About four hours later, I was waiting for the rest of the group in a cafe when the ground began to shake! The irony of this situation is that I probably would not have known what was happening if we had not been talking about earthquakes earlier that afternoon! It was a surreal experience-- buildings were swaying and cars were moving back and forth. We found out later that the earthquake was rated at 7.5 and that it lasted for over 2 minutes. Luckily, Lima suffered very little damage, and all of the students from UVA are fine. The southern provinces of Ica and Pisco suffered most of the damage with almost 300 deaths.
The following morning, UVA in Peru departed for a field trip to the high sierras and the amazon. It took us 17 hours to drive a distance that normally takes 5 hours. There was a landslide caused by the earthquake that blocked the only road that leads east from Lima. But, when we arrived in Tarma, a small villiage in the mountains, were received with a delicious dinner of Andean bread and Asparagus soup at 2:30 am. The hotel that we stayed at was constructed in 1730, and it was beatifully decorated with flowers, including the rosa verde, or green rose.
Today, we traveled further east to the Amazon and visited a small town called Pichanaqui. We visited with the social director of the school there, and she explained that one of the biggest problems for the school is lack of family structure. Many parents are farmers who rent a room in the city for their children, give them money and then abandon them to return to the fields. As you can imagine, this leads to serious problems with malnutrition, hygene, sexual abuse, and drug problems. After our discussion, we chatted with some of the children and took pictures. Some of the kids thought that we were celebrities, and tried to get our autographs!!More to come... I love you and miss you.
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