The Awesome people at the Parish, Santisimo Sacramento, Piura, Peru

The people on my trip that have influenced me the most aren't the people that I help everyday, but rather the people that assisted me through all my stay here at Piura, Peru. These people are kind, caring, funny, and extremely hardworking. Everyday, they stay up late to help us to plan for the next day's mission. They are always ready in the morning to serve us and bring us to our project site. They never complain about their long hours and they truly love what they do! Here are some pictures of the people that I work with and love!

Fanni, the school principal of Madre del buen Consejo

Fanni is awesome and has provided us valuable insight into the school Madre del buen Consejo! She has a great sense of humor and knows a lot about everything, really!

With Juan Carlos

Juan Carlos helps to manage the wireless networks in the parish, and also helps out the missionaries' daily activities such as purchasing supplies for people, bringing people to different places, and managing the electronics at the school.  He's a great guy to hang around with and definitely cares about his work.

With Johnny

Johnny is the multitalented electrician at the parish. He wired all the routers here. I've been working with him for the past couple of days to improve the system installed here at the parish. He learns extremely quick and has taught me many things about wiring and electronics as well! In addition to all of these talents, he also plays the guitar with great mastery and often plays it during mass!

Kitchen staff,  Fatia, and I peeling carrots

 Everyday, the kitchen staff work extremely hard to prepare enough food for 72 missionaries as well as the staff at the parish! They're really kind, and they make delicious meals! Fatia, student nurse from Marquette University is multi-talented and extremely good at cooking as well!

From left to right: Edith, Reyna, Karina and Ginet 

Edith, Reyna, and Karina are all amazing social workers that somehow remember a humongous list of families and manage groups of missionaries! They're all amazing and they love the work that they do. I'm very grateful for their dedication and hard work. They really connect the families that we provide services to us. They explain concepts very clearly, and never hesitate to help others!

Last but not least is Ginet, the mastermind of the whole operation! She call me nachito!. Ginet plans the missionaries' activities for the day. She also coordinates with the families and other places such as the school, boy's and girl's orphanages, and makes sure that everything is working smoothly. In addition to all of these responsibilities, she has to pick up missionaries from the airport and drop them off there as well! Still, she finds time to be funny, amazing, and talks to us missionaries often to make sure that we have a fulfilling experience. Ginet's the key that makes the whole missionary program run, and without her expertise, I'm sure that the parish would go into some kind of chaos!

I'm very grateful for all the work that these people have put into the parish! Without them, this trip would definitely not have been the same, and their hard work ensures that everyone has a good time and that the parish runs smoothly! I haven't covered all the people at the parish yet; I just haven't gotten their pictures! I'll update this post when I have their pictures later! (Missing: Alcira, Victor, and a whole bunch of people!)

Mass!

As I am staying in a Catholic parish, mass obviously plays an important role in my everyday life here. Every day at 7 PM, all of the missionaries attend mass. Mass is held 4 times a day by Piura's very own enthusiastic Father Joe.  Our dinner is always after the Mass. Except, on Wednesday, we had early dinner before Mass because there is a fiesta at one of the villages. 

Me, Father Joe, and one of the dogs, Boutina. We had dinner together after Mass. 

Father Joe and the other dog, Beethoven

The people of Piura are extremely religious and every day, the church is filled with many residents from Piura. We missionaries sit on the left side from the entrance.

The church just before mass. 

Announcements: Wedding, birth, baptism,etc......

 During mass, Father Joe fills his teachings with extremely relatable anecdotes, and makes sure to translate his words into both Spanish and English so that everyone understands. I daresay that his stories are even more interesting than those we here in the States. The entire mass is filled with singing and clapping, and is a great experience.

Receiving Eucharist is also done differently here in Piura. Everyone gets bread but not wine. Although mass may seem confusing during the first day, one soon gets used to the rhythm and really understands what its all about. Its definitely a great time to reflect upon one's day and think about tomorrow!

The following are pictures taken during mass.

Father Joe quoting from the bible.

Enhancing the wifi and buying more parts

Yesterday I fixed the choke points in the parish wifi network.  Today involved more diagnostics, improving, and enhancing the deployed router configuration. Johnny and I went around the parish looking at the wifi speed at various point (router/access point) of the Wifi network.  When I previously instructed Johnny to put the routers on different channels, I did not take into account the wifi signals from other sources that would be present around the parish. Reconfiguring the parish routers to broadcast on a less busy channel would make the wifi connection to the router more optimum. 

