Retreat (Finally!)

Part of the JVC commitment is making 4 retreats a year. JVC staff comes to Peru to run one of those retreats, and the other 3 are left up to the JVs to figure out. We have tried to go on retreat twice this year, and both times we were prevented from retreating by illness. Well, the third time is the charm.

Last weekend, only 9 months into the year, Mountain House went on its first retreat. We went to a small town outside of Puno called Chucuito. There is a Benedictine monastery there on the edge of Lake Titicaca. We stayed in their guest house and took our meals with them, but the retreat activities we planned and ran ourselves. The area looked a lot like a lake house in Maine, with the addition of alpacas.

There is only one Benedictine nun who lives at the monastery, but she has a group of lay people who have taken lay vows to support the mission and form part of the community there. They are a lively group who spend their meals one of two ways – in silence or in laughter. It wasn't clear to me how it was determined if talking was permitted during a meal, but whenever there was talking, there was joking. Since our retreat was focused on intentional community, it was nice to get a bit of an inside view of how a community that's been together for a long time looks and works.

As is the case with retreat posts, I won't get into the details of what we did on retreat. But I do have some pictures to show you of the beauty of Puno and the lake on top of the world.  

The marsh-like land at the edge of the lake.

Lauren and Erin taking photos

Monastary Rooftop

View from my bedroom windor