Lima Centro and meeting host families
Friday, January 13
Today the students became familiar with Lima’s historic center, once the very center of the Spanish empire in South America. To learn more about the Catholic tradition in Peru we visited the Santo Domingo church, the resting place of 3 Peruvian saints. At the central plaza, in front of the Presidential Palace, we watched the changing of the guard under a noon sun almost directly above us, casting very small shadows. With their stomach’s rumbling, we headed toward a restaurant down a popular pedestrian street, stopping along the way to watch some living statues. At lunch students learned about some Peruvian favorites on the menu, including lomo saltado, sautéed beef with vegetables, rice and French fries. With our stomach’s content we hopped on our bus for a ride to the top of nearby Cerro San Cristobal for a 360-degree panorama of Lima. Seeing the surrounding rocky, dusty hills devoid of any vegetation made it evident that, indeed, Lima is in a desert. That was hard to fathom after seeing abundant green landscaping in San Isidro and Miraflores, where the students yesterday had spent their first day in Lima.
After returning to Casa Goshen we finished some remaining SST orientation activities and then returned to the hostel before 6 p.m. Host families began arriving to pick up nervous students, anxious to meet their families for the next 5 weeks, and also apprehensive about spending a weekend where the only communication will have to be in español.
