Ecuador Student Blog

David T., Age 17

Open Meadow

I live in Portland Oregon as of right now. Most of my Family members live in other places in the United States. I really don’t see them as much anymore. When I was little I have seen them. But as I got older they have moved to other places. They really haven’t seen me grow up. I have a large family and half of them I never see. My neighborhood that I live in, I get to see some of my family when I and my parents have family reunions. Myself as I see it, if they aren’t their for me at first why be their now.

 

Challenges that I have is big opportunities for me to complete. Some of those challenges are trying to see my family that I haven’t seen for over the past years. Also for the Pangaea project of going to Ecuador is even a great challenge for me. Because I know that it will be stressful.

Well I don’t have any experiences, but as a student leader at out-door school. But as we go to a different country, I can become a better leader to my friends and help them when needed.

As of last year when the other Pangaea group came and spoke to us about their wonderful trip to Ecuador. It made me think. I was telling myself that I should try to go. During lunch at school and even in class, I was asking some of the students that went and what their experience was like in another country. As they told me, I took some notes to help me with what I’m trying to do. I was really committed to go! So after the process of doing research, I finally got a hold of the Pangaea staff members and got forms to fill out, to see if I qualify to go to Ecuador. When I got a phone-call from Pangaea, they told me I was accepted. That made me so happy and brought myself in a lifetime situation of going to Ecuador.

To be creative in away of being a good leader when leading my team members. Myself I know how things can be through out the time when staying with a group of twelve students. But I can do a lot for myself to be on top of things and knowing what’s coming at me. This program will help me out a lot. After going on the trip, I want to have strong leadership skills to take with me to where ever else I travel too. Also learning about how they live different from us. Knowing this kind of stuff will help me be a better person and stronger leader. And as my team members, I just hope they get the same as me. More leaders we have today will be better off then having none at all. So I will pull my team members into a situation where they need to be listening so that they become a strong leader as well.

Well some of my concerns really know where I'm staying, with who, and is it safe. These are what I'm really concerned about, “anything can happen”. What if something does? Then what? Knowing how you feel around the family’s we are staying with in Ecuador, will restrain our emotional feelings that are stuck inside of me and my team members. Also how do we know were going to be safe when we don’t know them. So myself I think this is something to look over when we are in Ecuador.

So let’s go, have fun, and bring leadership skills back to AMERICA.

Sarah M., Age 18

Open Meadow

I come from a family of four: my mom, sister and brother. My dad was never really part of my life as I was growing up. At the age of 11 months I was taken from my mom due to her drug addiction and domestic violence. Instead of being placed in foster care my grandma taken my sister and I until my mom could get clean. My brother lived with my dads’ mom. When she did, until I was the age of 4 my sister, brother and myself had gone to live with my mom. Growing up near Peninsula Park, on Rosa parks way which to me will always be known as Portland Blvd.

My grandpa would always take me there and hit tennis balls across the court of practice on the wall that was removed some odd years ago. Or I would play on the enormous play structure is located near the pool, Play in the fountain and walk thought the maze of roses, Smelling their sweet fragrance, hearing all the chatter and laughter’s throughout the park, the wind blowing cool breezes on hot summer days.

The challenge that I still fight and try conquer is being born with hearing loss and due to that I have impaired speech because of the hearing loss I have. Over the years I have matured and grew learning to cope and accept that this is me, and not to care what people say or what they say about you importantly. I want it to make me stronger and more individualized, in a way? I have undertaken many experiences some good some bad some I regretted, I learn and grow and sometimes I don’t. But, will eventually. A mistake made more then once is not an regret it a learning opportunity. But many has taught me where I hope and will stand in life one day.

I believe it was the third team that traveled abroad to Ecuador that at first sparked my interest, but I didn’t go. My friend, Kelsi Mill, He went and told me about all the amazing and devastating things that he experienced. I fell in love. I wanted to help these people have a more broadened horizon about who they are and how they live, most importantly to be apart of that and help them bring change. And here I am getting ready for the most important trip in my life and I can’t wait. I’m stoked.

