Adventures in Ecuador

 

I grew up in a town of about 17,000 people in Southern Minnesota.While it was a great place to grow up, the best feature of the town – actually, probably of the entire state – is the lakes. Sure we have some hills, there’s a lot of farmland, and the woods ‘up north’ are gorgeous, but there’s not a whole lot else to brag about.

 

The reason I tell you this is because three weeks ago I moved to Riobamba, Ecuador. The entire country is about the size of Colorado, and it has some of the most diverse landscape that I’ve ever seen. I’m living in the middle of a mountain/volcano range, the jungle starts just a few hours to the east of here and some of the best beaches in South America are just a few hours to the west.

 

While friends at home are complaining about the -30°F (-34°C) weather never-ending snowstorms, I’m enjoying temperatures of 60°F (16°C) and up. The worst thing that I have to worry about is carrying my raincoat as defense against the unpredictable rainstorms (that luckily never seem to last too long).

 

We traveled to the town of Baños, just a few hours from Riobamba, as a mini-vacation this weekend and got the chance to bike the roads along the river from Baños to the neighboring town of Puyo. This was a fantastic experience for me, because although I’ve gotten the chance to travel a bit through the Ecuadorian countryside, I always seem to end up feeling somewhat motion sick and end up closing my eyes … and therefore missing out on the scenery. The two towns are about 40 miles apart, following a road that is (luckily) mostly downhill.

 

The scenery along these roads is absolutely breathtaking (once you get used to the cars, buses, and trucks that are barreling past you). It really was one of those experiences that you just have to take in and enjoy, because no matter how hard you try to photograph it, you’re not going to capture it. There are several fantastic views of waterfalls along the way, and the vegetation slowly becomes more tropical the closer you get to Puyo (the gateway to the jungle mentioned earlier). We biked about 25 miles of the 40, and then took the bus the rest of the way.

 

I’ve mentioned the jungle a few times in this post, so I’ll leave you with a quick description of my favorite part of this trip so far. In Puyo we spent an hour at a Monkey Reserve where they keep monkeys rescued from homes and zoos and slowly reintroduce them to the wild.They are sneaky little creatures, but very friendly – and it’s amazing how strong those tails are! I had never seen a monkey outside of a zoo before, so it was quite the experience to have them jump into my arms, sit on my head, and climb up my legs. If it wasn’t completely illegal, I would totally be bringing one home with me!

 

 

With love from Ecuador,

 

Ascend Alliance Spring 2011 intern

 

 

 

Adventures in Ecuador

I grew up in a town of about 17,000 people in Southern Minnesota.While it was a great place to grow up, the best feature of the town – actually, probably of the entire state – is the lakes. Sure we have some hills, there’s a lot of farmland, and the woods ‘up north’ are gorgeous, but there’s not a whole lot else to brag about.

The reason I tell you this is because three weeks ago I moved to Riobamba, Ecuador. The entire country is about the size of Colorado, and it has some of the most diverse landscape that I’ve ever seen. I’m living in the middle of a mountain/volcano range, the jungle starts just a few hours to the east of here and some of the best beaches in South America are just a few hours to the west.

While friends at home are complaining about the -30°F (-34°C) weather never-ending snowstorms, I’m enjoying temperatures of 60°F (16°C) and up. The worst thing that I have to worry about is carrying my raincoat as defense against the unpredictable rainstorms (that luckily never seem to last too long).

We traveled to the town of Baños, just a few hours from Riobamba, as a mini-vacation this weekend and got the chance to bike the roads along the river from Baños to the neighboring town of Puyo. This was a fantastic experience for me, because although I’ve gotten the chance to travel a bit through the Ecuadorian countryside, I always seem to end up feeling somewhat motion sick and end up closing my eyes … and therefore missing out on the scenery. The two towns are about 40 miles apart, following a road that is (luckily) mostly downhill.

The scenery along these roads is absolutely breathtaking (once you get used to the cars, buses, and trucks that are barreling past you). It really was one of those experiences that you just have to take in and enjoy, because no matter how hard you try to photograph it, you’re not going to capture it. There are several fantastic views of waterfalls along the way, and the vegetation slowly becomes more tropical the closer you get to Puyo (the gateway to the jungle mentioned earlier). We biked about 25 miles of the 40, and then took the bus the rest of the way.

