Experience of a Lifetime

I decided I should go ahead and update one more time before I head to the rainforest in the morning. Don’t get your hopes up. I don’t anticipate on updating every two days, but when you’re staying in Quito there are always lots of stories to be told!

I guess I will start from where I left off. We had a nice stay in Venezuela and after a long wait in the airport, we finally boarded our plane for Quito. We only arrived here about 26 hours later than expected and from what we have now learned about Santa Barbara Airlines I guess that’s not too bad. So, my first piece of advice for anyone planning to come visit… DO NOT use Santa Barbara Airlines! Stick with one of the trusty North American airlines. Despite the delay, I couldn’t stop smiling as soon as we got on the plane and I was still smiling when we landed in Quito. It was a familiar place and somewhere that I could unpack my bags for a few days after three days of travel. I really felt like I was arriving at home. After we got through customs and immigration and picked up our bags we hopped in a taxi and finally around 11:00pm we made it to our hostel. We stayed in the Blue House, a vibrant youth hostel in the Mariscal area of Quito. It was nice, but after a night of listening to all of the activity in and around the hostel we decided that we needed a quieter place to settle in and get some rest. So we went down the street a few blocks to the Amazonas Inn where we are peacefully resting in our own individual rooms.

Since we arrived in Quito we have been working on registering our visas and picking up our “censos.” After many hours of waiting in lines and asking for information, we finally got everything taken care of and I now have an official Ecuadorian ID card. We also got to get together with all six people in our group that will be going to Yachana to work. It has been really great getting to know everyone so far and finding out all of the things that everyone has to contribute to our project. There is such a wide assortment of skills and knowledge and I’m excited to see how everything falls into place. And hopefully it falls into place quickly! We will be arriving at Yachana tomorrow afternoon where we will have about two days of orientation and then we will hit the ground running with classes starting on Sunday! I still don’t know exactly what I will be teaching or what level of math the students have studied before, but I have brainstormed some ideas and will figure that all out as we get started. I have a good support system in all of the people that I am working with and I can’t wait to get started!

I hope that I will make an impact on the students that I’m working with and I hope they learn a lot, but I know that I am going to learn more than them from this experience. Living in a new place, working with new people, speaking another language daily, and being completely immersed in a new culture is the ultimate learning experience. Right now it seems like a lot to take in, but I am trying my best to soak everything in that I can! I couldn’t be happier with my decision to come to Ecuador. I have only been gone for five days, but I know this is going to be an experience of a lifetime! ¡Hasta luego!