February 6, 2012 – Wow, what a weekend. I had a wonderful 30th birthday celebration with my new friends that included dinner at Mojsa, one of the nicest restaurants in Puno, cake, a house party, and dancing at a club. Then Saturday I enjoyed a lazy day catching up with family via Skype. Sunday was the first big day of dances for the festival so we went to the stadium and watched for a few hours. It was a beautiful day and I even got a little sunburned. After the dances we went to a cevecheria and I braved the ceviche – ¡Qué delicioso! That evening we watched more parades in the streets. So much music and dancing I felt like I was on sensory overload. But overall I feel like I’m really starting to get settled in here and enjoy all the people I’ve met.
Today was an interesting day at work. I spent some time in the morning with one of the obstetrices who answered all my questions about the consultorio (health center) and reviewed my surveys. Then I met with my preceptor to discuss surveys and interviews. Good news is he liked all my questions. Bad news is the process is going to be much more of an undertaking than I thought. First, there is not a complete database of customers like I thought, so I’ll have to try to recruit them in person at the centros focales. We decided to hold off on the client satisfaction survey (which is a good approach I think, and means less work for me) but the lifestyles/health behavior survey I drafted is now top priority. Plus it is no longer just a simple survey I can hand off to the obstetrices to give to the clients. My preceptor wants a statistically significant sample, which means 350+ surveys, so I have to try to recruit clients during their loan payment meetings. Luckily, I’m ahead of schedule for my work plan so hopefully I can get this survey rolling before my interviews go into full swing. I’m still a little concerned about convincing women to spend an hour with me for the interviews, but the good news is Doctor Alfonso liked my interview guide and made only grammatical corrections and no major changes.
Tomorrow I’ll be at the centers all day and then Thursday I’m going to one of the mobile clinics/health fairs. So that should be exciting, always nice to get out of the office.
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