BU Abroad: Ecuador Immersion

Quality time in Quito

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In the video above, Bailey Acevedo (CAS’10) talks about how she became steeped in the people, language, and culture of Ecuador.

“I spoke Spanish before I went, but being fully immersed in the language and the culture is incomparable,” says Bailey Acevedo.

Acevedo (CAS’10) spent last spring in the Quito Language and Liberal Arts Program taking courses and living with a host family in Ecuador’s capital. Her experience went far beyond the typical semester abroad, deepening into an all-encompassing immersion. She took liberal arts classes, taught at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, hung with Ecuadorian friends on the weekends, tutored English to native Kichwa speakers, and forged a special bond with her host family.

“I think that the language reinforcement will have the most lasting effect,” she says. “I never would have been able to learn that much out of a textbook. I also made a lifelong friendship with my host sister, Daniela, and I’ll always keep in touch with my host family. I loved them!”

Acevedo enjoyed her time in Quito so much, she’s continuing her studies there this semester — after side trips to Paris, Amsterdam, London, Rome, Sicily, Barcelona, and Machu Picchu.

Additional editing by Anna Gelb.

Devin Hahn can be reached at dhahn@bu.edu.

 

Next week, another foreign visit. Read more at BU Abroad.

Have a study abroad story to share? Let us know in the comments below.

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BU Abroad: Ecuador Immersion

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  • Devin Hahn

    Senior Video Producer

    Devin Hahn

    Devin Hahn creates video content for BU Today, Bostonia online, and The Brink. He is a producer, a cameraman, an editor, and, under duress, a writer. Profile

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There are 2 comments on BU Abroad: Ecuador Immersion

  1. To enchance the experiences you had and others in the future you may find information regarding safety and security in Ecuador at: http://www.ecuadortraveladvisory.com / I have been a student of Ecuador for thirty years and continued to be amazed at the deepness of the culture and how few outsiders get a glimpse of the country. I once read that visiting a country is sometimes like looking at an iceberg. You see the the top ten percent through buildings, food, ect. But, you miss the underlying aspects of the culture. I worked on this subject for so long that I wrote the book “Culture Shock! Ecuador” which is now in it’s third edition. I tried to strip away the layers so the outsider could understand the culture better and increase the learning curve which has taken me three decades and still I am learning.

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