Summary and Write-Up!

Hello all! In the hope of communicating to students well past the hour when I'm going to see any of them - today, at least - I'm making another post here, thinking that those of you who were following the blog will be alerted, and may in turn alert the students you know who came on the trip. To this piece of news:

The school newsletter, which is going to press soon, would like a write-up of our trip to Ecuador!

I think it would be best if this write-up came from students. It would be much more relevant to other potential students that way, and would reflect the students' experience more than my perception of the students' experience. So if any of your students are feeling creative and gushy about our wonderful experience, please let them know that they can tell the world about it through the newsletter!

(Also, I don't want to do it.)

But I do want to say this about our last day in Quito: It was free, open, and very, very productive. I turned the students loose until 2:00, at which time I wanted them to be back at the hotel, in plenty of time to pack and be ready to go by the time our bus was set to depart (3:30). But JUST at the moment when it would be impossible to gather everyone up because of a change of plans, around 10:00 AM, there was a change of plans. The hotel concierge told me that check out time was 12:00, and that his bed-changer only worked until 4:00. If students didn't come back and clear rooms until 2:00, he'd never get enough rooms cleared out in time for new clients!

Ms Getzen and I sprang into action, cartwheeling and backspringing through the crowds to the Plaza Grande, where we found a large contingent of students who were shopping. We asked them to rush back to the hotel and clear their rooms, after which they would be free to do more shopping and exploring. They spread the word to everyone they found on the way, and between that and a few others that we managed to bump into, the management of the hotel were smiling broadly when I next saw them. They had gotten all the rooms cleared and were extremely pleased with us. Which is just how we like to leave 'em.

I took a lot of footage that last day, wandering by myself, doing some shopping for my kids, for a few of their friends, for my wife. Buying my last few churros and glasses of coconut juice (not the same thing as coconut water at all). A group of students took the Trolley to Parque Carolina, a huuuuge public park in the North of Quito, where they played soccer with Guillermo and his friends. They spoke of the morning spent this way in almost reverent terms when they were done - this was transformative for some of them, I think. Using mass transit, with which they were very familiar, to go with Ecuadorian friends from the medieval center of town out to the most modern suburban reaches, to play a game they all love under the Equatorial high-altitude sky. I wished I could have gone with them - just like I wished I could have gone downstairs and gotten in on the card game in Mindo. But these experiences are not about me. I've had my share.

Long goodbyes at the hotel, and then onto the bus. And every single juncture went pretty much perfectly, if slowly - a three-hour wait before we could board our plane in Quito, another of equal length in Bogota, followed by the long and itchy flight home, the long and bothersome trip through customs in the US, the long bus ride home to Lenox...And the longish wait for someone to come let us in the front door of the high school in the sub-freezing wind. But we all survived it, and from what I see and hear at school these past few days, we did so in good spirits and with a lot to think about for a long time to come.