The Journey of a Friendly Giant

Being away from home is amazing, you get to meet new people, immerse yourself into a new culture and way of life, learn a new language and experience more newness than you’ve ever imagined. When things are going well with both your personal life and professional life, everything is pure bliss. However, recent events have made me realize, that when things begin to go wrong, and you feel upset or sad about anything for any given reason, suddenly being far away from home becomes slightly excruciating. At the pre-departure orientation for this internship over 4 months ago, the interns were warned of a “breaking point”, this might be mine. It’s strange to realize how much I rely on my support system at home; my family, fiancé, old friends, my neighbors and that familiar feeling of belonging exactly where I was. All of those things combined bring both comfort and encouragement to me, and I got so used to it, that I barely noticed how helpful and important my support system is in my day-to-...

Patience is definitely something I´ve learned and developed at a young age. In fact I’m pretty sure it´s my mother´s favorite word! Though in the past this annoyed me, I now see the value in learning how to be patient,  patiently . Some people understand the concept of patience, but they simply cannot wait to see the positive outcome of their patience, with patience. I always remind myself to wait, everybody has a pace, and mine may normally be much faster, however, it doesn’t mean it´s better. Learning to wait can only bring positive things, especially when it comes to international development and capacity building. I'm focusing on establishing relationships within the community that I´m working in before jumping into workshops. Slowly but surely I am getting a short debrief of the issues some of the women are facing individually. I have been documenting this and will keep my eyes wide open for any patterns in answers, and that will inspire the topic of my first workshop. I will...

  An old tradition for the Pro-Bosque ( Pro-Forest ) foundation employees is an annual camping trip. It is probably the only time where all of the employees from the different departments, as well as the interns are at the same place, at the same time without their serious work faces on. This past weekend, I happily joined the rest of the team at the Cerro Blanco dry tropical forest at 5pm for our camping adventure. When I arrived, they were preparing what I consider a gourmet meal for camping. They had shish kabobs with beef, chicken and sausage, a big pot of rice, avocado, a garden salad and maduro , which translates as: ripe . It’s sweet cooked ripe plantain bananas. Everyone contributed to the cooking, while laughing, singing and taking pictures. Okay.... so we had a kitchen for some of the stuff :) Outdoor bbq Dig in everyone! The "young people" table :) After some great conversations about family, friends, and traveling, the food was all gone, and we we...

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...

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 ;)´´  Strang...

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 1...

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 op...