Remembering Ecuador

During my first days here, as they turned into weeks and then into months, I often thought to myself; will I ever return home? Although there were many times when I was around Americans from the United States, I have to say that I did not feel at home. I'm sure many of you will agree that when one travels outside the confines of their country and the circle of family and friends that surrounds them; they are ultimately in a foreign place estranged from everything they hold dear. Well, this was my story, and although I decided to study abroad to improve my spanish skills; I wasn't quite sure what all this year would entail for me. I then decided that I would have to learn to cope in this place I found myself and that since I had chosen to live here for a year, there was going to be some changes in my outlook of life. So needless to say I began listening to music, watching movies and television and trying to speak only in Spanish so that I might become somewhat fluent by the time I return to my beloved homeland. Afterall a year is an awful long time to be away from one's culture and I thought I would try to gain Spanish fluency if I ever wanted to return in the future.

Weeks passed and months moved along, at times at a snail's pace as I travelled this small but beautiful country learning all I could wrap my mind around about it's people, culture, political situation and problems which I tried to understand. As our two month vacation after the first semester came and went and the second semester arrived, I enrolled in a Kichwa class so that I might learn the first language of a large amount of the population here in Ecuador. That way when I spoke to them they would feel more at home around me and maybe even accept me as more than just a “gringa”. When I learned that there were many different people groups here, it made me feel more at home in the sense that I as well came from a different culture and people group.

These last few months of my life I have grown as I learned to live in the world around me and what it means to be a stranger in a foreign country. It has been a time of change in my short lifespan of twenty-two years that I will never forget; nor do I want to. As my time draws to a close in this wonderful and different country called Ecuador I find myself with mixed feelings as I will miss this place when I leave, so I thought I would put together some snapshots of images from the last ten months of my life of the people and faces that will forever be in my memory. Now as I begin the process to finish out my studies here and return to my hometown in Washington State, I will always remember Ecuador as I saw it through the lens of my camera and hopefully have the chance to look again on it's beauty as the hope of coming back is never too far from my mind.