Stunning Mountains, Crater Lakes, and Indigenous Culture……..

As students continue their march through the SST experience, encounters with new landscapes, new cultures, and new sensory experiences pound out their steady drum beat each day…..  One of the true challenges of SST is to fully absorb the daily reality of other human beings given that we each come from our own unique set of experiences.  It is difficult to imagine walking in the shoes of another until you actually do.  Even when you begin to put on those new cultural shoes by speaking a second language, riding in a packed public bus, and navigating a host of unfamiliar environments, your brain as a North American with a ticket back to a different life knows it has an out and often wants to run for the exits.  It takes a measure of psychological stamina to stick with the process of trying to understand what permanently adapting to a new environment different from your own fully requires.  As we walk through that process together here in Ecuador, it is important for each of us to realize how relevant to our future lives these experiences are.  Finding ways to adapt to and find peace in difficult circumstances is a critical life lesson that will be revisited repeatedly in the years to come…