Friday, February 17 We left early this morning for a 90-minute flight (vs. a 20-hour bus ride!) to Cusco, the capital of the Incan Empire, whose name means “navel” (as in “the belly button of the Incan world”). For perhaps the first time ever, all the students were pleased…
Wednesday and Thursday, February 15-16 We have safely returned from our epic week of travels in Cusco, the Sacred Valley, and Machu Picchu. On Friday and Saturday the students departed for their service locations on overnight buses. By Saturday and Sunday they had all arrived at the homes of their…
Thursday night and Friday, February 9-10. Climbing the hill to the old cemetery. After the Ballumbrosio family fed us supper they put on a musical show filled with beats and zapateo dancing characteristic of their community. Another popular tradition we followed is dancing around a bonfire,…
Thursday, February 9. Mark has been the only student this year to earn Camilo’s fist-bump award for Outstanding Beginner’s Talent. We took a 2-day field trip to a small community of Afro-Peruvians, descendants of the slave trade. A three-hour ride south of Lima, in the small…
Friday and Saturday, February 3-4 Also grown in the valley are oranges, corn, and peppers. This two-day field trip visited 2 locations with a shared name but separated by 5,000 years of history. A 4-hour bus ride took us past seemingly endless mountains of arid sand and…
Tuesday and Wednesday, January 31 and February 1 The high kicks had the guys in a full sweat, but their tongues weren’t hanging out yet. What is more exhausting than playing futbol? Answer: doing traditional Peruvian dances with Pedro Farias. The dance instructor divided the students into…
Saturday, January 28 Some inspiring projects in the Cono Sur are the bio-huertas, or urban gardens, where those in surrounding low-income neighborhoods use vacant lots to grow fruits and vegetables. A video, From the Earth to the Pot, describes several bio-huertas in Lima. The project organizer, Senora…
A two-day visit in the Cono Sur – Part 2 Friday, January 27 For the rest of this afternoon the students engaged in sporting activities: Frisbee, volleyball, and, for 2 hours, soccer. The Frisbee and soccer took place in the neighborhood’s park area under high tension powerlines where houses…
Friday, January 27 We spent Friday and Saturday in the Cono Sur, the southern region of Lima that, like the area we visited on Friday of last week, saw explosive growth in recent decades from massive influxes of people from other parts of the country. Most residents of Lima…
Wednesday, January 25 Dusti and Amber use some of the molds for clay figures that are mass produced. We have all seen stores, like Ten Thousand Villages, that sell artisan crafts from abroad, but this week students learned what it means to buy those handicrafts via fair trade…
