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…
As we reflect on this past week, it is hard to absorb all we saw and experienced in the last seven days. The SST experience continued its daily sensory buffet of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and the unique feel of being in a place unlike others you’ve been to before. …
The first week of the study portion of SST continued the daily immersion of new sights, sounds, and experiences that began in orientation last week. The contrast between SST and many other international exchange programs is that after each day full of classes and activities, students return home to their…
SST in Ecuador is once again in full swing and for those who have experienced it firsthand, the first few days are a whirlwind of activity; a fire hydrant blast to the face of new sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and languages coming at you all day every day. Students (and…
