Roughing it in Miraflores

Miranda in Miraflores

Well, I have to admit. There isn't much to complain about here in Lima. Miraflores is the touristy, expat part of Lima - we've been affectionately calling it gringoland. A lot of the big hotels are here, and its right on the waterfront. I'm living in a great apartment just two blocks from the sea. Lima is perched on the top of cliffs in a wide bay. Just two blocks from my apartment is Larco Mar - a posh shopping mall / movie theater / giant nightclub that is carved into the cliffs. Stairs lead down to the water, where there are, on average of course, about a hundred surfers a day. Constantly flying overhead is a mass of paragliders; on windy weekends there are upwards of fifty of them at once.

Food in Peru is fantastic and (relatively) cheap. The food isn't spicy like it is in other parts of Latin America; but the ceviche is definitely the best in the world. Ceviche, if you haven't had it, is raw fish "cooked" in lime juice. Here it comes in enormous chunks of fish and seafood, and costs only a few dollars for an enormous plate. To the shock and horror of our Peruvian friends, we dove into the ceviche on the very first day. (They think we're all delicate little flowers!) There are also a lot of grilled meats with spicy sauces. Of course, potatoes are a part of every meal (if you didn't know, the potato originates from Peru!). The drink of choice is chicha morada, and juice made from blue corn. A specialty around here is anticuchos, or grilled cow heart. They are surprisingly delicious, though I can't say I liked the grilled intenstines! Besides, we had three vets at the table who had more fun identifying stomach compartments than eating them.

Of course, the fruit is one of the best parts of being here, although its a different mix of fruits than I got to know in Panama. Chirimoya (Custard Apple) is everywhere and really creamy and delicious. There is passionfruit (Maracuya) everywhere, which makes me endlessly happy. There's another sort of passionfruit called Granadilla, we haven't worked out if there's an English name for it.

We manage to do things other than eat. Lima seems pretty sporty, I have several friends training for the Lima half-marathon. I joined the fancy Gold's Gym where I've been really enjoying going to spinning classes in spanish; I've also been convinced to go to an intermediate step class which is basically salsa on a step and is way above my step or language capabilities.

There are also some great bars here. Pisco, made from wine, is the national drink. A pisco sour is mixed with egg white. A maracuya sour has passionfruit, and is definitely my new favorite drink. Watch out though, they're quite strong.

Oh wait - we're also doing work! I'm still deciding what project to work on. This means that I travel around the city to different institutions, meeting with people and observing what's going on in the lab. The two institutions I'm visiting are the Universitario Peruano Cayetano Heredia and the Naval Tropical Medical Center. Once you cross the river and get out of fancy downtown Lima, life is much more as you might expect. However, here in Lima, even the stray dogs wear sweaters. When we asked a taxista why, the response was "because it's cold of course!".

Cold is the only major drawback here. I knew I was coming to winter, but I didn't quite believe it. It's in the 50s and 60s every day, however it's overcast and muggy and it absolutely chills you to the bone. What's more is we don't have a drier at our house, and our clothes never actually dry. I thought at first the overcast days wouldn't bother me, but after two weeks with no sun, my seasonal affective disorder kicked in.

I've been bad about taking photos, but I'll work to remedy that! I've stolen a lot from friends, so check out the album below!

Peru 1

The long-awaited arrival in Lima post!

Miranda in Miraflores

I've now been in Peru for 3 weeks and I'm finally getting on with blogging.

If you'd like to know what I've been up to, check out Katie's blog: http://notoriouspastorius.blogspot.com/. Katie slept in my bed for the first week and a half, so its safe to say that most of her posts apply to both of us!

More to come soon!

Sixteen Fogarty's go to Seattle and get crabs

Miranda in Seattle

Sixteen of the Fogarty scholars went straight from Bethesda to Seattle to take a course at the University of Washington on the Principles of HIV/STD Research. It seemed that those of us with mentors who are associated with UW got the opportunity to go. I was worried that, as a veterinarian, I was out of place at this course. However, since I was willing to learn, and someone else was willing to send me, I figured why not?! Besides, I’d never been to Seattle before.

The sixteen of us were all on the same flight to Seattle from Bethesda. Unfortunately this flight left at 7am, meaning we left at 4:30 (several of us did not sleep at all that night, after our last night at NIH evening out). Fortunately, we got to Seattle really early; we head straight downtown to have dim sum in Chinatown (with a native Cantonese speaker and two Mandarin speakers – this was not your average dim sum!), toured around Pioneer’s place and Pikes Market, and trekked over to and up the Space Needle.

We were staying in the dorms at UW – although the campus is really beautiful, the dorms at UW are some of the worse in the country. My roommate was a doctor from Uganda named Zaam; we got along really well and spent lots of time laughing about the differences between the States and Uganda (she finds it totally outrageous that we don’t iron our clothes). We managed to be in Seattle during a record breaking heat wave – it was sunny practically every day, and during the second week it was intensely hot every day! There were 140 students in the course, the majority of whom were clinicians from outside of the States (mostly from Africa).

Class was intense but very interesting. These days were shorter than those in Bethesda, giving us plenty of time to get down to the Agua Verde for some fish tacos and margaritas. The most interesting lecture was on social networks and the spread of HIV; the idea is that a culture with a greater acceptance of concurrency in sexual partners leads to a more thorough spread of STDs. Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/user/statnetMovies (and if you want more, you can read the article here: http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/6/1023).

The group of us had a great time in Seattle; since we already knew each other from Bethesda, we spent a lot of time together exploring Seattle. It’s amazing how well you can get to know a city in less than two weeks! We got to know downtown and Capitol Hill very well. We went to the aquarium and ate at the Crab Pot, a feast of mussels and crabs spread out on the table in front of is. I got to meet up with an old friend from college, who also now works in the global health field. We took the ferry over to Bainbridge Island, and Bruno and I spent an entire day at the Woodland Park Zoo and didn’t miss and single exhibit. Everyone did a lot of shopping, especially everyone from outside of the States who had lots of presents to bring home. Thinking back on it, I can’t imagine how we managed to do so much. No wonder we were tired when we arrived in Lima. These two weeks were truly phenomenal; I really got to know the Peru crew really well, and made some other fantastic friends.

One of the best things we did was rent a car to drive up to the San Juan Islands. We took a ferry over to Friday Harbor, drove to Lime Kiln Bay, and camped out waiting for orcas. Many hours later, they arrived, and we saw several very close to the shore! We had missed our ferry, and had to go home on the late ferry that stopped at every island, but it was more than worth it! These two weeks were an excellent send off for our trip to Peru!

DC and Seattle