July 3-4. San Roque, where Anja and Austin are doing their service, is most notable for its size; whereas Arequipa and Ayacucho are major cities of several hundred thousand people, San Roque’s population is a mere 800. Another significant difference is altitude; rather than being in the high Andes…
July 1. Clara lives a 45-minute drive outside Ayacucho in the small village of Quinua, which has two claims to fame. It is most famous for having been the site of the 1824 Battle of Ayacucho, where South American forces fighting for independence defeated the Spanish royalist army,…
June 30 – July 1. Ayacucho is the capital of one of the poorer departments in Peru, located in the Andes about 9000 feet above sea level. Marisa, Landon and Karina work here at a school, a museum, and an orphanage. Marisa assists teachers in several English classes in…
June 25-27. Two other students in sunny Arequipa are Dez and Alia, and they’re both doing work in education. In the mornings they each have separate jobs, Dez working at a Methodist elementary school assisting in English classes, and Alia teaching at a public pre-school with children 3-5 years…
June 25-27. Olivia and Joshua are two of the four students doing their service assignments in Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru. Situated on a plateau at about 8,000 feet above sea level it enjoys year-around comfortable temperatures, and every day it sees some blue sky. At…
Wednesday and Thursday, June 14-15. Here are a few pictures of the students who opted to hike to the “Sun Gate,” a nearby mountain pass with ruins overlooking Machu Picchu. Late that night we took a train back to Ollantaytambo, spent the night there, and then in the morning…
Wednesday, June 14. The bad part of visiting Machu Picchu in June is that this is the tourist “high season,” meaning there are more crowds to contend with. The good part of “high season” is the reason most tourists come now: it never rains and you are guaranteed uninterrupted…
Tuesday, June 13. We awoke in this Incan village containing some of the oldest continually-occupied homes in the Americas. After breakfast we made a 30-minute climb to the Pinkuylluna ruins, 3 curious-looking long buildings we had seen on the mountainside from our hostel. The students recognized that the ruins…
Monday, June 12. After breakfast with our families in Lucre and Cusco we headed through the Andean mountains for three stops on our way winding towards Machu Picchu: Chinchero: Although the remains of an ancient Incan temple and terraces are here, the main draw for us was a textile…
Sunday, June 11. Last night all the students were left in pairs at the homes of Mennonite families in Cusco or the village of Lucre. In the morning students had breakfast with their respective families and then went together to the Mennonite church in either Cusco or Lucre. The…
