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Dear friends and family,

    I just wanted to write to let you know that I’m home from my adventures in Ecuador, and that I had an absolutely fantastic time! As I slowly start to unpack my bags, looking around me at my new yet familiar surroundings here in Maine, I think about the last few months and how much I was able to change, to grow, from this semester. It has impacted my perspectives, my thoughts, my dreams, and most of all opened my eyes and my heart to the world around me.

    There is no one thing I could pinpoint and say “This is what made going to Ecuador so amazing.” I could tell you about the twelve other students, about what a close-nit and loving family we became, or about our teachers, how inspiring and caring and hardworking they were.

    I could tell you about the cold beauty of biking through the highlands, about the brown-green hills turning to mountains, turning to clouds and stretching on to the horizon. It was so continuous, so vast, so breathtakingly beautiful. And there was a peaceful loneliness in it too, like it could go on forever like that, the shrubby grasses, the occasional bird, the crunch of our tires on the gravel roads.

    I could talk about the jungle: the rush of the river as we pulled our paddles through its rapids, the moss that dripped from the branches of towering trees, the living buzzing crawling green rainforest that tangled us in its tightly interwoven ecosystem.

    I could describe the never-ending sky of fiery white stars, so close above, the only light apart from our dim headlamps as we climbed to the summit of the glacier-capped volcano Cotopaxi. There was a deep calmness there too, in the dark with nothing but the quietness of the giant mountain, the crunch of our crampons on the steep snow, our own will to keep going, to take the next thin breath, to get to the top.

    I could say how much we learned, from the smiling faces of the Ecuadorians we met, from learning to live so peacefully with the land and with each other, from the lessons we received about herbs, permaculture, weather, Spanish…

    But in truth, there are no words I can find to sufficiently describe a journey so powerful, so crazy, so beautiful. So all I can say is thank you. Now, looking back on all the things I have been lucky enough to experience, I feel a deep gratitude well up in my heart to all of you who made them come true.

    Thank you for making this journey possible for me, for letting me truly live my dreams. I feel infinitely lucky to have such beautiful and supportive people in my life. And now, after semester, I can see that because of your support in getting to Ecuador I have not only had the chance to experience this incredible journey, but also to have doors open beyond this adventure and out into the wide world.

I hope you are well, and happy holidays!


Hila


P.S. If you would like to read about some of our adventures more in detail our blog address is http://krokaecuadorsemester2011.blogspot.com. Enjoy!