Wednesday, Sept. 21 The students admire a mummy, in a sitting fetal position, with a gold mask. In preparation for a two-day field trip to a 4,600-year-old city later this week, today we visited the Larco museum, well-known for its collection of pre-Columbian artifacts. Although everyone has…
Tuesday, Sept. 20 Learning Peruvian culture means learning Peruvian dancing. Dance instructor Pedro Farias came to teach us dances from the three regions of Peru: the coast, the Andes mountains, and the Amazon jungle. Each region had very distinct dance moves, which the students learned in short…
Monday, Sept. 19 Art major Rachel makes a new friend. In the afternoon we took a bus to the artistic Barranco neighborhood, home to famous Peruvian artist Victor Delfin. Delphin has created sculptures and paintings that have been exhibited in many collections outside of Peru. The sculptures…
Friday and Saturday, Sept. 16-17 The neighbors who prepared the land and will attend the gardens worked with us. We took a two-day field trip to Villa Salvador, a relatively new urban area at the southern edge of Lima where Alicia (who prepares our lunches 2-3 times…
Wednesday, Sept. 14 Mission accomplished. We have all seen stores, like Ten Thousand Villages, that sell artisan crafts from abroad, but on Wednesday students learned what it means to buy those handicrafts via fair trade principles, meet some of the artists that make the crafts, and try their hand at…
Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 10-11. Spirited dancing around a bonfire made from cotton plants. We took a weekend field trip to experience one of the Peruvian cultures, that of Afro-Peruvians, descendants of Africans brought to Peru as slaves. A three-hour ride south of Lima, in the small community…
Friday, September 9. We drove 2 hours north from central Lima …. and were still not at the outskirts of this sprawling city. This capital now has almost 10 million people (Chicago is 8.3 million), but 50 years ago had less than 2 million. Rural poverty…
Josh buys tomatoes. The past four days the students have been settling into their weekly routine: language classes are from 9-12 in the morning at the Good Shepherd Church, an Anglican church with a long history in Lima. Lunches are usually shared together (either at Casa Goshen…
Before the plates were quickly cleaned. On Friday and Saturday the students had several activities interspersed with orientation sessions about living in Peru, including some quizzes on assignments. Friday began with us picking up the students at their hostel and walking with them to Casa Goshen, with…
Right off the boat, or the plane. The students’ flight arrived at midnight, about an hour behind schedule because of a detour around the hurricane off the gulf coast of Florida. But we’re glad to have them all here with us in Lima now. It took an…
