2012-11-05
The days leading up to my departure from Northampton, Massachusetts, then the week in Palo Alto, California, finally the month in Quito, Ecuador, each was connected to the other by a lengthening string of preoccupations about my six month stay in rural Ecuador. What might it be like living with no running water? Without showers?...
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2012-11-05
When I first I first arrived in La Abundancia, I questioned my decision to be placed in a small community. I walked down the single paved road, peering into the handful of shops and restaurants, and wondered what I would do for the next six months. I couldn’t head over to a library to study, a coffee shop to...
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2012-11-04
“No te creo, no te creo.” “I don’t believe you.” Of course I must have ridden on a motorcycle. I explain that they were dangerous to ride in my city, a city like Quito. My sister runs to tell my brother, and next thing I know the motorcycle has been pulled onto the street and he is motioning for...
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2012-10-31
I don’t claim to know a lot about Brazil. It is rich and poor, African and European, image-conscious and free spirited. It is a place of seeming hypocrisy and contradictions. But it is this complexity–the diversity of categories and space between the extremes–that I can’t even begin to wrap my head around. And a pequena community eight hours inland...
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2012-10-31
I have been teaching here in Pedro Vicente Maldonado for two weeks now. Pretty much all the kids know me, which is pretty impressive considering there are 984 students in this school grades 2-7. They all run up to me in the yard, calling me “Profe” or “Teacher.” The wee ones ask for high fives,...
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2012-10-31
About thirty minutes before we were all about to meet our Quiteño host families I decided I needed to call home, which I hadn’t done since we arrived in Quito four days before. This was not, per se, the best thing I could have done in that moment because as soon as I heard my mom’s voice through that...
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2012-10-31
I have had a lot of time just to think during my time in Ecuador, which, in the past, is something that I have not had a lot of time to do. I have been able to contemplate how I want my life to be and how I want my gap year to be. I have come to...
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