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…
We began our first week of study with a colloquium presentation on income and poverty in Peru — how poor is this country relative to the U.S.? We discovered that the average income is about five times higher in the U.S. when the difference in cost of living is accounted…
If our purpose is to study the changes happening in Peru — the movement from a traditional Andean culture to a society influenced by North America and connected to the global economy – it makes sense to begin in the beginning. If we had a time machine,…
This country is incredibly diverse — how do we even begin to learn about Peru and the changes that are taking place here as the nation evolves from a people steeped in Inca culture and tradition to an up-and-coming global player? The students began their first day…
Twenty-two students stepped into the cool evening air outside Lima’s Jorge Chavez International Airport an hour and a half ago. The group appeared weary from a long journey, but happy to be here at last and definitely ready to begin a new adventure. They made it through…
