Blog Post Five: Teleferico and Classes


My greatest challenge so far has been dealing with the language, as I’m sure it has been for many others. More specifically, the challenge has been trying to listen and understand the language. That is what is most difficult for me. I am comfortable speaking it, despite my limited abilities, and I am confident in what I know. However, the listening and comprehension is a completely different story. In Spanish classes back home the professor has an English accent, talks much more slowly, and purposely only uses words and phrases that have been taught. Being thrown into a new culture with the surrounding people using Spanish as their primary language, while speaking conversationally and not academically, creates a tough task when it comes to listening and comprehension. Despite the difficulties, I am trying my best to focus and pick out words that I know and use context clues to piece together what others are saying. That strategy works really well when they only say a couple sentences, but anything more and it becomes too difficult to process the words and context clues while also listening to the remaining sentences.

My favorite part of our Spanish class today was when we had to give a seven-minute biography with only a couple of minutes to think about what we would say. I went first which meant I could not think of what I wanted to say while others were talking or get ideas from others. It was difficult, but also fun to see what I could come up with and I enjoyed the challenge of it.


The thing I will remember most about our trip to the Teleferico will be the time spent with David. I always enjoy listening to his speeches and playing games with him on the bus. What was especially nice about the Teleferico today was that I rode down from Pichincha with him in the cable car which gave us almost twenty minutes to talk. Not only was he a fantastic tour guide for us during our first days in Quito, but he was also a wonderful person to be around, extremely intelligent, and I quickly grew a lot of respect for him. I wish we could have him as our tour guide for future trips, but it isn’t possible sadly. If I ever return to Quito, he will be someone I go out of my way to reconnect with.


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