The things that I hope for, for myself are… Self confidences, willpower, open mindedness, communication, problem solving and self-esteem. I ant to see myself grow as a leader and bring positive changes to me and my community, and hopefully others that I come across, for the others I would pretty much want the same thing, definitely teamwork and communication and optimism.

Nkechi I., Age 17

POIC

My name is Nkechukwuyelu Cherice Izuchukwu. Nkechukwuyelu means “God has given us a gift” in Igbo. My father is Nigerian; however, he was born in London, England. His father (my grandfather) was a judge and his mother (my grandmother) was a businesswomen. My father grew up in a village outside of Lagos, Nigeria on a compound with a large house and servants. My mother is African American. She is the daughter of and educator and a businessman. My grandmother’s family ties to Oregon go back to the late 1800’s. I have deep roots in Nigeria and in Oregon.

I have grown up knowing that I have two older sisters and no brothers. However, when I turned 14, I found out that I have another sister and two brothers These are my father’s children. That was quite a shock and a change.

While I didn’t know my great grandfather well, my grandmother (my mother’s mother) told me about how her father always told her that he was from Pangaea. My grandmother says that she never really knew about Pangaea until I went Sunnyside Environmental School where we had a Pangaea festival each year. She says that she thinks that my great grandfather said that he was from Pangaea because people always asked him why he had red hair and why his skin was the color of a copper penny. Grandma thinks that was my great grandfather’s way of saying, he was a member of the human family.

Anyway, I have a large imagination. Sometimes I wish I could stay asleep and just keep dreaming. Maybe that is because my dreams are better than the life we live in reality. I have many aspirations and people say I could accomplish things. Things are difficult because the intelligent adults in my life are very hard working and spend their time trying to put a roof over our heads, food in our bellies. Meeting out needs, providing books and things necessary to survive takes all of the time. There is no time and the system only offers a penny for their thoughts so I keep their strengths in my mind and I follow no one. Pride keeps me motivated.

Each day I wake up and I set goals by the day so that I am less likely to feel like I have failed.

I stepped up for the Pangea program after seeing a presentation at my school by some friends. I usually just sign up for almost anything but when I signed up for the Pangea program, I saw an opportunity to change my life since I never knew about what I would do after school.

Now that I am almost out of school and I know that what I want to do is to see the world. When I get out of school, I will go to Americorps for a few years and I think that with that occupation and experience in my mind, the Pangea program is a great plan to get me started. I pray that I will be able to use this program to its fullest potential without letting outside dysfunctional relations get in the way of my being at the top of everything we do.

I think Pangea offers me an opportunity and that there is nothing that can stop me from meeting my goals. Being involved with other people who are motivated and having the opportunity to experience another culture will prepare me for my future. I am excited about this great opportunity. This experience can set the foundation for the rest of my life.

Robby G., Age 17

Open Meadow

I was born September 2nd 1991 in Portland, Or. Growing up my family wasn’t very wealthy. I lived with my parents, two brothers and my sister; so the little money that we did have had to stretch pretty far. When I was seven my parents started going through some problems that eventually led to their divorce. Soon after the divorce my mother started going out with her boy-friend that she’s with now and turned to drugs to get away from her problems. On the other hand my father’s did not turn to drugs, he just became an alcoholic even worse than what he already was, which eventually led to his death.

Growing up there was a lot of gangs in my neighborhood. I was young and all the problems that were going on in my life didn’t bother me much at the time. It didn’t start impacting me until I started getting into my teens and that’s when thing started going down hill for me. I hated not having money, I wanted to look cool and have nice things and money like all the other kids.
I was in my middle teens when I started getting into trouble with my friends and hanging out with all these gang members and basically became one myself. I loved feeling like I was someone, having money to buy whatever I wanted. It felt good and it felt like that’s where I belonged. So I stuck with them for a while but eventually got tired of it and started going my own way.

