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…
There are a lot of hard things in Quito. For instance, my walk to the Fundación, where we have our classes, is up a very steep hill. My little commute is one of the best parts of my day, however, and it gives me time to reflect each morning. On…
Students left for their service placements on Saturday morning all arriving by the evening and greeted by their new host families. 🙂 We mentioned previously that last Thursday afternoon we spent some concentrated time discussing/reflecting/anticipating the upcoming transition to service assignments together as a group. We asked students to define…
During our last week of the “study” portion of the term, students traveled to several hours east of Quito to explore the upper Amazon basin. We combined several experiential learning activities – both cultural and environmental, based on the region’s unique characteristics – with time for fun! We were excited…
We had a full week of classes and wrapped up several large academic pieces to the term. Friday evening students hosted their families for a program and goodbye party. Monday we began a full week of morning spanish classes. Students at…
After a few days of class in Quito we took off for the north, arriving to the beautiful city of Otavalo in the province of Imbabura for several days. Tuesday morning we participated in Ecuador’s free health care system receiving yellow fever vaccines in preparation for our…
We continue individually and as a group to process the tragedy of the landslides in Quito that occurred last week not far from some of our host families and in a neighborhood that we have, on a couple occasions, passed through as a group during this term. In one of…
