Preparation

Alright the details:

I leave Windhoek for Ecuador on February 3rd - less than 2 weeks! It’s a crazy series of flights, Windhoek to Johannesburg to Atlanta to Miami to Ecuador with an overnight or two in between, but I arrive finally around lunch time in Quito, the capital city. …it has occurred to me that I am making the assumption that Ecuadorians a) eat lunch at 11:40ish and b) eat lunch in general.

If you wish to send me mail, this is my mailing address for the duration of my program (from February 5 to May 20).

Elsita Kiekebusch
c/o Ana de Alvear
Experimento de Convivencia Internacional
Hernando de La Cruz N31-37 y Mariana de Jesus
Quito, Ecuador

As far as I can tell, only people with blogs can post comments on the page but feel free to write me an email at the usual account and also to forward the link to friends.
Anyways, I’m on the last leg of my vacation and getting pretty excited and nervous at the same time. I’ve been reading up on Ecuador, but the program’s mandatory reading has been mostly scientific literature about tropical rainforest biodiversity and the Galapagos Islands. So far I have resolved not to make any assumptions about Ecuadorians before I get there and also not to be eaten by an over-defensive mother caiman guarding her brood during the dry season.

Welcome to my Blog

Hello there. Please feel free to keep reading. This is my first post ever. I'm sitting at a friend's desk, writing from Gobabeb Training and Research Centre, Namibia. Its located in the Namib Desert, where much scientific research has been conducted, specifially about the unique arid environment found here. I interned at Gobabeb last summer break (winter for those of us in the southern hemisphere) and am currently visiting for a week. For those of you who don't know me, I attend a small liberal-arts college situated near Philadelphia USA, though I otherwise live in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, a country on the west coast of southern Africa. More importantly, I am about to embark on a semester-long study abroad experience in Ecuador, with the School for International Training. Being a biology major and particularly interested in the environment and so-called "Big Bio", I chose SIT's conservation and ecology program, complete with homestay in Quito, spanish class, independent study project and field excursions to the Galapagos Islands and the Amazon, among others.
This blog was created with a few simple goals. Mainly, I plan to document my upcoming trip to South America, and in so doing, make this record of events, thoughts, observations, feelings, worries, sensations and so forth, accessible to my friends and family while I am taveling. Call it a journal if you like, later I will certainly use it to remember and think about all that happened. Any readers are welcome, so if you're just here for the ride, enjoy it.
Upcoming posts will include final thoughts before take-off and hopefully some comments on how readers can most conveniently respond to my posts, if they wish to do so.