Reports from Ecuador

I cannot believe that this is my last night in Ecuador!  Quite a bit has happened since my last post, sorry for not updating more!

We left Planchaloma a few days before our internship ended to try to do some Lab In a Backpack interviews in the Amazon.  Unfortunately, many of the people we wanted to talk to were not at their clinics, and a broken bridge prevented us from even getting to one.  We did, however, get to see one heavily used backpack, and an entirely new part of Ecuador!

We returned to Quito for the last full day of our internship, where we visited a shop to get posters and booklets printed and tried to track down some final supplies for the TB and malaria staining kit.  As of last Saturday, our internship was officially over and since then we have been purely ‘turistas’, save for a few more BTB related errands we had to run.

We spent one day visiting the historic district of Quito and joining in the Indpendence Day celebrations, and then flew to Guayaquil, where we spent a day walking around the city, visited a park full of land iguanas and ate plenty of pan de yucca.  The next day we took a bus to Cuenca, where we admired the beautiful architecture and quaint city.  We returned to Quito yesterday and spent all of today buying thank you gifts and trying (unsuccessfully) to pick up what we had ordered at the print shop last week.

Early tomorrow morning, I’ll be boarding a flight back to the U.S.  My time here has been truly unique, sometimes extremely rewarding and other times very frustrating.  I’m sure I won’t fully realize how much I’ve learned and how much my perspective has changed until I’m back in the U.S., but I do know that the things I’ve learned and experienced here will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Thank you to all of the kind people who have helped me in the last 9 weeks.  My Spanish, and my English, aren’t good enough to truly express how grateful I am for all you have done.

For now, ¡chau, Ecuador!  I will certainly never forget you.