By HANNAH WALLACH

Features Editor

While most people take them in mirrors, junior Amelia Henning of Monmouth Beach spent her summer taking “selfies” among friends, sheep and Peruvian landscapes.

“Selfies” are images taken of oneself by oneself and are more popular now than ever.

Henning traveled to Peru with Rustic Pathways, a student travel program that specializes in “community service, adventure, language immersion and life skills programs,” said Rustic Pathways employee Daniel Valenti. High school students can choose from 21 countries and 130 programs, but Valenti said Rustic Pathways wasn’t always so encompassing.

“Rustic Pathways began 31 years ago when the founder, David Venning, started bringing groups from his old boarding school in Ohio to the Australian Outback. They slept in swags, drove 4X4s and cooked kangaroo by the campfire,” said Valenti. “Venning founded the company in Australia and his trips quickly started filling up, so he expanded to Fiji and New Zealand and eventually all over the world.”

Henning said the size of the program appealed to her after she “google searched teen travel programs” and it led her to choose Rustic Pathways for her summer excursion.

On July 9 Henning boarded a seven-hour flight to Peru and the first thing she did when she arrived was take a selfie with her friend Grace.

“It was like a running joke. We took selfies with everything we did, so we had like 500 selfies by the end,” said Henning.

Before Peru, Henning traveled with Rustic Pathways to Fiji where she engaged in community service and weekend getaways. This summer she said she wanted to go somewhere different from Fiji and ultimately chose the former home of the Inca Empire.

Henning didn’t want to go somewhere as tropical as Fiji, and she got her wish. Henning described Peru’s weather as “hard to acclimate to” because it changed throughout the day. She said it was cold in the mornings, hot around noon due to the altitude, then cold again after noon and in the evenings.

“It was rough, but it was fun,” said Henning. “We got like six blankets each, and then it would be all of us piling all in one bed. You’d wear everything you could, like our hats and our gloves. I think it went below freezing each night.”

Another reason Henning chose Peru was the day trip to Machu Picchu. The group of 16, ages 14 to 18, embarked at 5 a.m. on a two-hour hike to “a citadel of cut stone fit together without mortar so tightly that its cracks still can’t be penetrated by a knife blade,” according to National Geographic’s website.

Viewing the sunrise among the ruins of what is often called the “Lost City of the Incas” was one of Henning’s favorite experiences of the trip. Another involved a selfie with a baby sheep.

“You saw sheep everywhere in Peru, and … every time we saw a sheep and it baaed, we’d baa back at it. I just thought that was so funny,” Henning said.

On one occasion, Henning and her friends saw a baby sheep with a group of larger sheep that walked up to the group and started “hanging out” with them.

“And it starts sniffing us, and I get down like, ‘Oh, let me take a picture.’ And it comes right up to my neck, like ‘Oh, my god, you’re such a model.’ We took a picture and got a video of it. It’s so cute,” said Henning.

Amidst tourism and exploration of native wildlife, Henning dedicated three days to building a greenhouse in Lake Titicaca from nothing but a square of mud on a plot of land. Henning said her trip to Peru did not involve as much community service as her Fiji trip, but she enjoyed seeing a project through from start to finish.

“Community service was always teaching in schools for a few days or cooking for families, but I never started with something and then worked with it all the way through to finish it and then see how it really will impact that community,” said Henning. “Because they need a greenhouse; they need to grow fruits and vegetables.”

Henning’s classmate and close friend junior Olivia Whitaker of Oceanport, who called Henning “one of the most compassionate, caring people I know,” said Henning’s interest in summer trips focused on community service “just makes perfect sense with her character and everything.”

“She comes back and she’s tan, and she seems like she had a great time, and she made friends and all these fun things …  she comes back the same way from a service trip that some people would come back from a stay in Hawaii just lying out all the time. That’s really what energizes her,” said Whitaker.

During their time together, according to Whitaker, the two friends take selfies with each other. Whitaker said this keeps them from taking things too seriously and combats the stressors of high school and teenage life. It also helps them to remember and document their time together.

Henning’s mother, Maggie Henning, acknowledged her daughter’s “whimsical” personality and said that her ultimate hope for her daughter’s travels was personal growth.

“I certainly hoped she would take advantage of the opportunity to mature a little and grow in a way that she wouldn’t necessarily be able to in the safety of her immediate environment,” said Maggie Henning.

Henning said she doesn’t plan to take selfies during her future travels because, “it’s something you do when you’re with your friends and everyone’s joking around” and instead will “reserve that for when I’m with Grace.” She has considered becoming a trip leader for Rustic Pathways when she graduates from college and would accordingly be able to continue making memories with the program.

Of Rustic Pathways’ experiences, Valenti could not pinpoint a specific favorite memory.

“Our shining moment happens every day when we’ve made a difference in someone’s life … we seek not only to change the communities around the world, but also to change the thinking and actions of our students,” he said.