Even after a rocky travel experience the previous year, I decided to step out of my comfort zone and board a flight to South America to spend July living in various places in Ecuador with a teen travel group.
Last summer, I traveled to Fiji, which was undeniably life-changing but also took a toll on my health. Living in such a rural area for a month left me with health complications that lingered in my system and caused substantial problems for my wellness. Even so, my love of independent travel outweighed all my doubts and fears, and I decided to travel again this summer.
I signed up for a nearly month-long trip to Ecuador. I had never been to South America before, and I wasn’t at all familiar with Ecuadorian culture or customs.
The week before the trip, I began to have doubts about my decision to leave my family for over three weeks. I was worried about getting sick again and having health problems completely strip the enjoyment from my trip again. Even my family had doubts, and they constantly questioned whether I should go on this trip.
However, despite all my worries, I left for my trip on July 1 and flew to Quito, Ecuador’s capital. Within a week of being in Ecuador with my travel group, all my anxiety about the trip had completely vanished.
Instantly, I was welcomed into the warm, ever-friendly Ecuadorian culture. I participated in a one-week home stay in rural Ecuador, two and a half hours away from Quito. Here, I truly allowed myself to become immersed in the amazing culture surrounding me.
With that, I learned things that I could have never known about if I hadn’t left the U.S. This deep cultural immersion in a Spanish-speaking country naturally required us to speak Spanish as much as possible. My Spanish skills, which were previously lacking, improved significantly through real-world experience. Being fully immersed in a Spanish-speaking environment pushed me to use the language constantly, which helped me learn much faster and more naturally than I could in a high school Spanish class.
I gained the confidence to hold real conversations, a skill that is much more valuable than all the grammar rules I was learning at home. This constant exposure to the language not only transformed my Spanish skills but also taught me to appreciate the culture behind the language, as I gained firsthand knowledge of the traditions, values, and everyday lives of Ecuadorians.
In the area where I stayed in Ecuador, the local community lived solely off the land. Most food, drink, medicine and other goods were made from natural elements found in their surrounding area.
Eating a dish made from beans that were planted, grown, picked, and prepared in my own backyard was one of the most rewarding experiences of my trip, as I felt much more connected and present in my surroundings, which is an element rare to find in the U.S., as most food comes from huge factories and farms.
Since the community relies so heavily on the land, they want to ensure that they pay gratitude back to their environment for all that it’s done for their community.
In the words of Antonio, an important figure in the town we were staying in, the relationship between their community and the land is “symbiotic.” This important idea of paying gratitude to the land is something I wish to take back with me to the United States. I want to help people recognize how much we depend on our land and to adopt a more reciprocal approach toward the environment around us, just as Antonio described it.
Looking back, even though I had my doubts, I would never have learned these important values that I now carry with me every day if I hadn’t stepped out of my comfort zone and left the United States.
I strongly encourage other high school students to challenge themselves to explore places where people live differently from them, because being somewhere new allows for personal growth and meaningful learning about the world to happen.
Amelia Riepe of Park City is a junior at Waterford School.