TLDR: Hospital life, fencing, music, life, friends, won a tournament

August and September have been pretty interesting months for me. A lot has happened, partly because July and August were basically vacation time. maaan, such beautiful moments! A friend who moved to Canada came back to Peru for her birthday, and we did tons of stuff with her from exploring downtown to hitting up clubs. Everything was super fun, and I'm really happy to have seen her. It's kind of crazy since I've known her since first grade (over 10 years ago!) and we still maintain that friendship and bond so strongly.

And speaking of bonds, I can't talk about them without mentioning my best friend Montoya. The vacation wouldn't have been the same without him. We did so much together, whether it was our 10pm-4am gaming sessions, our outings to events or places we're into, or our fencing adventures. My favorite moment with him was actually thanks to fencing.

We were invited to this kind of "medieval fair" where they sold stuff, held events, and people showed up in period cosplay. We were invited to do a longsword and saber demonstration, but we did SO much more than that. Our instructor was friends with a well-known Tyrion Lannister cosplayer (the dwarf from Game of Thrones), and that opened a lot of doors at the event. First, we accompanied him to all the stands for a tasting of local wine for all the attendees (we also tasted each and every time they did, lol), and then did the same thing but in the VIP room. The event had brought in a bunch of important voice actors and actors too! We met the Spanish voices of The Rock, Shrek, Kakashi, Homer, among others. Besides being talented, they were really kind and good to us, so it was a truly beautiful experience I'll always remember.

Before vacation ended, the "Masters of War" tournament was also held. THE biggest HEMA tournament at least here in Peru. I competed in the longsword/synthetic saber and steel categories, and for my first time having only trained for 5 months, I didn't do badly at all. Here were the results:

• Third place Steel Saber (medalist!)
• Fourth place Synthetic Saber
• Seventh place Synthetic Longsword
• Ninth place Steel Longsword

that's me, as you can see other fencers were WAY older + buff as hell so I'm happy, also excuse the stache, weird experimenting era in vacations lol.

I got a really constructive experience about what's happening in HEMA here in Peru. I'd like to expand it and over time grow both myself and the community of people who practice it. Side note: right now I'm in my physical conditioning phase, there's still SO much to learn.

Okay, let's put fencing aside for a moment (I plan on doing a post later that talks about it). 

I BOUGHT AN IPOD! 

I'd been tired of the current music format with digital platforms for a while, because I wanted to distance myself from them, but it was precisely music and my love for it that kept me from doing it completely. I bought an 8GB iPod Touch from an old man for about 20 dollars? Best purchase I've ever made. 

The battery lasts for weeks, I like the interface, and the closeness and connection I have with my music has increased exponentially (plus it looks really cool with my Koss headphones).

love itt!

Right now I'm at the hospital most of the time, and it's a really useful experience for me! It's like rediscovering my taste and love for medicine in a closer, more personal way. My patients are varied, but I think I can now understand why I chose this career. I feel like an impostor writing this, but these are really things you think about and never say. It's nice being human sometimes.

Anyway, that's been a VERY CONDENSED version of everything important that's happened in my life lately (oh, and I went to see Green Day live—forgot to mention that!). It feels good to be back, and I'm taking advantage of that to step away from social media and devices a bit.

Love you, person reading this. Thanks for making it to the end.

silly pic took in the ipod yesterday