I didn’t put photos up yesterday but it wasn’t y fault.  We had another blackout last night so I couldn’t get on to the net.  We seem to be getting one most nights at the moment.  It is a little frustrating especially last night as I was talking to mum on Skype and her sound had just started working and then the lights went off.  Anyway, here are yesterday’s photos.

One of the things I love about living in Chulu is the 30 metre pool.  It is about 1km away so 3 or 4 times a week I can run to the pool and swim some laps.  It is a beautiful pool and being able to swim is such a blessing for me.

Here is the view outside the pool on my run.

Here is the pool.

And the other side.

I am actually quite excited about doing washing here in our new home.  Party it is because after two months of living in other people’s home and having to do it by hand or take it to someone else’s home it is just really easy to have my own laundry.  But also because my laundry is great as you can see from the photo.

And because I hang the washing up on the roof and this my view.

And here from another point of view.

Inspired by Jenny, Lesley and Tom I also am going to do a photo challenge of my own for the rest of Feb.  I am going to try to put a photo or two each day of some of aspect of our life here in Chulucanas Peru to give people a little bit of a feel for the place.

I am starting with two photos of the rain.  We are in the rainy season here and each afternoon/evening the heavens open and we enjoy the pouring rain and the cooler air.  The downside I guess is that the house leaks and as people keep reminding me the rains bring mosquitoes and they can bring diseases so we have to be even more careful.

But here our street with the rain flowing down and the children playing and the moto taxis not succedding in keeping dry.

And here is Nina enjoying the rain.  She is fully recovered from her illlness thankfully.  We just have to see out the antibiotics.

It has been a stressful weekend to say the least.  On Friday night around dinner time we noticed Nina had a bit of a a fever.  We checked her temp and it was about 38 degrees so we put her to bed with us and stayed with her to keep checking on her.  At 2am when she got diarrhoea and her temp had reached 38.9 we took her to the hospital.  The doctor checked her over and thought she was ok but he ran some tests on her poo and sent us home.

When we returned the next morning to get the results they were quite concerned about her and wanted to do a blood test and urine test as well.  So she was put into the hospital.  It took ages for her to do a wee as she was quite dehydrated so she was put on a drip to give her water as we couldn’t get her drink enough.  It was so awful watching her go through all this and I completely lost it as they put the drip in.  It was made all the more awful as doctors here don’t always communicate what is going on and on top of that I was missing much of it as I don’t know much medical Spanish.   In the end it turned out she had an intestinal infection.  She probably ate something not right.  So she needs to have antibiotics for five days.  They wanted to keep her another day at least to give her the antibiotics and to keep an eye on her hydration.  I was not coping with that idea at all.

Thankfully, a good friend of Martin’s, Sonya, is a nurse at the hospital and she offered to take us home, and come each afternoon for five days to give Nina her antibiotic and check on her hydration etc.  I cannot express how grateful I am to her.  I believe she is an angel sent by God.  Even though she was only there for about ten hours I have never been so grateful to bring Nina home.  She still has the drip in so that Sonya can give her the antibiotic each afternoon and water if need be and I feel sad when I see this big thing on her hand but she is fine.  We check her temp often and it is hanging around 37 degrees and she is eating and drinking ok.  She has a little diarrhoea still but she’s not worried.  She just plays as normal and climbs on everything and runs around the house.  She has been so strong really.

I haven’t been.  Despite having had a really amazing couple of weeks here in Chulu, I have to confess much of this has made me wonder if we have made a terrible decision coming here.  As I look back I do believe that the doctors and nurses did what they had to for Nina and are obviously experienced in these type of infections but I hated been in the hospital so much.  As mentioned their communication wasn’t always great and the cleanliness at the hospital could certainly be better.  And it was so hot without any air-conditioning.

But as always I know God was with us the whole time and that I must continue to trust Him even in defeat, as I did at Nina’s birth.  As someone who didn’t have antibiotics until I was 21 and then only once since I did not want this for my beautiful baby at 1 year and 5 months.  Accepting it  has been hard to swallow.  But I do thank God for antibiotics anyway as I do for Cesareans.  Who knows what she would be going through without them?

Thus, I continue to trust that this is where we are meant to be for whatever reason.  For the last 6 years we have dreamed of coming back to Peru, we have had different visions and hopes and plans for what we might be able to do here and I am not sure that it will work out as we had planned.  To be honest I have no idea what we will happen here but I continue to trust in defeat knowing that this is where God works in our lives and the lives of those around us.