It was an education I hadn't anticipated and was sad to receive. But those experiences did not detract from the wonderful things I found in Ecuador. The opportunity to learn and to share, to communicate in a common language, opened an entire world for me filled with new perspectives. Yes, communicating directly allowed me to learn about the crisis, to understand what those hard realities meant for the people around me, but that was only one small part of all I learned. I went to Ecuador in September 1998 as part of a World Teach program.
Participants live with local families, and teach English for one year.
I taught basic, intermediate, and advanced English to students between the ages of 16 and 47. I went to Ecuador knowing next to no Spanish. My host family was wonderful, patiently waiting for me to complete my thoughts. My students were also wonderful, and perhaps even more understanding, as they were struggling with the same problems in my classroom. One advantage, among many, of learning a new language, is that it strengthens your understanding of your own language.