TO OUR EARS

TRANSFORMATIONALTRIP TO PERUScholarships, gift help Washburnstudents study abroadBy Jeremy Wangler • jwangler@wufoundation.orgThe study abroad trip to Peru included several Washburn University professors and 15 students. The groupexperienced the country for 11 days, including visits to Lima, the Amazon rainforest and Andes Mountains.Photo by Marydorsey WanlessPeru’s architecture and biodiversity providedinspiration for 15 students studying abroad thissummer with the Washburn Department of Art.One learned new pottery techniques. Another will usebugs she saw as imagery for her painting. They all sawart, architecture and nature in 11 days traveling from thecoastal city of Lima to the low-lying Amazon rainforestand to points in the Andes Mountains between MachuPicchu and Lake Titicaca reaching 14,000 feet.Students provided some of their own funding forthe trip. The rest was made possible by WashburnTransformational Experience scholarships and a privategift from longtime art supporter John Adams, honorarydoctor of humane letters ’08.The adventurers left Topeka on May 18 and were ona downstream journey into the Amazon the next day. Aremote lodge was their rainforest home where they sawmonkeys, toucans and macaws in the trees and tarantulas,frogs, army ants and horned crickets on the forest floor.The creepy crawlies didn’t bother junior art major AmberAylor, Perry, Kansas. Insects already appear in her work.25 Campus News“You don’t expect to see them in nature after seeingpictures in books,” she said.A blue morpho butterfly and an elephant beetle sheencountered will both likely make it into her portfolio.After spending two nights in the rainforest, they set outfor the Andes and Machu Picchu, a city built in the 15thcentury, abandoned before conquistadors ever foundit and left untouched until 1911. The architecture stillblends perfectly with the mountainsides it was built on.“It was just like the pictures you’ve seen,” saidMarydorsey Wanless, a faculty trip leader and associateprofessor of photography who retired after the springsemester. “Then you got up close and could explore it onyour own. I enjoyed watching the students in awe.”Ryan Caldwell, a ceramics major from Topeka whograduated two days before departure, was glad he had achance to see the Inca handiwork.“I was mesmerized by the skill it took to build that upon a mountain,” he said.A bus ride through the Andes then took them to LakeTiticaca, the largest lake in South America and one of the