One of the sacred elements of the SST structure is the final retreat in which students regather from their service locations for a final time together of rest and reflection before returning home. In Ecuador, our retreat location has been housed at El Refugio “The Refuge”, a retreat center just…
Looking out from a small pueblo in Imbabura Province. I’ve been given the opportunity of using my real eye, my camera, for my service placement. There’s a quote I love (that I can’t remember who or how it is said so it’ll be butchered) that goes like this, “we often…
As our second week of visits to service locations concluded, students and leaders came to the realization that this chapter of SST is quickly drawing to a close. The end of SST always brings a mixture of emotions; sadness, joy, relief, and reflection about this unique experience. When students return…
This past week we set out on our cherished SST tradition of visits to students at their service locations. Our first stop was to visit our students in the cloud forest and Amazonian rainforest locations on the west and east sides of the giant Andean mountain range. Cloud forest is…
I have to admit, I was nervous. As I stood by the medical center in the crisp morning air and watched students continue to file out of a charter bus, my pulse increased. I was tasked to act as a translator for a group of physical therapy (“PT”) students from…
Blog: Week 1 of Service Isa H. On our way to our service town in the Ecuadorian Cloud Forest, Lisa and I weren’t quite sure what to expect. With nervous stomachs and bladders, we sat on the bus for about 2 to 3 hours waiting patiently as there were various…
Our final week of the study portion of SST was an eventful one. It began with the widely celebrated Ecuadorian national holiday of Carnaval. This pre-lenten four-day party involves getting soaking wet and covered in foam in many parts of the country. Students experienced activities in Carnaval in wide-ranging ways…
This past week we set out on a journey south through the Ecuadorian Andes to discover more of this stunning landscape and the people who inhabit it. As we wound our way around incomprehensibly deep gorges, steep mountain passes, and through high altitude villages, the landscape shifted and changed, but…
As the current SST’ers celebrated the one-month anniversary of their SST adventure, they experienced the unique sights, sounds, and smells of an open-air market, helped prepare a traditional Ecuadorian meal, learned some Latin dance, spent time with refugees hearing their heart-wrenching stories, and learned some of the unique differences between…
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…
