This video is a culmination of some of the things I learned as a Fellow in Ecuador the past eight months; I have been deeply affected by the family, friends, and home that I found there and I hope that this video can show even just a little of what I experienced there.    

15 June, 2012

Shadowed mountains trace uneven lines; the golden sky splits & tears– jagged halves, dark & light.   All around, the lazy city moves in twilight: deliberate & unchanging, an afternoon ritual.   The vegetable man stands expectantly awaiting passerby. His gold tooth flashes, cinnamon eyes crinkle a fleeting smile.   He swims through his tomatoes,…

27 March, 2012

Imagine you are a curious child, about 10 years old.  You don’t know your exact birthday, because no one ever cared enough to write it down—you think it’s sometime in February.  You long to go to school, but you have never been able to, what with seven little brothers and sisters to be looking after. …

27 March, 2012

One vaccine down, four to go.  It was a tiny bite—an incensed mono ardilla(squirrel monkey) had drawn just two drops of blood from my hand when I removed him from a tourist at the Parque Amazónico.  This tiny scratch, however, ended in an eight-hour round-trip for the first vaccine and four-hour trips for the remaining…

27 March, 2012

It’s only a map…it’s only a map…it’s only a map… The words kept repeating in my head, but to no avail: no matter how I attempted to rationalize the situation to myself—and the absurdity of my reaction to it—I could not fall asleep on Monday night.  I was terrified that none of the invited kids…

27 March, 2012

This is my first video blog from Ecuador…I called it Moments because the clips are simply taken from my daily life, and the special moments I have experienced that have affected me the most.

17 January, 2012

I don’t really know how it happened, but suddenly I was in the water.  My day had been pretty ordinary before this surprising event: I woke up at dawn and did sun salutations as the insects and birds began their morning serenade.  My sister and I ate a quick breakfast of cold empanadas de queso…

08 December, 2011

The following are three anecdotes—“snapshots” of my life, if you will—about my past week in Tena, Ecuador; they include an everyday bus ride, a rainy adventure, and an epiphany I had walking down the street one evening. I saw the blue-and-white bus in the distance, and crossed the road to catch it.  There isn’t a…

11 November, 2011

“¿Puedo lavar mi ropa?”  I sheepishly held up my jeans, filthy from a long day cleaning up tree limbs outside for my apprenticeship at El Parque Amazónico.  It was 5:30 on Friday afternoon, and my host mother was lounging with my baby brother, Aron, in the evening light.  She glanced at my displayed garment and smiled…

03 October, 2011

When I began the Global Citizen Year Fall Training at Stanford University just two weeks ago, I felt like I was turning onto a new page in my life—and that I would soon start inking a new chapter onto it.  Fourteen days later, I’m certain that I could write a whole book with everything that…

07 September, 2011

If you’ve ever spent any good amount of time with me, you will find that I fall down a lot. I have this amazing ability to somehow find every tree root and every crack in the sidewalk, and promptly trip over it.  I know exactly how to get both my feet stuck in a wet…

05 July, 2011