Since being stationed in the town of Mindo for my service portion of SST, I’ve noticed a big cultural difference between U.S. Mennonites and Ecuadorian “Mindo-nites” – pun intended 🙂 approaches to life. There’s a palpable sense of serenity and...
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Beauty, History, and the Equatorial Sun
Jan 14 2020
Ecuador SST 2019-2020 version 2.0 kicked off this past week with strange global climate change induced sunny weather during the start to the rainy season in Ecuador. Students missing the sun in North America quickly realized just how intense the sun at high altitudes on the Equator can be. What the sunny days have provided however is a brilliant backdrop to the first few days of orientation and beginning activities in Quito.
The first week of SST generally is like standing in front of an open fire hydrant with your mouth open. There is so much coming at you so fast that sometimes you just want someone to turn off the flow of newness. That said, students have met all the newness with joy, curiosity, and resilience and have taken things in stride. They have been inundated with historical places and lots and lots of new foods. One of the challenges of this type of experience is to see beneath all the layers to the core of what lies beneath. We take strength from one another as together we peel back the layers of the complexity that is Ecuador.