BLOG 2: Homestay & Community Project
The students are now in their second week of the Ecuador program. They arrived to their host community on July 3rd and have spent the last five days living with their homestay families and working on the site of the service project.
Homestay Community: The students are staying in the village of Maria Aurora, which is approximately 8kms from San Luis de Pambil, in the Bolivar Province. It is a community of about 40 families, and is about 10kms from San Luis de Pambil. The closest major city is Quevado, which is about 75kms away from the community in the middle of the country. This is a beautiful area of rolling hills, agriculture, and beautiful scenery. Most homes have electricity and running water. It has a small elementary school with roughly 80 students, various small convenience stores, and a town plaza.
Service Project: The local host community in Ecuador has requested that the students work on three different projects! The first is building an area for the children to play fútbol (soccer), the second is building a kitchen area for preparing communal food, and the third is to renovate an old community building.
History: This is the second time a Global Routes group will be hosted by this community. The last Global Routes group went 18 years ago and many of this year’s host parents were children when the first group was there! This makes for a very special ongoing connection across generations. The local community is very excited to be working again with Global Routes students.
[Student-written blog post starts below, written July 5th]
“We got to Maria Aurora and we got separated into our own families at our welcome party. We have been working for two days so far and it consisted of transporting rocks and cement through the assembly line. We have been getting to know the people that live here and we have been bonding with each other at the work site. We get breakfast and dinner with our families everyday. It has been a great time so far. Tune in on Monday for more (referring to the student calls home on Monday, 7/8 at 6:30pm EST)!” [End of student-written blog post]
More photos of the service project below!