When I first heard about Pangaea, all I was interested in was going to a different country. Everyone told me how fun it was and how much of a good time they had on the trip. But these few weeks Pangaea has already showed me that this program is much more than that. They show us that our community and our country need us youth’s. We’re the youths of our generation and Pangaea teaches us that were the ones that are going to change the future and peoples lives.

I really want to get more into my community and all the problems that Portland is facing today. Because before Pangaea I never cared about all the problems that the world is facing, I didn’t even care about our countries problems, not even my own community’s problems. One of the biggest things I want to help out on is homelessness, this is my top priority because after my parents divorce, my father was homeless for about nine years all the way up to his death.

Some of the biggest things I want to get out of Pangaea are; to get better leadership skills, I want to have better leadership skills because I want to be remembered when I die and not just be some guy killed in gang violence or in a drive-by. I also want to learn more about social justice because not only does the U.S need help but so does other countries, and I want to go and help these other countries because we don’t need to leave all these problems to our next generation of youths. These are just some of the things I want to get out of Pangaea, and I know by the end of the program that I’ll have most if not all these things.

Ty M., Age 17

Open Meadow

My name is Ty Maher. I am 17 years old. I come from a loving and caring family. I am the youngest girl out of 11 brothers and sisters. There are 7 girls and 4 brothers. I have a big family all around. I lived in Portland all my life and I really never plain on moving away. I have all my family that lives here with me and my mom and dad grew up here too. So did most of my brothers and sisters.

I have not had that many good experiences in my life but one of the good ones is when I went to camp. I had been going there for about 7 years now. I meant so many good people there that I still talk to mostly ever day. I did a lot of new stuff there that I would never even think of doing at home like sleeping in tepees, jumping off of the dream tree, horse back riding and even white water rafting. It was the most fun that I ever had in my life when I was there at camp and I know that I will go back to be a youth leader in two years from now.

For my challenges in my life I have so many of them but the one of the most challenge is that I have every day is my reading. I really can’t read that well. I really don’t like reading out loud but some times I just have to do it. when I do it feels like people are going to make fun of me or even laugh at me because of it but now I really don’t let it get to me as much as it did when I was little. Because I know that I just have to over come it no matter what.

For my dreams I have only two dreams. One of them is just to be happy with what ever a do in life and the other one is two work with kids. But I don’t know what I want to do with kids yet. I could be a teacher or whatever just doesn’t know yet.

For being happy is just go see the world and that’s what brought me to Pangaea and how we spend a mouth in Ecuador. I love the fact that we are going to leave are life like them milking cows or just cleaning their homes.

My hopes for my self is just get the best out of going and just trying new things and doing new thing no matter what they are and just being lucky that I get to go. There are so many kids and people that would love to go see the world or just go see Ecuador like I get to. my hopes for every one is the same as mine. I just want every one to get a long and become really good friends. I really don’t have any concerns for this trip because I know we will make the best out of everything and anything.

Adrion W., Age 18

Open Meadow CRUE

I’m going to tell you a little about myself and how I got to where I am today. It all started back when I was a wee little tike, I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon but I lived in southern California for a couple of years. Growing up I never had a good life but at the same time it could have been worse. Throughout my childhood I was brought with my mom living from paycheck to paycheck on welfare. All of our food was bought on food stamps and the only reason the rent got paid was because of that lowly welfare check. Until I was 11 we lived in a trailer park in northeast Portland where we were constantly around drug use and other sorts of crime. Which when you’re a kid is actually very scary, but at the same time made me more aware of the issues and helped me learn how to avoid them.

After the trailer park we moved to hot dry old California. I didn’t want to move but my mom’s new boyfriend talked her into it. While living in California I finished up what was left of fourth grade as well as fifth grade. After two years my family had enough of California. So we moved back to Oregon only this time we lived in Newberg instead of Portland. In Newberg I went to school all the way through middle and up to the second half of my junior year at Newberg high school. During my time at Newberg high school I didn’t think school was that important so I skipped a lot and fell behind. One day I woke and thought to myself, “What the hell am I doing with my life?” so I decided that I had enough of Newberg and moved away from home to come back to Portland.

