Peru

The Feast of St. Dominic, Sunday, August 8, 1999. We have been getting ready for this day all Summer; planning, preparing, inviting.

The mass began with a long procession up the center aisle.

No feast would be complete without a feast, and we had one! After mass all of the Dominicans and Franciscans were invited to the back cloister for a banquet.

Today's presentation was by the Dominican Youth Movement, a way for young people to get involved in the dominican charism that is growing in popularity around the

The Feast of St. Dominic is just around the corner (August 8) but we start celebrating early here in Perú.

Machu Picchu. The place where everyone goes, and for good reason.

Here are the gratuitous tourist shots. Yes, we made it, see! The first two are of Bob Knickerbocker, a friend who came down from the states to help (and he did!).

At the end of the day, everyone heads back down the mountain to Agua Caliente, most to catch their respective train back home.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

For mass this morning, we visited the nuns at Sta. Rosa Monastery, the smaller of the two Dominican monasteries in town.

"Everything is better in Arequipa" say the locals here. I'm inclined to agree.

fr. Gregorio Chávez OP
Fr. Gregorio is the confessor of one of the two Dominican Monasteries here in Arequipa, Santa Rosa.

Yesterday Bob Knickerbocker and I arrived in Arequipa, a smaller city of about 500,000 people in the south, near the mountains, nested between three volcanoes.

Casa Hogar de San Martin is the house where St. Martin de Porres was born. His mother, Anna, was a servant in the house, a freed slave of African descent.

Campoy is a small suburb on the edge of the Lima metropolitan area.

Yesterday (Sunday) we took a quick trip out of the city, straight up the Central Highway. The land here is incredibly arid, with nothing growing on the mountainsides.

The brothers here all know about the 4th of July and wish me "Happy Independence Day". Peru's Independence Day will be at the end of the month.

Today was a day to get errands done. First, it was wash day. Of course, we don't have a machine, the fathers send it out and it comes back in a week.

This is the first installment of my journal, and it comes a bit late. I have been here for three days and I have seen much already. I just didn't know what to write, what to say.