After spending 11 days in Cuenca and 15 grateful days in Ecuador I think that I have come to better understand what it means to experience another country and appreciate their values and traditions. The class I’m taking here in this beautiful country is over intercultural communications, when I first signed up for this course I solely picked it cause we were going to Ecuador. But I was the one who landed on the Daily Double and absolutely loved learning about the indigenous groups of Ecuador and being able to compare side by side the benefits and downfalls on Ecuador vs. United States.
When we visited the CEDEI school, the Centro de Salude No.4, Cajas National Park and dozens of museums, I’ve been able to seen first hand what being from Cuenca is all about. Each visit had it’s unique attributes but helped me understand their culture better. At the CEDEI school they must be doing everything right to be running a 1st-9th grade school all in my location and still not have any problems with bullying, or theft. As well as their number of students that are “overweight” is less 7 children. When we first visited the CEDEI school, you could see children with disabilities and non-disabled children playing I thought to myself, if I were in any other country you would see the children in two separate groups and the children with disabilities are always with other children with disabilities and they never interact with other normal children.
At Cajas National Park, we could see where the Incans used to travel and experience what they went through to bring goods to consumers in Cuenca. The beautiful landscape and trails were just one of the ways to show us how the Cuencanos go to and from places. Walking and being surrounded by all 100s of different plants and trees that were so interesting to see, also doubled for medical purposes as well. Many flowers can be used to tea, to weave items or to simply dye the fabric used to make different textiles because using chemicals is damaging to “mother earth.”
Everyone one of the aspects are made possible by the indigenous people who keep their traditions alive everyday, whether it was wearing the outfit that is significant to their community or keeping ceramic pieces that were made to eat from or just to be there. All of this shows their true culture and beauty as a whole here in Ecuador. I can honestly say that I’ve truly experienced a lot with my time here in this beautiful country and I am going to be very sad saying goodbye and returning to the states.
