It has been a while, and I’m sorry if I haven’t updated, but it was a busy weekend!

On Saturday, I spent the morning in Old Town and returned to my host family’s home for lunch. Then later I went to Mariscal, the tourist district, and made it just in time to the Internet café Papaya.net for the rain to kick in. It was nice just relaxing, ordering a drink and talking to people online.

Today was more exciting, as four other students and I went to the Mitad del Mundo! It was a lot of fun. I bought some postcards to try to send home, to my grandparents in Canada, and to my boyfriend stationed in South Korea. Mitad del Mundo’s stores were more pricey than some I have seen around, so when I visit Otavalo I plan to get more souvenirs. The postcards were very nice, though; they came in a 10 for $1 pack so I was sold on the bargain! It was also fun going with people I had never met and who had traveled far and wide in their lifetimes, from Lisbon to Tanzania to Greece to many other places! The stories shared were really interesting.

The internship is going well at the Catholic university here in Quito. The students are very nice and have a lot of knowledge about human rights in Ecuador. My internship is more geared towards human rights rather than women’s rights, but this allows me to see a wide range of cases I did not expect to be related to human rights. I believe in Ecuador the definition of human rights is broader than in the United States, and the younger generations being more progressive help to bring about more awareness than past generations. It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming weeks I am here.

That’s all for now! I will update again soon.

-Megan