Ecuador te llevo dentro de mi corazon...

I'm back in the old you ess of ay today. It was with a heavy heart that I boarded my American Airlines flight yesterday morning. Ecuador, Quito, the house of the Oñas-- that has been my home for the past month and a half. I was sort of glad that the power was out that morning because then no one could see me crying.
As someone who has moved around thirteen times-- I have come to know what sort of finality is entailed with leaving a place-- and even moreso in this case because for the medical students, this is our last vacation - period -. The best we can do is hold onto the memories and pictures in our head and the things that remind us of the people and places we've seen.

Some of the things I will always remember-- Sebastian and Andrea, the two little monsters/angels of the house who were always willing to hug you and then blame you for making them cry, watching the World Cup with all the project members—when PELIGRO! means take a swig from your Pilsener, late-night futbol on the canchas in the park outside our house, granadillas—the amazing break-it-over-your-head fruit that looks like alien guts but tastes like a million dollars, white water rafting in the jungle, making chocolate, climbing Guagua Pichincha, long bus rides with all the project kids, Choo choo gua (or however you spell it—it’s a fantastic song), days when we DIDN’T eat rice, riding horses in the Galapagos, smooshing faces into cakes on birthdays, dancing, late night Scrubs episodes, movies dubbed in Spanish, Fausto Vinicio, Ariel, and the internet guy, returning Pilsener bottles at 8am to the nutty lady in the corner store, eating lemon-flavored ants, Pinguino ice cream for 60 cents, giant turtles, BOB ESPONJA, late night medicine-counting, the long line of people every day at the clinic at 8:30 am, little kid hugs, Samy and Jordy, COSQUILLAS, farmacia drawings... I suppose this is one of those lists that only makes sense if you were there and can go on forever...so I think I’ll end it.

I hope I can go back one day but it’s always a frightening aspect to go back and know that it will never be the same as when you left it—and never will be again—but that is not always necessarily a bad thing.

To any and all who might ever be even minutely interested in joining the Quito Project—DO IT—this has been the best summer I have ever had –period-.

Mucho tiempo, mucho estudio, muchos abrazos y besos a todos,
Alex