Start from one, start from none

I should think that there are a number (likely a large one) of journals, or "blogs" if you must, out there in which the writer is embarking on a "life-changing" travel experience and they decide to share the details of just how much that experience changes them. One thing I have found from previous such travels is that, after a while, people simply get tired of hearing about your amazing life altering experiences; they weren't there, they didn't do what you did, life continued while you were gone and you need to get over it and catch back up to pace with them. After I spent so much time in Argentina, returning to the states was like being a foreigner in my own country, I lost many friends, made many drastic changes and life was typically hard for the following years. Fortunately, I kept some of the best people close and they're still around to see me leave yet again. 
With the entries that I plan to write here, I hope to do my best to engage you, the reader. I hope not to bore you with self-centered details about me and my reactions, but rather relay my encounters, dilemmas, incidents, challenges, successes and failures to bring you closer to what I am doing. This was something I completely failed to do on previous trips. By reading this, I hope you will feel like you're right alongside me, as if I never left and we never fell out. Maybe if I can do that, you'll still be around to care and be a curious but informed listener when I get back, whenever I get back.

Many of you know that I am leaving for Ecuador on the 23rd of this month, August, which is less than a week away. The suitcases have yet to be packed, yet I'm still feeling more and more anxious about those threatening loose ends and that unfinished business that lingers, things left unsaid and undone, but it will always be like that and I will never have all of the words, time or strength to do or say everything I would like to. 

I will be going, for the first time, to the Ecuadorian Amazon, to an Eco-Reserve and Technical High School known as Yachana Foundation (yachana.com) to do my best to teach as a coordinator of Language Arts and the Humanities. This is something that I feel comfortable with, I know I have the necessary experience to do it, but I'm am, none the less, nervous and not knowing exactly what to expect. It will have to be, in many ways, a sink or swim process and God knows I'm used to that.  

My hope is that this new part of my life will be something that fulfills me in a way that I really need and, on a less selfish note, I hope that I can do something important and significant for the students and people of Yachana and the Amazon. As Guevara said:  

Me siento tan patriota de Latinoamérica, de cualquier país de Latinoamérica, como el que más y, en el momento en que fuera necesario, estaría dispuesto a entregar mi vida por la liberación de cualquiera de los países de Latinoamérica, sin pedirle nada a nadie, sin exigir nada, sin explotar a nadie. (I feel such a patriotism for Latin America, for any country in Latin America, that in the moment it might be necessary, I would be ready to yield my life for the liberation of any Latin American nation, without asking anybody anything, without demanding anything, without exploiting anyone.)

I could only hope to be so selfless.  

So, if you would like to know a little bit more about Yachana and the cause, please do check out the website and watch the video below. 

Hasta pronto queridos amigos, talk to you soon dear friends,

Chris