The Journey of a Friendly Giant

There’s something strange that happens when you get out of your comfort zone and explore a different country and culture. Travelling is a fantastic way to blow your own mind enough to change your perspective about many things in life.  As you may know, this blog originated as a travel blog. Though my life has changed tremendously since my time in South America, I still enjoy travelling quite a bit. " Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime ."  Mark Twain is a wise man! And that is one of my favorite quotes of all time because I couldn't agree more. If you’ve never felt like an absolute alien in a new environment where people ask you on a regular basis why you choose to do what you do, wear what you wear, and say what you say; then I high...

Being the largest and most populated city of Ecuador, Guayaquil is known as the city that “makes money”. With nearly 3.1 million people in the metropolitan area, Guayaquil is located on the western bank of the Guayas River which flows into the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Guayaquil. Its convenient location makes this developed city, the center of Ecuador´s business and manufacturing industries. The city of Guayaquil takes pride of being the economic centre point of Ecuador. However, the poor air quality, busy noisy streets, and loud city noises doesn’t necessarily make the city a tourism hotspot. In fact, many tourism websites and books describe Guayaquil as a great central location to travel from , and that is not recommended to “stay in”. “If you don’t like something, change it; if you can´t change it, change the way you think about it.” – Mary Engelbreit Other Ecuadorian cities are much greener and they take pride in their biodiversity and protect it with care. Guayaquil understand...

"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...