Ecuador

Service Internship Placements

For this month of July, students have participated in service internship placements around the country. Here are some photo highlights!…

Arrival to Service Placements

After completing 20 days in Tena we got the green light and made a move to Service this past Saturday. Yay! Some students were joking that instead of Study-Service Term SST (which is named for the two significant halves of the term) we should now call our semester Study-Tena-Service Term…

Paro Perspectives: Joel

CONAIE is the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador and it is a large organization composed of representatives of various indigenous groups in Ecuador and they advocate for more indigenous rights. They do this most often by shutting down main roads to grind ordinary life to a halt until their…

Paro Perspectives: Ruby

As of today, we have been in Tena for more than a week longer than expected. This is due to the countrywide protests regarding indigenous rights and economic security, led by the organization CONAIE, which stands for the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador. This is a collective organization made…

Paro Perspectives: Cadence

CONAIE stands for the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador. They represent the rights of indigenous people in Ecuador, specifically including the following communities: Quichua, Shuar, Achuar, Huaorani, Siena, Secoya, Shiwiar, Záparo, Cofán, and many more. Since the 1980s this rights protection organization has advocated for the strengthening of positive…

Last Week in Pictures – Tena

Cafe Tortuga, a favorite hang out spot Nina leading spanish classes Students organized a Sunday morning hymn sing Ana making…

National Paro & Tena, Napo Province

In our last week of study several students including Nina and myself came down with covid, so unfortunately we had to navigate some significant adjustments in our final week with Quito host families, which included moving spanish classes to zoom, at-home final essays and a virtual despedida goodbye party and…

Otavalo’s Markets and Indigenous Cosmovisión

We had a wonderful week last week hosting some faculty from Goshen College and making our way North to the city of Otavalo in the province of Imbabura.

Ceviche, Class & Culture

Monday morning we visited Mercado Santa Clara with Chef Francisco Guevara, currently a culinary/gastronomy professor at the Universidad of Ibarra a couple hours north of Quito. One of the oldest markets in the city, Francisco showed us around and explained typical cuisine from various…

Factfulness

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…