A few new pictures

Guess it's been a while since I posted, sorry about the delay. I actually was preparing a post about a week ago with various new pictures, but the internet connection I have is pretty slow, so the pictures were uploading very slowly, and I ended up just quitting. Now a week later, I've finally gotten around to putting up that post.

Obviously, with the delay that I've had in posting, I've been very busy the past while. This past week we spent a lot of time looking at religion and arts in Perú. We had a great lecture about the history of the Catholic church in this country, which is fascinating, as the Catholic church has had a lot of influence on Perú, as in many other Latin American countries. Another highlight this past week was going to the Museum of Art in Lima, where unfortunately I wasn't able to take any pictures. But the artwork there is amazing, from the pre-columbian artwork of native Peruvian cultures, to current artwork that depicts Perú very diverse culture.

Probably the most enjoyable times this past week were spent at the Pacific Ocean, where I got to swim three consecutive days. Thursday and Friday several people from our SST group went down to the beach to enjoy the view, and take a dip in the water. Spending time near the ocean is an awesome activity that we don't get to enjoy much in Goshen, so we're really trying to live it up. The first picture of this post of the sunset was taken on Friday as we walked back from the beach. Our experience in the ocean yesterday was pretty exciting, as our group got to go on a boat tour and swim with 'lobos marinos,' or sea lions in English. That was a pretty awesome experience, I've never swam that close to any marine life of that sort before. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of that, but I'm sure there will be some photos up on the Goshen blog. The picture to the right is of me and Rachel enjoying the sun in the boat.

One fun, and very interesting, event that I was able to attend recently, guess it's been two weeks now, was a church youth retreat with my host sisters. The event was located in Chancay, about two hours north of Lima, also on the coast. It was quite a bit smaller than the Mennonite conventions I'm used to from my high school years, only about 150 people or so, but it was a great way to see into a very unique part of Peruvian life. My host family's church is Evengelical, which represents a small percentage of the Christian community in Perú, so it was very interesting to get a look at their traditions. It was also nice just to get out of the city of Lima, see another place. While in Chancay we also visited a really interesting castle, called the Castillo de Chancay. The pictures here are from our visit to that castle. In the second picture with me is Phil, a fellow SSTer, who lives with my host dad's brother, and went along to Chancay.

Well, those are a few of the things that I've been up to recently. Sorry it's taken me a while to update you. Finally, here are a couple of pictures from my home life. The one on the right is me in my room, and on the left is me with my host parents, Segundo and Mervy. Well, I'm off to do some school work...gotta finish up a project as this is our last week of Spanish classes. Then I'm going to head to downtown Lima with my family for some sightseeing and dinner. I'll be sure to get an update with some pictures of that posted a little faster next time.