One of the texts for our term is Hans Rosling’s Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. I believe one of the great benefits of the book is that it provokes really interesting discussions and conversations among students. The…
After two days of normal class schedule in Quito, we wound our way through the mountains to the northwest region of the Pichincha province where we explored the cloud forest. With historical and indigenous peoples contexts in the back of our minds from these past weeks, we transitioned this week…
The first week of class are already behind us! Wow, we’ve already covered a lot of ground and feels good to start to settle in and find a new routine between classes and host families. Here is a glimpse of the story in pictures: Monday afternoon Randy…
Welcome to Quito! We are so pleased and honored to welcome 21 new students to this beautiful country of Ecuador. And welcome to you, who may be following along and supporting our journey from afar. After picking up students from the airport late Thursday night, we had a wonderful first…
We wrapped up our semester with a weekend full of reflections, discussions, relaxing and fun at El Refugio where we had the decompression and processing time we needed to close out our time together here in Ecuador. Friday evening students returned from their service placements to Quito.
During the service portion of SST, I have been volunteering at a foundation called Su Cambio Por El Cambio (SCXC) in a little town called San Simon. SCXC’s primary missions are to provide a safe after school environment for local kids and to provide services for local seniors living in…
In January, I took a 3-day trip with my host family in Quito, Paola (host-mom) and Sammy (host-sister). It took 2.5 hours to get to Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas. We took the Cordillera de Los Andes road. This very long road goes through Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and…
Before we left for SST, we were told to prepare some gifts for our host family. The suggestion we got was to prepare some things from Goshen or our College. But at that time the bookstore was already closed. I needed to find another way to prepare a gift. “Clothes?…
Nina and I keep in touch regularly with the students via phone calls and texts, but we especially enjoyed visiting students at their service internship placements throughout the last few weeks. We continue to be so grateful for the many ways that our service partners and host families receive and…
Soccer games with the family, an example of so many things I’ve experienced and learned throughout only six short weeks in Ecuador. Every Sunday except those during which we were out of town visiting Mindo or Tena, my host dad Oswaldo, host mom Mary, sister Megan and I would make…
