Our first day I got to introduce dad to some of my friends at Scripture Union. We went stopped by the center, took a little walking tour, and went to dinner with a small group. The following couple of days are a haze of tourist torture that I don't particularly want to recall. We did a lot of walking around and looking at old, broken buildings. They were old and made of stone and in all cases, no longer functional for any purpose other than to be the subject of a photograph. We also walked through Catholic churches, containing towers of gold and silver idols and ornamentation.
Going to these churches really made me upset. After witnessing the poverty in Peru, to see an organization that claims to follow Jesus and the Bible so obscenely ignore the teachings of both is crushing. It makes absolutely no sense to me how a "Christian" church can horde massive amounts of wealth when the people of the country need food, water, jobs, homes. I chose not to go into the last church on the tour.
Seeing Machu Pichu was very impressive. I was probably more impressed by the natural landscape than the ruins themselves, but it was amazing to witness the broken city at the top of the mountains. I actually had just as much fun hiking a small trail with my dad, mostly because there weren't mobs of tourists everywhere, taking pictures. The mobs of tourists kinda brought me down.
[Missing photo of Machu Pichu]
My dad actually has some photos of the ruins, so I'll probably get to post them in a couple weeks when I make it back home.
For once, I was actually happy to return to Lima and escape all the tourism. On our last day in Lima, my dad and I got to spend some time hanging out with the boys in Lima, shooting some hoops. My dad enjoyed goofing around with Carlos, who is probably my favorite boy here. Carlos is 19, awesome at soccer, and he helps the SU staff a lot when he's not working at the SU bakery. I think the initial impression of Carlos exudes when you meet him is, "This kid is nuts!" But once you get to know him, you find out that he's really smart, he looks out for his friends, and that he loves acting like a goofball. He's especially funny trying to replicate the crazy tricks I do with the basketball and pretending to hurt himself in the process.
[Missing photo of Carlos - he's awesome]
So I learned during my vacation to Machu Pichu that I don't like being a tourist, and I don't like looking at things because somebody else says that they are important. I learned that the most important buildings in this world are made out of materials that cost nothing, and that those buildings may last only 25 years, rather than 2000 years. I also learned that I'm much happier when I'm working to help people, studying the Bible with the mission teams, and spending time with the Girasoles boys. My next vacation will probably be to Kusi...
However I did take in many guilty pleasures during our trip.
- A hot shower every day!
- A hot shower with lots of water pressure!
- American music on my iPod!
- Clean clothes, washed by the hotel
- Slim Jims
- Pizza every day for lunch...
- Reading Harry Potter
- Spending time with dad
[Missing photo of Jared and Dad]
So since dad left I've been hanging out in Lima, without much work to do. I'm killing time until I make my triumphant return to Puerto Alegria (the Amazon) on Friday. I'm hanging out with the boys in the Lima center and catching up on all the podcasts I have missed over the last 5 months.
And in case you didn't know, I return to the states in about a week and a half on September 10. I'll have about a month to rest and take a road trip down the east coast before moving back to VA and starting up again with IBM. I really would like to work full time in a Christian ministry, but I think that staying with IBM for now may allow me to go back to Peru for an extended visit again next summer... after I take some classes to improve my Spanish...
Stay tuned for when I'll be passing through your town if you live on the east coast. I should have enough bracelets for everybody that wants one.
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