I have also been exploring Quito and travelling a lot on the weekends, Ecuador is beautiful!

La Basilica, a huge Roman Catholic Church in the historic center of Quito. It’s construction was technically never completed and some people say that if it were to be completed it would be the end of the world.

One of many Quito signs that I have taken pictures with.

Futbol!! We went to a soccer game between the Quito team and the Guayaquil team. It was crazy! I have never seen so many police officers in my life there were upwards of 400 inside the stadium, about half of them wearing full riot gear, and probably another few hundred outside. They even had a tank there! Our friend was wearing the Guayaquil jersey and he had to take it off before entering the stadium so as to not start fights. It was crazy but really fun and really cool!

Laguna Cuicocha (or lake of the guinea pigs in Quechua, named because the island in the middle looks like a guinea pig) This lake is a caldera of an active volcano. You can see gas bubbles rising in the water from volcanic emissions.

View of el Panecillo and the historic center from La Basilica

El Santuario de las Cascadas in Mindo, a small town in the cloud forest. We did a hike with 7 different waterfalls all of which you could swim in!

The Panecillo, a huge statue of the Virgin Mary overlooking the city. The highest nativity in the world!

Laguna Quilotoa, a volcanic crater now filled with water at about 12,000 feet. The locals say that it has no bottom, we hiked to the bottom which was fine but coming back up was one of the hardest hikes of my life.

I’ve been really bad about posting, kind of because I’ve been busy but mostly because I’m just lazy. These past 7 weeks have gone by in a blur. It’s hard to believe I only have 2 weeks left.

In these past few weeks I’ve seen a lot of amazing places in Ecuador and met lots of really cool people that also love to talk about birth control. I know so much about all the different kinds of birth control that I could probably talk for hours about it and I’ve gotten really good at making happy  condoms out of foam paper with fun messages! My favorite one is “tener sexo sin usar condon es magico, aparece un bebe y desaparece el papa” or “having sex without a condom is magical, a baby appears and the father disappears.”

While I have definitely learned a lot, this program has been REALLY different from my expectations. I had to spend a lot of time in Spanish classes that weren’t super helpful and made me lose time at Cemoplaf. I also spend a significant part of each day sitting around waiting and doing nothing. It’s also hard because June and July are the months where most kids are about to get out of school so they’re taking exams and the teachers are busy so it’s harder to visit the schools and do workshops. But we have gone to a few schools. I also had to switch host families and internship sites because of this other CFHI program so that was kind of stressful as I had to start all over again 5 weeks into my program.

An evangelical school where we discussed adolescent pregnancy. We weren’t allowed to talk about contraceptives as the students have to make a promise that they won’t have sex until marriage. It was interesting to compare this school with the other non-religious schools and I was impressed that they still let us talk about teen pregnancy despite how conservative the school is.

The “Colegio Militar,” which used to be only for sons of military personnel but is now a public school. They are considered to be a problem school as students start sexual relations at a very young age without knowing how to protect themselves. Here we talked about different contraceptives and especially how to correctly use a condom.

We had a “mesa informativa” where we sold homemade penis-shaped chocolates and condoms and talked about Cemoplaf’s services with people on the street.

The girls in the picture are “promotores” of Cemoplaf which means they go to Cemoplaf once a week to be trained on sexual and reproductive health. They are then able to talk to their friends and family about those topics and can bring free condoms to their friends when they need them.

All of the birth control methods Cemoplaf offers! When we go to school we talk about all of them and explain the pros and cons of each one to the students.

Educational materials. I’ve gotten really really good at cutting out letters from foam paper.

I arrived in Quito about a week and a half ago! I’m living with a very sweet host mom and three other girls doing different programs here. Quito is about 9000 feet above sea level so adjusting to the altitude has been interesting. During my first few days doing normal things like making my bed or walking up a flight of stairs would leave me out of breath and walking up hills is a nightmare but I’m adjusting and when I get home I’m going to be in great shape! It’s been very rainy and cold every day but yesterday I finally saw the sun for about three hours before a torrential downpour started. There was so much that I was stuck on a bus for over an hour. It was rush hour and the bus was completely full and it started to get so hot and uncomfortable that people started yelling at the bus driver to just let us jump out onto the street. We ended up taking a huge detour to the Centro Historico. When they finally let us off the bus it was time to go home for dinner. We didn’t want to get back on another bus so we walked four miles in the rain to get back home, but it felt much better than being on a cramped, sweaty bus!

I started my internship last Wednesday at CEMOPLAF. It’s been really interesting so far. CEMOPLAF has a lot of different services. They provide maternal healthcare, gynecological check-ups, contraceptives, and much much more. I’m doing my internship with CEMOPLAF Adolescente, which primarily focuses on outreach and education for youth in Quito and other provinces of Ecuador. On Wednesday’s a group of young people come to train as promoters of CEMOPLAF. Each week they learn about new topics like sexuality, adolescent pregnancy, contraceptives, STIS, etc. The idea is that they will be able to teach their friends about these topics as young people are often more inclined to listen to their peers than to adults. On other days of the week we go to schools to give talks and prepare informational materials to pass out at fairs and other events. It’s already very clear to me how important the work CEMOPLAF does. 1 in 4 pregnancies in Ecuador is an adolescent pregnancies. There are also many myths here regarding sex and contraceptives. For example many people think that if you carry condoms with you or use other forms of contraception that you’ll be tempted to have sex. So, a lot of young people don’t use contraceptives or buy condoms, but they end up becoming sexually active anyways. Additionally, most schools don’t have any sort of sex ed and many young people are just told to be abstinent. These factors all illustrate why Ecuador has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Latin America. I’m excited to keep working with CEMOPLAF this summer and learn more about what they do and get to know more people that are involved!

Aside from working at CEMOPLAF, I have also been taking Spanish classes and exploring Quito. I’ve been finding lots of cool coffee shops and restaurants. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day so you can go to a restaurant and an almuerzo, which is a three course meal; soup, the main dish, and dessert, along with a fresh natural juice, usually just for $2-3! Today I went to the Botanical Gardens which was really cool! Ecuador is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world; they have over 4000 species of orchids. They also had a bonsai exhibit which was really amazing. One of the trees was 80 years old! I’m really happy I get to spend two more months in this beautiful city!