Whitney demonstrates how to complete the project Whitney and Justin are volunteering at a special needs hospital on the northern coast of Peru. Hogar Clinica Juan de Dios offers medical treatment, physical therapy and educational programs to children diagnosed with cerebral palsy and other physical disabilities. The…
The study portion of the Peru Study Service Term came to a close with a despedida (farewell party) for the Lima host families, language instructors and coordinators. The students sang a couple of songs, performed a skit comparing the life of a student in the US to…
Learning comes in many forms. Lectures by Nestor Vergara, Jerry Acosta, Maria Lopez and Father Jeff Klaiber taught us much about living conditions at the edge of Lima, life in Peru during the time of terrorism and the Catholic Church in Latin America. Workshops with Pedro Farias,…
Lima, Peru’s bustling capital, was founded in 1535 by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro. He intended to establish a capital accessible to Spanish ships, a place to export the gold and silver he found here as well as bring more Europeans to the region. Pizarro built a city…
The students have spent the past week getting to know Lima. They have spent time with their new host families. They have learned how to travel by bus from their family’s home to Iglesia Buen Pastor (Good Shepherd Church) where we meet each morning. They have met…
Lima is a lively, bustling city of 9 million people. People come here from all over Peru in search of work, education, medical treatment or, simply, new opportunities. We arrived here several days ago from our three-week adventure in the Andes to begin the Lima portion of…
Machu Picchu means “old mountain” in Quechua. The greatest Inca ruler, Pachucutec, built this citadel atop a giant granite outcropping many years before the arrival of the Spanish in 1532. Archaeologists believe that the city provided a place for the Inca ruler and his predecessors to rest…
The Wilcamayu — Quechua for “Sacred River” — flows through one of the most beautiful and historic valleys of Peru. We began our five-day tour in central Cusco, capital of the Inca Realm that once extended from modern day Colombia all the way south into Chile. The…
The Andes are a fascinating place, steeped in history and buzzing with activity. It is commonly held that the Inca people believed in a variety of dieties, including the sun, the stars and the snow-capped mountains. But one of our speakers, Juan Carlos Machicado, has a different…
We are reading a book entitled A Path of Our Own: An Andean Village and Tomorrow’s Economy of Values. The author, Adam K. Webb, describes how more than one-third of the earth’s inhabitants live as peasants. Subsistence farmers, they plant crops and tend animals much as their…
