Home base by Ana de Freitas Boe

After two weeks of travel, first, to the cloud rainforest in the Intag, second, to a research station in the Amazon, the class has settled down to intensive language studies in Cuenca. The students are feverishly writing about their experiences with travel and globalization. Feel free to follow their individual blogs. Just click on the links to the right. Once they've submitted their first round of blogs, I'll digest their work on this page. Enjoy!

On extreme sports by Ana de Freitas Boe

My first morning in Quito last May, fighting the fatigue of my first day at high altitude, I was approached by a group of teenagers in the Plaza de la Independencia, who asked if I would be willing to be interviewed in English for their school project. I agreed. (I’m an English professor. How could I say no?) The young woman, no more than fifteen, held her hand-written questions up; her boyfriend steadied his cell phone camera at me: the interview began. “Why are you visiting Ecuador,” she began tentatively. “Because it is home to ecological treasures: the avenue of the volcanoes, the Galápagos, the Intag,” I replied gesturing at the mountains in the distance. They nodded. This is the answer that they expected. Emboldened, the young woman fired off the rest of her questions: “Where are you from?” “What is your profession?” “Are you married?” “Do you have children?” The boy’s cell phone recording my halting answers as I strained to speak English—not the complex sentences in my head—but the more simple English that will help them get an “A” on their assignment. Simple English—like the Spanish that I used to get a taxi to drive me to the hotel the night before or the Spanish that I used to order huevos revueltos for breakfast that morning. Everything was going swimmingly until they asked me a question that I did not understand. “No entiendo,” I squinted into the camera. The guide giving me a city tour came over to translate. They repeated the question in English to him. He scratched his head. What were they saying? Finally, they broke down and repeated it in Spanish. He laughed. “They want to know your favorite extreme sport?” I look up at the piercing blue sky. The Andes in the distance. The white-washed Presidential Palace. I reply, “Walking across the street in Quito is my favorite extreme sport.” The teenagers laugh. For a moment, I am not just a tourist saying standard tourist things. I grin. They smile. Thanking me, they turned to approach another tourist while my guide and I walked down the Plaza Grande.

How to create your own blog...

1. Sign up for a gmail account at www.google.com. If you already have a gmail account, you can use it to create your blog.
2. Go to www.blogger.com and sign up for your own blog account.
3. Play with templates. The software is intuitive. The more that you use it, the easier it will be.
4. Email Dr. Boe (aboe at bw dot edu) the web address for your blog.
5. Sign up to be a "Follower" of the class blog: http://seminarinecuador.blogspot.com/. The class blog will aggregate each student's best blog posts.

What good blogs do...

Coca-Cola in Baños

Good blogs are...

1. Visually engaging.
2. Creative.
3. Well written.
4. Concise but well developed. (Not too short but not too long.) (The general consensus is around 250-500 words is a good blog length.)
5. Have a point.

Good blogs are not...

1. Diary entries--they are public art forms.
2. Poorly proofread. While your style can be informal--in the same way that speech is informal--strive for clarity. You can only effectively break the rules of grammar and punctuation when you know what the rules are.

For ENG 263IE Globalization and Ecuador, your blog must...

1. Do the things that good blogs do (see above), but also...
2. Engage the themes of the course: globalization and the experience of travel.