The Journey of a Friendly Giant

When are you going to start working?¨ I must have heard that question about 50 times already from absolutely everybody. My answer is usually ¨Why?... Jealous?¨;) People think I am on a long vacation since I haven't mentioned work. I wish. The truth is, I have in fact started working, but not in the way that the other interns have. Some of my fellow colleagues from the Niagara College, CIDA funded internship program began working almost immediately after their arrival. However, I have officially been here for 4 weeks, and my first full month has been an orientation period like no other. "If you like your job, then it's hardly work at all. In fact, you would do it for free if this world didn't require you to have money." - Lisa Unger  In my first blog post entitled Passion  I spoke a bit about Cerro Blanco, but since then I have learned much more. I now know that the protected forest of "Cerro Blanco" is one of the very few remaining dry tropical for

After settling in, and making some friends, we had already made plans to explore Ecuador. Time seems to have flown by, and next thing you know I found myself on a bus. Luckily enough, the first two seats on the bus don´t have any seats in front of them. This meant . . . you guessed it, endless leg room for the  giant lady . The city to city travel busses are coach style busses, much like Canada, with comfortable seats that lean back, and movie entertainment provided. We were going to Rio Bamba Ecuador, which was 4 hours away from Guayaquil.  Another CIDA intern from the College of the Rockies, British Columbia program, had a Lonely Planet travel guide for Ecuador. Our plan was to, relax, and settle in to the hostels we were staying at in the first day, in preparation for our big train ride the next morning on’ The Devil´s Nose train line.´´ Rio Bamba was a nice town, with many boutiques and very kind people.   Unfortunately for us, the Lonely Planet book had mislead us, and the Train w

This post could be considered as my first ´´culture shock´´ experience. In the past, as a shy person, attention has never been something I looked for. However since I couldn´t help but get an abundance of it, eventually, I learned to work with it through humour, smiles and friendliness.  [cartoonstock.com ] For those of you who may not already know this, I am unusually tall for a female, and taller than most men for that matter! An old teacher used to tell me, ´´Feeling weird about your height, will only make other people feel weird about it. Strut, be proud, they will see your beauty if you feel beautiful.´´ Without shoes I stand at 6´3 inches in height. I´ve always been the tallest woman by far in every location, at school, in my neighborhood, and even in my city if you ask me. When I´m in Canada, almost every day I hear the following things: [torontodominicano.com ] Stranger : ´´Wow you are tall!´´ My response : ´´Thank you, I didn’t notice ;)´´  Stranger : ´´Ho

When I woke up in Ecuador, everything felt like a dream. I was surprised to see that I wasn’t waking up in my little apartment in Canada. My “ dream ” was real, and I was really gone from home .   The first night I arrived In Guayaquil I’ve never felt so tired! The hot and humid temperature, mixed with my long 12 hour Journey made me want to dedicate a full day to sleep. But that was most definitely out of the question. I had things to learn, places to go, people to meet, and houses to seek. My morning had an early start and it was go go go. With the light of the day, I noticed how beautiful my hotel room was. Manso boutique is half hostel, half art gallery, and half heaven if you ask me.     View from door                                                   View from table The service was wonderful and the food was 100% organic and vegetarian. Though I’m an omnivore myself, my first meal in Ecuador at Manso hosteleria was simply mouth-watering deliciousness on a plate

When everything around you is suddenly unrecognizable, different, new and sometimes strange, fear is usually the first reaction. Fear of the unknown is often inevitable; When I arrived to the City of Guayaquil in Ecuador, I was scared out of my mind for three reasons:  1.      I was by myself. My partner Lindsay, can't join me in Ecuador for a full month after my arrival.  2.      The length of this trip ( 6 months ) exceeds any trip I’ve eve  taken in my whole life. 3.      It was real now, after all of the training and preperation, it was time to dive into ecaudor and see if I will sink or swim.  To help with my jitters my nose was stuck in my book "The Alchemist". I left from Toronto airport around 3pm, stopped at Bogota Columbia, where I had a 2 hour layover. I decided to scan through a few stores in the airport and found the Spanish version of the book I was reading "El Alquimista" I took it as an opportunity to improve my Spanish, and bought it immediat

"For every moment spent in preparation, an hour is earned"  - Paulo Cuello - El Alquimista I was recently asked, "How do you prepare for a trip like THAT !" So this post is for you my curious friend. Though I've been in Guayaquil for over a week now, the training I've received prior to my departure is an important part of my journey ahead. As previously mentioned, the training period was 3 weeks long and held at Niagara College.   There was a group of mentors, each of them teaching all of the interns’ different things in very different ways. The goal of this internship is for us young graduates to gain global experiences while gaining both Global competencies and development competencies along the way. (click on titles to see pages on both) The training and networking that has already happened prior to this internship has been very rewarding. During our training we did so many different things all related to our internships, we had the chance to experie