JHHS Spanish class returns from 10 days in Ecuador

Ask a lot of people where Quito, the capital city of Ecuador, is lo­cated, and they might shrug and say they’re not sure how you’d get to either the city or the country.

But there’s a group of 10 Jack­son Heights High School students who can tell you where both are — they visited the South American nation and a handful of its cities, including Quito, recently.

The students recently took a nine-day trip to Ecuador as the most recent in a series of trips put together by JHHS Spanish teacher Kelly White to “give these kids some exposure to the Spanish lan­guage outside the classroom.” But in the end, it’s also an opportunity for the students to find out what life is like outside the circle they know.

“More than anything, it gives them some experience in the world outside of Jackson County, which is new to most of those kids,” White said. “They not only develop an appreciation for what’s out in the world, but when they come home, they’ve developed a greater appreciation of what they have here and they’re less likely to take things for granted that they always have.”

For the class’ fourth trip — the third that he said he was able to take part in — White “kind of let the students decide” where they wanted to go. Groups of kids in the class had not yet been to South America — they’d gone to northern Spain on the last trip in 2013 — so options were explored for a trip way down South.

“A couple of different itineraries were explored,” White said. “We looked at Peru and Argentina, but Ecuador seemed to us the most rea­sonably priced, and about the right length of time.”

The students — including Jacob Andrews, Kay Andrews, Emily Bowhay, Daquari Hardman, Jessica Keehn, Logan Rethman, Payton Thomas, Jordan Wells, Logan Wells and Bailey Williams — left June 17 with White and his wife, JHHS librarian Jessica Karns, fly­ing out of Kansas City. Unfortu­nately, a weather delay on the way to Dallas meant they would be staying that night in Miama, Fla., rather than going straight on to Quito, where they landed the next day.

At that point, they also arrived too late for any of the morning tours of Quito, so they and a group of about 40 students from Valley Catholic High School in Beaverton, Ore. — participating with Heights in the Ecuadoran tour organized by Education First Tours of Denver — got to know each other and spent time in downtown Quito, near their hotel.

The third day began with a driv­ing tour of Quito, followed by a trip to the Cotopaxi region of the Andes Mountains for some hiking at a nature preserve. In the latter case, White said that not many on the tour were prepared for the climate shock they experienced.

“It was quite cold!” he said. “We were underpacked. We were kind of expecting South America to be all warm, but we’re at 14,000 feet, and it was chilly.”

After an evening in San Andres, the group visited the Calpi Market, a local livestock sale that White said was unlike any livestock sale he or the kids in his group had ever witnessed.

“It was interesting, but it was very chaotic,” he said. “It seemed disorganized, compared with the Holton livestock sales, but people seemed to know what they were doing.”

The group then headed for Ecua­dor’s most populous city, Guayaquil, stopping on the way at Palacio Real, a self-sustaining, in­digenous community in the Andes that White said “relies on livestock production, agriculture and using the things from the mountains” to survive. There, he said students hiked and discussed native plant species and animals, including llama.

The latter, he said, served as the group’s lunch that day.

“It’s similar to lamb or goat,” White said of the afternoon meal.

But it wasn’t the most exotic or strange thing that members of the group tried to consume. Here in the States, for example, most kids keep Guinea pigs as pets, but in Ecuador, it’s a delicacy — and White and some of the kids tried that, too.

“It’s unlike anything I’d ever tasted before,” he said of his first taste of Guinea pig. “It’s kind of musky and sweet.”

Such experiences, he said, are the driving force behind these tours.

“The kids were really adventur­ous, for the most part, and willing to try new things, and that’s the main reason we go,” White said. “A lot of these students haven’t been outside the States before, and some had never been on a plane before. But by the fourth day, they’ve gotten their feet wet and they’re willing to try new things.”

In Guayaquil, there’s another sense of climate shock — the city’s on the Pacific coast, and “the weather is suddenly hot and hu­mid,” White said. But it was worth it to visit some of the city’s high points, including the Malecon 2000, a boardwalk development that’s a hit with shoppers, and the Parque Seminario, famous for its free-roaming iguanas of various shapes and sizes.

On previous trips, one of the stu­dents’ favorite destinations has al­ways been the beach, and on the sixth day of the tour, it was time for a few hours at Machalilla National Park. That evening, they drove down to Puerto Lopez, a fishing village where the tour group would spend the remaining evenings of the tour.

The seventh day saw the group visiting Isla de Plata, which White described as “a poor man’s Gala­pagos.” Students were able see various species of exotic animals in their native habitat, including “humpback whales and several species of lizard,” then went snor­keling after lunch.

“A lot of the kids would say that was their favorite day,” White said.

The students’ eighth day of the trip and their final full day in Ecua­dor included a visit to the commu­nity of Dos Mangas, a community of artisans and craftspeople who gave the kids a tour of their work­shops. The community is most fa­mous for its citizens’ work with the tagua nut, which is used in the same manner as wood, carved up and made to look like tiny ivory sculptures.

Students also got a short tour of the Pacific coastal rainforest before a “farewell dinner” with the Ore­gon contingent, and the ninth day of the trip involved students getting up at 4 a.m. to head back to the air­port in Quito for the long flight back to Kansas City on June 25. But even with this trip just in the books, White is already looking ahead to the next one — the class’ fifth.

“We’re looking at going on an­other trip in two years, probably to northern Spain,” he said. “We were in southern Spain two years ago, and that was my favorite of all the trips we’ve taken.”

The two-year window between trips means that students have enough time to raise their own funds for each trip, and White said for this particular trip, students had to raise about $3,000 each. But with the EF tour group, that’s an all-inclusive fee, including hotels, transportation and meals — every­thing but the souvenirs.

“It’s a pretty major time com­mitment — not only during the school year with fund-raising ac­tivities, but also in the summer, when the kids are busy,” White said. “But it’s an opportunity for them to see something new, and they love it.”