Last semester I studied abroad in Ecuador in a three-part program focused on international development and community involvement. The program started with an intensive Spanish language course, followed by two months of classwork in international development and country analysis, and culminated with an internship teaching English at a rural, indigenous school. Throughout the program, I not only improved my ability to communicate in a foreign language, but I also experienced the reality of living in a developing country.
In many ways, this reality could not be more different than my life in the United States. I grew up in a sizable neighborhood in suburban Ohio where I attended the local public school with access to wonderful teachers and practically every resource imaginable. After school I rode my bike around the cul-de-sac with neighborhood children and my parents helped me with my homework. I shared a bedroom with my younger sister and at night we spent hours whispering and giggling, snuggled under fluffy blankets while the heater hummed in the background. I lived in a safe and comfortable environment and had few concerns of my own.
The children that I taught in the rural village of San Clemente, Ecuador, however, face a much different childhood, especially in terms of securing an education. Days in San Clemente start early, before six o’clock every morning, and sunrise is filled with a flurry of activity as parents and children scramble to feed the chickens, milk the cows and tend to the guinea pigs before parents run to catch the 6:30 bus into the nearby city, where many fathers fill their days with physically demanding construction work. Later the children walk to school, many on empty stomachs and often arriving late, as school rarely starts on time. The elementary school consists of eight grades—one teacher teaches the lower four grades (preschool through second grade), while the other teaches the older students. The teachers are talented and well-trained, but overwhelmed with the demanding task of managing too many grade levels at once. The school has few physical resources to offer the students, and no internet access, a luxury that only two families in the community can afford. At 1:30 in the afternoon school ends and the children walk home. Lunch typically consists of potato soup or rice. After tending to small fields of corn and gardens of fruit and herbs, children play late afternoon games of soccer, as mothers watch kindly, absent-mindedly embroidering exquisite blouses and table runners.
The families in San Clemente live simply, many in small homes with no more than three rooms. My host family’s home, for example, consists of a kitchen, shared bedroom, and dining area with a fireplace to provide heat. The bedroom has two sunken beds, one for the parents and one for their three children. Pleated skirts and sunhats line the walls, adding color and warmth to the rooms. The bathroom is outside next to a large cement sink where my host mom washes the laundry once a week. Few people own a couch or a computer or a car. Instead, they own the land that has been passed down to them generation after generation. Taking great care of this land, they plant corn and potatoes, quinoa, rice, tomatoes and carrots, trading fresh produce with neighbors to create a nearly self-sustaining community.
Before living in San Clemente, I had never experienced a rural lifestyle like this, nor had I lived with so few material goods. At times, this was extremely challenging, and I sometimes felt incompetent when I had to ask (in less than perfect Spanish) how to peel a mango or how to tie off a thread and start a new one on an embroidered towel. Even more challenging was learning how to teach a foreign language to five and six-year-olds and to earn the respect of older students who were hesitant to listen to a foreign volunteer teach a language they had never heard. The hardest part for me, however, was living with limited access to the internet, not only because I had to design lesson plans and complete my school work without the aid of technology, but mostly because I was unable to communicate on a regular basis with my own family and friends. While I loved the children that I taught and the families that I connected with, I sometimes felt lonely as I watched loving families laugh and hug and share stories, knowing that my own family was thousands of miles away.
Because of these challenges, however, I learned more than I ever 
thought was possible. I learned how to plant corn and spinach, how to make juice out of bizarre and oddly shaped fruits, how to make tostadas and how to peel habas for potato soup. I learned how to speak, listen, write, read and live in Spanish. I learned how to embroider a towel. I learned that stickers can motivate a kindergartener to sit still, that some kids can memorize a song after listening to it once, and that middle schoolers do not like to act out vocabulary words in front of all of their classmates. I learned about the lives of the students I taught just as they learned about my life in the United States. I learned about a culture that has existed since before the Incan empire, and how to speak a bit of Quichua, the native language of my host family. I learned that it is okay to walk slowly up a mountain and that time is relative. And while I learned that in many ways life in San Clemente is very different than life in suburban Ohio, we have more similarities than we have differences. Even though the language we speak and our location on a map are different, my experiences have led me to believe that people around the world laugh at the same things, are frustrated by the same things, and ultimately all want the same things from life: to love and be loved, to find happiness and to feel safe in our surroundings.
In a changing political climate and rapidly globalizing world, I think it is sometimes easy for us to view people from other countries, especially countries with cultures different than our own, as dangerous and dirty and different. It’s easy for us to take for granted everything we have been given in life simply because we were born in one of the most privileged countries of the world. It’s easy for us to ignore the struggles that other people face, not because we are trying to ignore those struggles, but simply because we have never experienced them ourselves. Going forward, I know that my experience in Ecuador will be beneficial to my academic goals (as a student majoring in International Development) and to my professional goals (to work as a foreign correspondent), but more importantly the experiences that I gained in Ecuador have changed the way that I look at the world. Studying abroad in Ecuador and teaching English in a rural village taught me patience and kindness, and I am more motivated to listen to and learn about the people that I interact with every day. These experiences reaffirmed my belief that education can be life-changing and my desire to work to ensure that all children have access to a quality education. They make me more motivated than ever to continue learning Spanish so that I can personally communicate with people all over Latin and South America. I am more open-minded and grateful for all of the opportunities that I have been given, and I am aware that I make an impact everywhere I go. I could not be more thankful for my semester abroad in Ecuador and everything that I learned there.