Friday – Sunday, Nov. 11-13 San Roque, where these three students are doing their service, is most notable for its size; whereas Ayacucho, Cuzco and Arequipa are major cities of several hundred thousand people, San Roque’s population is a mere 800. Another significant difference is altitude; rather than being…
Acheing at her service assignment. Being a college kid is hard, you know. Assignments, group projects, trying to stay healthy, thinking about your future and all that mumbo jumbo. Then comes your spirituality. Goshen is a Christian school, thus you have many opportunities to interact spiritually on…
Thursday – Friday, Nov. 3-4 Lane holds a “Happy Anniversary” poster with his students back in the gym. Arequipa, the second-largest city in Peru, is home to 3 students for their service placements. Located in southern Peru, it sits in the middle of a desert, making the…
Monday – Wednesday, Oct. 31 – Nov. 2 After desert with Emily’s host mother and 3 siblings, Yadeli, Johan, y Jonathon. Cuzco, the high Andean city where the group’s journey to Machu Picchu began, is also the service location for three students. We began our visit with…
Thursday and Friday, Oct. 27-28. John shows us the workshop and two recent pieces. Ayacucho has traditionally been famous for having 33 large Catholic churches, its large Easter week celebrations, and for being the site of a famous battle for South American independence. But in recent history…
Wednesday and Thursday, Oct. 26-27. Behind Alex is a mural painted by previous GC volunteer Maddie Gerig. Doug and Maria’s first trip to visit students at their service locations was to the city of Ayacucho, high in the Andean mountains at an elevation of about 9,000 feet…
[Doug and Maria have been traveling between Lima and service locations visiting students the past two weeks. Here is the last blog entry from the trip to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Starting tomorrow entries will be posted from the first service visits, to pause again when we leave Lima midweek…
Early this morning a massive fire started in this shantytown that we visited about a month ago. About 300 homes burned down and an estimated 2,000 people are homeless now. We heard that the school we had visited did not burn down, fortunately. The entry from our visit and the…
Tuesday, Oct. 11 Tim with the Pinkuylluna ruins behind him. This town, sitting halfway between the Incan capital of Cuzco and Machu Picchu, was originally inhabited by pre-Incan tribes before the Incas renovated it. Structures built before the Spanish arrived are still in use today. We visited…
Monday, Oct. 10 The women apply the dyes to the wool. After breakfast and bidding adios to our Mennonite host families in Lucre and Huacarpay, we traveled to the small town of Chinchero. At many of the other tourist sites we had been impressed by vendors selling…