I’ve mentioned the jungle a few times in this post, so I’ll leave you with a quick description of my favorite part of this trip so far. In Puyo we spent an hour at a Monkey Reserve where they keep monkeys rescued from homes and zoos and slowly reintroduce them to the wild.They are sneaky little creatures, but very friendly – and it’s amazing how strong those tails are! I had never seen a monkey outside of a zoo before, so it was quite the experience to have them jump into my arms, sit on my head, and climb up my legs. If it wasn’t completely illegal, I would totally be bringing one home with me!


With love from Ecuador,

Ascend Alliance Spring 2011 intern

Reflections on 9 Months in Peru

Many people ask me after living in Peru for 9 months, “is it weird to be back?” My answer up to this point has been in the affirmative; yes, it is weird to be back. It feels strange to no longer have to avoid massive potholes in the street, it feels weird to be able to pet dogs without the fear of getting fleas, it feels weird to speak in ENGLISH again, but most of all it feels weird not to be able to visit the communities where I have worked and to say goodbye to a previously foreign place which I had begun to call my home. In retrospect, 9 months isn’t really that long. It is the same amount of time to finish a school year, have a baby or digest an In-and-Out Burger. If I live to be 80, which may happen if the world doesn’t end in 2012 and I stop drinking coffee with ample sugar and cream, this experience will only have been about 1/100 of the time I will have spent living. However, I feel that the time I spent as an international intern with ASCEND will mean 100 times more to me than the other experiences I will have had in my life. But how can I possibly say that this is my defining life experience if I still have so much life left to live?


It’s simple, interning with ASCEND helped me to identify what it is that I want to do with my life AND put the wheels in motion. We did SO many different things throughout my time in Peru, whether it was teaching basic disease prevention to parents and watching them writhe in disgust after viewing our video clip about intestinal worms, or organizing a group of children to pick up trash after a health campaign and then having them wash their hands before buying them all corn and cheese as a reward, or installing a banner publicizing a fledgling business of culinary geniuses, or putting the finishing touches on a new, beautiful school that would replace a 60-year old mud hut that was about to fall over, or…… (this list could go on for 100 pages). This is the stuff that memories are made of. These are the experiences that help you determine what you want to do with your life. These are the experiences that give your life purpose.



I’m not just walking away with an inkling or some vague, general outline of what I want to do (like what happens to most when they take that walk down the red carpet to pick up their rolled-up piece of paper). I have a plan for the next 10 years of my life, something that I don’t think that most of my friends my age can say that they enjoy. I have established relationships with people that can help me to achieve this plan. One thing I like a lot about ASCEND is our approach to setting goals. We know how to set them so that they are achievable, realistic and measurable while simultaneously worthy and ambitious. Working with the people of Peru, the REAL people, not the tour guide, not the wealthy businessman from Lima, I discovered that I want to work in international business entrepreneurism in Latin America as a career. That’s not a stretch considering my major is business entrepreneurism with a minor in Spanish. Nevertheless, I needed the practical experience of living and working in Peru to confirm what I had previously identified as a possible career path. I’m not going to go into specifics because I don’t want you to steal my ideas, but I promise you that there are good things in store.



More than anything else, ASCEND helped me learn to identify opportunities and have the personal motivation to act appropriately upon these opportunities. Looking for opportunities to work with Humanitarian projects is a lot like looking for business opportunities. We are in the business of identifying NEED. We identify a need, and we fulfill the need. Once that need is identified, we set goals and measure our progress on an ongoing basis. After that need has been met, we do follow-ups to make sure that the need continues to be met and how we can meet that need even better in the future. So I would like to send this message out to anyone who knows what they are studying but don’t know what they want to do with their lives. Become an intern with ASCEND, either at HQ in Salt Lake City or in South America. No matter what you are studying, there is an opportunity to put your skills to work with ASCEND. I promise you that your experience will be as rewarding as mine if you are willing to step outside of your comfort zone and embrace the unknown and unfamiliar; you will NOT be disappointed. Also, you will get to go to the coast, the jungle and the sierra HAHAHAHA! More to come…