Climb every mountain...

Hello, hello!

This morning, we met up with several other young folks from the Presbyterian Church and went out to El Morro de Calzada, a beautiful mountain nearby, to spend the day hiking and enjoying ourselves. The hike up was about an hour and a half long (including multiple rest breaks). After resting a while at the top, we went to the very very top, where there is a very tall cell phone tower.

For the men of the group, the mission - should they choose to accept it - was to climb atop the tower and send a paper airplane into flight from the top. Whoever created the airplane with the best flight (in terms of distance and sustained altitude) was the winner. The winning airplane was created by Daniel and traveled so high that it became a speck in the sky. Quite impressive. Three cheers for testosterone.

While up top, we ate lunch, talked, played card games, took photos. It was a great way to spend the day. Perú has views that would easily make North Carolina jealous, I think - though I love the North Carolinian mountains quite a lot. Moyobamba and the surrounding villages find themselves in what is almost a crater - they are collectively surrounded by mountains on all sides. Beautiful. The town of Calzada was especially visible, and the university site is very close to Calzada. Daniel helped us decide just where in the rather large landscape that might be.

This evening we visited the youth group at the church again, playing games and talking about the Word, of course. The games played sometimes disrupted the proximity of our translators, Leslie and Andrés, which made things interesting for those of us who are less Spanish-proficient. It was, nevertheless, lots of fun.

At this point? Dawn and Daniel and Robinson are in the plaza with the guitar, Leslie and I are internetting, Megan and Andrés returned home. I won't pretend to speak for us all, but I am absolutely exhausted, and will be heading home as soon as I leave here to curl up with a little Harry Potter and follow up with a lot of sleep. There are church services and soccer games to be had tomorrow, after all. 'Night, y'all.

Happy trails -
sch