Looking at the speed in the lounge 

Looking at the internet speeds from the secretary's office

Therefore, I downloaded the free version of inSSIDer on Johnny's computer so that I could look at the different channels that the routers broadcast on. I then told Johnny that for the routers to work more efficiently, each router should broadcast on a different channel so that it does not overlap with the signals from the other routers and become less strong. We switched the channels of the two main routers that the missionaries used so that the signals would be stronger and the internet would be more consistent. Below is a picture of the tool inSSIDer and all the wifi signals in the parish (click to enlarge)!

using inSSIDer, a tool that diagnoses the channels of surrounding wifi

 I also tested out some old routers that Johnny had. I checked to see if they are still functional, but I couldn't get them to work because they are either unresponsive to a reset toa  factory settings or they reboot itself randomly. It would be nice if these routers function so that Johnny can use them as replacement if the deployed routers failed in the future in the hot and dusty Piura weather.

Repurposing and testing out the old routers

I went with Johnny to downtown Piura to buy some new equipment for the parish. Downtown Piura was absolutely amazing. They're definitely more technology and food based, because in the 2 blocks that we walked, we passed through 6 different chinese restaurants and 5 shops selling computer equipment. While we went through every shop, I found out that the prices compared to the prices of the equipment from the US were definitely more expensive.

However, while looking through the stores, we found the cheapest prices at a store that Johnny's friend runs, which was great!

At Johnny's friend's store

Taking a taxi! One sols takes us back to the parish.

Chinese Restaurant in Piura, Peru

One of many Chinese Restaurants in downtown Piura

 One of the menu which was posted outside the restaurant.

This is the entrance of the Chinese restaurant.

Here I come.....

Wonton soup (Sopa Wanton) and roast duck (Pato Asado). Popular  Cantonese food.

It is very delicious and fresh.

Chinese restaurant are very popular in Piura, Peru. Just in a short perimeter of the town, there are more than 6 chinese restaurants called chifa. It’s name literally means eat rice in Mandarin. Even though they have the Cantonese and Hakka influence, most of the dishes are very much infused with Peruvian taste. I managed to look at some of the menu and here are some of the translations (from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chifa#Typical_chifa_dishes)
We had Chinese food on the 2nd Thursday while we were here. It is a nice treat and quite an experience to have Chinese food in Piura, Peru. The roast duck is just amazing. it is moist and succulent.

Reconfiguring the wifi network in the parish

Right now the parish has 10 routers. However, the bandwidth provided by these routers is very low. Since everything is connected ad hoc, so I had to rewire and reconfigure them to make them more efficient. Although the internet works now, the current configuration is only a temporary solution and not very efficient. 

One of the fixes I performed today was replacing an old router with a newer one. The change definitely helped since before, the old Belkin router linked the main router to 3 other access points. Since the router was old, IP packets could not pass quickly through these access points no matter how they were reconfigured. Therefore, once this bottleneck was fixed, the internet ran much faster, reaching the speed of 1.5 Mbps for download instead of the previous 0.12, a humongous improvement.

Testing out a new router

Replacing the old router with a new one

 I then instructed Johnny on a possible future plan to execute when the parish got more supplies. This plan would definitely sustain a large amount of missionaries using the internet at the same time. By giving the missionaries 3 access points, the parish would be able to maintain relatively fast internet speeds while having a lot of missionaries (about 60 missionaries; 20 connections per router. These older routers can't handle more than 20 connections before crashing) using the wifi for any purpose.

Instructing Johnny on how to link the routers together with proper subnet-ing each router as access point

Partial diagram of linked routers with a unmanaged switch

Star configuration from the main router

 Finally, I configured the routers for the clinic so that the nurses and doctors could use it consistently without any issues. Although they are linked to the main routers, they still need to be routinely reset so that they are not overloaded with the amount of users that use them. Hopefully, these routers will now work regularly and facilitate the doctors' work!

Reseting "SantisimoClinica" router to factory default settings.

Reconfiguring "SantisimoClinica"

Fixing and testing the wifi in the enfermeria.

