Meet our first volunteer of this school year - Andrew. Andrew is with us doing an internship for Florida Atlantic University's Honors College. During his time he will be teaching English and helping out with our tutoring program. Today Andrew shares with us a reflection on his first week in Ecuador.
Andrew & Steve during our tutoring program.
"I have been working with Starfish now for about a week and I can say with confidence that this will be a week that I will never in my life forget. Many times when you come across the odd gringo here in South America they look like they are running away from something. For me, I just want to highlight that my experiences in Ecuador have been something very much running toward. While I didn't know what I was looking for when I decided to come here I have found an extraordinary group of students and families here at Starfish and am amazing host family who were willing to open their doors to me and had the patience to work with my basic knowledge of Spanish to try to explain things.
Andrew teaching his first English lesson in Guasmo.
For the past week I have been helping the students with their English homework and attempting to teach English when we have spare time. What I value most about my time in Starfish is the free time I have occasionally just to sit and talk to the kids about anything and everything we could possibly talk about. Although much is lost in translation, that exchange of ideas I believe is going to have a lasting impact of my perspective on the world, hopefully I also have some useful perspective to share."
"Aprendamos juntos" or "Let's learn together" is one of Andrew's favorite phrases. Here he exchanges language & cultural lesson with Cristhian and Eddy.
No comments:
Post a Comment