When I got into Portland I heard from some long time family friends about a school called Open Meadow that sounded interesting to me so I thought I would give it a shot and go apply for admittance. The admissions were the day after my 17th birthday. Luckily I got accepted on my first try. I was nervous at first because I had been out of school for a couple of months now and didn’t know what it was going to be like. To my surprise it was actually a very small and welcoming school. More like a small community even.

This brings me to my next topic the Pangaea Project. Open Meadow is one of the six schools that they choose to take students from. As soon as I heard of a program that takes low income students to go abroad and learn about social justice issues I wanted on board. Luckily I was one of the four students who got accepted from my school. If it were not for Open Meadow I would not be going to Ecuador this summer in July.

We have an excellent group of students going this year and I am expecting to make some long term friends from this program as well as a sort of support system that I can turn to in my time of need. For myself I am expecting to strengthen my public speaking skills as well as my leadership skills. My biggest expectation for myself is getting my voice heard and doing my part to make a change in the world around me. I refuse to sit around and watch the world fall apart.

Mila B., Age 16

Roosevelt SEIS

My immediate family consists of five people: my parents, my two siblings, and myself. And ever since I was little, my family was very close. Everything going on in our lives was shared; every emotion that we encountered was felt among the rest. And at first, a lot of my life was based on the actions of my sister. Being the oldest, Kayla set the tone for the rest of the children. If she was interested in one thing, it was reasonable to assume that I would be too. I faced expectations either derived from how Kayla acted in school, or her life outside of it. My parents also both came from hard backgrounds. As a child, they merely wanted what was best for me. And I faced a lot of restrictions because of that too, because staying home meant staying safe. But when I started getting older, my own identity began to form. And throughout the years, I started to twist and bend and kick my way out of the grasps of both. My interests started evolving and my mind started opening.

And I am, to say the least, the most rebellious child in this family. But I realized how could I make it in the world if I didn’t live in it? And I realized along the way that my family members are pretty set in their ways. They know what they are comfortable with and prefer to engulf themselves in their routines. And I appreciate stability, but I am still learning. I am still creating myself and since, I’ve been looking for programs to help me along the way.

And then, once I begun high school, I was introduced to one. Because I was only a freshman when I first heard about the Pangaea Project I couldn’t apply, but it still absolutely amazed me. So as I listened to Deb speak and watched the video she brought in with her, I planned to take advantage of this opportunity the following year. I was very interested from the very beginning and kept that desire in the back of my mind. Then sophomore year began. The opportunity presented itself again. It took a while but I got my name on the list of interested students and met Deb again. I planned my life around the idea of getting into the Pangaea Project and applied for the program. Some time after I got interviewed, some time I got accepted. I felt an amazing emotion of shock and happiness! I soon discovered I was the youngest of the twelve students traveling to Ecuador this year and the only participant from my school. But it didn’t deter me. This was what I wanted.

My hope for the program, personally, is to gain some perspective. Others around me are always saying how they want to make the world a better place and I want to do that too, in my own way. But how can I change the world if I don’t understand its problems? I want to become better from this program. I want to take with me all it wants to give me.

My hope the group that I’ll be traveling with in Ecuador is that we are able to build partnerships between us that last a lifetime. I feel it’s always been easy for me to think fast, to understand concepts, which is why I’m exceptional in school. But like the quote says, it’s lonely at the top. I believe though it’s good to succeed, it’s even better to bring people up with you. I change this year, because of this experience, I want that experience to be shared with all twelve of the members of this Ecuador team.

But my concern is that I will miss something important. That I will walk away not recognizing what the Pangaea Project was trying all along to teach me. And many things come into play of this concern, especially the fact that I’m young. I feel that makes me at somewhat of a disadvantage sometimes. But I’m determined to focus on the Pangaea Project and what’s at hand regardless.