The Beginning of the End

Today was my last first day of classes. Weird. It's weird because for the first time in my life, I have nothing planned next. Once I graduate in May, I have no idea what to do. I'm in the process of applying to a few jobs (race car driver? musician? bartender? yeah right...), and considering grad school (maybe?), and trying to figure out where I want to live and what I want to do, and it's terrifyingly exciting.

However, in all of this worry about the future, I need to remind myself to stop and enjoy the 4 months I have left at Colby.

Like, how much I'm going to miss my friends (even though they will obviously come visit me all the time):

Or how much I'm going to miss being on my own schedule with time to go to noontime yoga or a 10:30 jog in the snow. I'm being sappy, I know. I just need to remember to sometimes stop worrying about the future and focus instead on how lucky I am for my present.

Bring it on, second semester.

Printmaking

So, for my final JanPlan of my Colby career, I'm taking a class called Printmaking. It's sponsored by the Art department, which is 100% out of my comfort zone and boy let me tell you, I'm learning SO much. But, who knew that art could be so difficult?

My workstation

Made these two today.

If you want to buy one, I'm selling them... just kidding. They're not nearly that good. But, I have a TON of prints and would show anyone who wants to see them! And I'm sure I will have many more once JanPlan ends in a week and a half, so we will see what I come up with!

Servicio Comunitario

Part of the Duke in the Andes program requires each student to spend 10 weeks at some sort of community service on top of the classes we are taking. I have landed myself in the cutest school of all, helping teach English. There are kids from ages 5-12 at the school, which is a public/private institution (I still haven't figured that one out...). But it's a very low resource school, and the English teacher, Mariana, basically has to buy supplies out of her own pocket. It's really sad, actually. And a lot of the kids don't have adequate supplies or the correct uniform size or their uniform has huge holes in it because their families can't afford to buy new ones at the moment. It's rough, but the kids are adorable and so sweet.

This is the outer wall of the escueltia. The murals are actually pretty cool.

This is the English classroom. It's an old auditorium, and the kids sit on church pews. It's not very conducive to learning, but like I said, they don't have much choice because of the economic situation of the school.

Today we learned the colors, and got to go outside and play with a big tent-thing!

Not much learning happened.

So yes. This is where I spend 10 hours a week. And it's worth it.

This weekend the program is venturing into the Amazon Rainforest (yep. that Amazon). Wish me luck. I don't do well with snakes.

It's Not A Vacation Anymore...

Up until this point, my stay in Ecuador has felt like an extended summer vacation. Yes, I've been going to classes and I've been learning a lot, I just haven't had much school work to do. Until this week. Yesterday we started our classes in FLACSO, or Facultad Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales. It's a grad school and we have two classes a week from 5-8 at night. The work load is going to be much more like the typical Colby workload, and to be honest, I'm not really looking forward to it. But hopefully it will vale la pena (be worth it).

One of the two FLACSO towers. 

This is the café in one of the FLACSO building. I will be spending a lot of time here.