Countdown to Peru...

For those of you reading unfamiliar with my upcoming trip, I will be leaving for Peru in just three days, the day after Christmas. I am traveling with Living Routes, an organization dedicated to study abroad organized around sustainability. Their goal is to bring education to life through experiential coursework, service learning, cultural studies, and immersions. The title of the program I will be engaging in is “Ecology, Community, and Indigenous Spirituality in the High Amazon.” I will be traveling with a group of about twenty students from across the United States and I am so excited to get to know everyone is just a few days!

                My personal journey will begin at the Center Sachmama, a non-profit located on the edge of Lamas, in a town located on the tropical foothills of the Andes (Their website if you want to learn a little more ---> http://www.centrosachamama.org/sachamama_e_in.htm). Here is where we will begin our cultural immersion and learn to disconnect ourselves from the ever-moving world.

                Traveling has always been one of my passions, but the reason that I chose this program was because it offered something different than any other travel abroad group I had seen. Our Journey through the Andean Amazon will provide a firsthand learning opportunity in which we will be living in local communities and living in harmony with their local environment. During our trip we will experience indigenous Quechua principles of culture autonomy and respect of ancient practices that “talk back” to global systems of capitalism and politics, and assess the wisdom of a worldview that values the “other-than-human” living world of plants, animals, and spiritual energies. We will work effectively with one another to contribute to the regeneration of local communities through service learning projects that promote agricultural biodiversity, sustainable environmental action, and right livelihood.

                Over the next few weeks I will be keeping track of my experiences through this blog and share some of my new-found knowledge and insights (electricity permitting, of course). I am hoping that the challenges and encounters I face in the coming weeks will help to build my awareness and understanding of myself, my culture, the Peruvian culture, and the world as a whole.