Finally, I walked around looking for computers with a defective ip address that was issued by the Trendnet router. Since this router is used mainly by administrators, giving the administrators a static ip address would be a temporary fix until new equipment is brought in!! Nevertheless, the internet works fantastic now, and I'm sure the internet at the school will function just as well, if not better.

Power cycle the access point in the secretaria office.

Speed testing the network connection using Speedtest.net application and servers from Lima. We are getting close to 1.5 Mbps download bandwidth instead of the previous 0.12 Mbps.

A Day at the Beach

Since the parish doesn't do work on Sundays, I went with the group from St Ann's parish, Texas, who just arrived yesterday, to spend a relaxing day at the beach. An hour's drive from Piura, the beach has a resort directly next to it and several fisherman as well. Along the beach houses were bags of sand to prevent the ocean from eroding away the house's foundation.

The beach!

Fisherman going out to sea to catch fish

 While exploring the beach, I saw tons of tiny snails in the sand. What surprised me was the lack of garbage on the beach. Usually, I can see tons of broken glass, but the beach was really clean and amazing.

Me playing in the sand 

And having fun :)

Sitting with the group from St. Ann's

We bought our lunch from the resort, and it was extremely delicious! I totally didn't expect an assortment of raw fish in lime juice to taste amazing, but I really enjoyed this dish.

Mixed Ceviche 

 At the end of the day, I got really sunburned, but I enjoyed this trip to the beach since it was a way to unwind. Since the beach is relatively close to Piura, and since some of the families from the villages visit it as well, it was nice to know that they could relax once in a while and head to the beach to unwind and forget about their troubles!

Fixing the wifi network at the parish

Today, I'm finishing the last of the fixes for the parish wifi. There are problems with the existing internet infrastructure, which causes the internet to be intermittent. The main suspect is conflicting access point subnets and multiple wifi signal broadcasting on channel 6.

For the first router, I found out that the wifi was intermittent because the router hang and had not been power cycle. However, I found out that since the routers were set up a long time ago, Johnny did not remember the admin password to log into the router. Therefore, we had to look at the instruction manual online and figure out how to reset the access point to factory default settings. After that, I changed the encryption from WEP to WPA so that the network could be more secure, changed admin password, wifi channel, and subnet.

Logging in to the trendnet router in Father Jose office.

Resetting the router with Johnny

The second problem was a cable and internal wifi card problem. Fortunately, we were able to find out that there were two problems because the internet stopped working for one administrator no matter what we did. Therefore, we brought in a cable tester to see if the cable was bad, brought in a new cable, and then tested the macbook to find out that the wifi card inside the computer was also bad.

Testing a cable with a cable tester

Finding out which cable goes where through the wall

Testing the cable with my macbook and figuring out that there was
both a bad cable and wifi card on Fanny's computer.

The router room where all the cables go to.

This Sunday, I am going to reset the clinic router to factory settings and store the password so that future repairs will be easier since the password for the router login will be available, and resetting the router regularly will be possible. In addition, if the parish staff decides to upgrade any equipment, knowing the password will save much more time than if they had to reset the entire router and configure it again!

Configuring the wi-fi camera at the parish

I tried to help set up the cameras at the parish today. Father Joe wanted to install a new camera at the Santisimo Sacramento Parish in Piura that moves, so that the video feed on the website (http://santisimo.org) will be active and feature a moving feed. 

The following is a picture layout of my day!

Looking at the instructions for setting up the camera.

Working with Juan Carlos and Johnny to diagram out the camera's connections to the router

Figuring out the IP address of the camera and testing it with the downstairs (main) router.  It does not work!
 And I don't know why? No one has the admin password for the main router.

Testing the wi-fi camera upstairs with the access point called Santismo2.  It worked!

Trying to find out why it works with the upstairs access point but not the downstairs router. Juan Carlos calling TelMex, the ISP, for the router admin password.

More testing involving the upstairs access point!

Figured out that the IP is provided by the internet company, and that we need to get the information from them in order to set up the wifi camera.

Viewing the camera feed (wifi camera connected to Santismo2 access point), which can be viewed on even mobile devices!

Tomorrow, I hope to find out the information about the IP address for the main router that is provided by the internet company so that I can continue setting up the camera. This knowledge would also help in facilitate future fixes because knowledge of the router's workings would make fixing or replacing several parts in the future easier.