Ecuador

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…

Mindo Cloud Forest

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…

First Week of Classes & Centro Histórico

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!

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…

Retreat Weekend

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.

Su Cambio Por El Cambio (SCXC)

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…

Santo Domingo with my Host Family

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…

Cooking for my Host Family in Quito

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?…