Peru is a beautiful country of amazing contrasts in a relatively small area. Perú is located in South America. Its capital city is Lima. Perú has 24 million inhabitants and approximately 10 million live in Lima. It is blessed with three marked geographical features: coast, Andes mountains and jungle regions. Our school is located in a well to do neighborhood in the city of Lima called La Molina. Lima is in a desert region on the coast of Peru, but offers the advantages of mountainous areas very close by.
This allows us to have the best of all climates, depending on the season of the year we are in we can choose to go to the mountains close by, or to our beautiful beaches. We have extreme socio-economical conditions, you will find modern and wealthy areas as well as poor and under developed areas in the city. Ours is a developing country with a rich history and folklore.

Our school is located in a southeastern suburb of Lima away from the countryside. We can see low mountains as we are near the base of the Andes, but mostly around us is city and desert. As mentioned before, it is very easy to travel to the nearest countryside, which is at approximately 30 minutes away from our school in a place called Chaclacayo and Chosica where some of our students spend the Lima winter months because of its beautiful weather.

We are now enjoying spring like weather although the official beginning of spring is September 23. All seasons are very mild in Lima but not in the rest of the country where seasons are very marked. Our winter days in Lima are around16 degrees Celsius and our summer days are around 26 degrees Celsius, being July and August our coldest months, and January and February the hottest months of the year. Summer is sunny and warm, humidity levels are not high during this season. In winters all we get is cloudy skies and a light drizzle (it never rains in Lima) that can continue for hours but never soak you. Winters are very gloomy and humid, sometimes reaching 100% humidity levels. Good thing is just 30 minutes outside of Lima, one can find sun all day, all year!

Participating Students & School Demographics

The groups participating in this project are all from 7th grade. They are boys and girls between 12 and 13 years old

Our school population varies between 1,300 to 1,350 students housed in three schools: Elementary, Middle, and High School. Our student body includes United States citizens (24%), Peruvian citizens (54%), and nationals representing 42 other countries (22%). Elementary school has the most students because it includes in it our Early Childhood Program that has three year, four year and kindergarten classes. Languages spoken at our school are English and Spanish, although other languages are spoken during recess. Ours is a private school, the students that attend our school come mostly from wealthy families local families, embassy families, or are children of international corporation employees that are working in Perú. The socio-economic area our school is in is the affluent that enjoy a high socio economic status.