Blog #5

My greatest challenge in Ecuador so far has been communication.  This is all due to my lack of being able to speak Spanish in the slightest.  Beyond that, I am also struggling to communicate without it.  Often in public, gestures and simple English gets me nowhere.  It has become a little frustrating.  Today we have finally started taking Spanish classes.  Already a few more things make sense.  To beat this challenge, practicing Spanish whether it is in class or not is essential.

My favorite part of Spanish class today was pretty much all of it.  We have been here a few days now and before class I only knew a few random words.  We covered a few things that so far is making all my listening at least a little better.  For the most part with my host family, I am listening.  I don’t understand much, but today really has already shed a light for me.  Specifically, in class today I enjoyed the ways that are class is interactive.  We learned by playing hangman and Pictionary.  This was a way for us to learn and not feel so constrained to normal classroom ways.  This was especially helpful simply because of my absolute lack of Spanish.

The one thing that I will remember most about our trip up Pichincha was that moment that the fog lifted for a few minutes.  Our entire trip up to this point was filled with so much fog that it was hard to see where we were going let alone what was around us.  Before this happened, I was talking with Mr. Bishop about the landscape and he mentioned that there were some spectacular waterfalls in the area.  When the fog lifted, a beautiful mountain was uncovered.  Off in the distance, I could see a waterfall too.  Though we couldn’t be any closer to it than we were, what we saw was so satisfying that I didn’t need anymore.  It just went to show how important it is to pay attention because you never know what you are going to miss.  After five minutes, the fog rolled back over the mountain and we were left to our solitary trail experience. (Super Proud of this Picture)


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