
Sunday, August 14
We were greeted by a member of the Vive Peru team, Janice, who recognized us in the airport from some of the glamour shots we had sent her a couple months ago. We piled into a taxi and took a speedy ride through Lima and along the coast before arriving at the Dragonfly Hostel. While we were not staying overnight at the hostel, it was a great place for us to relax for the day before our overnight bus from Lima to Trujillo.
After lounging in the hostel, we went out to explore the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima.
We walked around Parque Kennedy, which is locally known as the "cat park" where locals and tourists like to spend time hanging out with the stray cats who call the park home.
After taking in the sights and sounds of the area, we settled into a cafe for a leisurely lunch and discussed some of our goals for the next two weeks.
We returned to the hostel for orientation with Janice from Vive Peru, and then went out with her for dinner. After dinner, we took another speedy taxi ride to the bus station, where we took an overnight bus to Trujillo from 9:15pm-6:15am. Every member of our team slept straight through the journey!
Monday August 15th
We were picked up from the bus station this morning by taxi and taken to our home for the next two weeks. We are staying with a host family in their lovely, spacious home. Señora Mercy y Señor Jose own a small cafe, which is attached to their house. They have two children, one who is in univeristy in Trujillo, and one boy who is six years old. Senora Mercy treated us to a large, delicious desayuno with home-brewed coffee. In fact, it was so wonderful, we did not think to capture it in a picture. We had the morning off to recover from our traveling and spent it chatting with our host family.
After lunch, we went to the Vive Peru headquarters down the road from our host family's house. We had a meeting with the organizers of Vive Peru to review our itinerary for the next two weeks and discuss the logistics of our projects.
Following the meeting, we took taxis into the city centre of Trujillo where we admired the Cathedral and beautiful colonial buildings.
We followed-up our stroll around the city with coffee and dessert in a cafe called "La Llave" because of all the old keys it displays on its walls.
Thank you again to our supporters, and we will keep you all in the loop as our hearing wellness project progresses here in Trujillo!
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