I loved my experience at Andean Global Studies Program. For awhile my university (The Ohio State University) was lucky enough to use this program as a way for study abroad students to achieve Spanish language credits while being immersed in daily classes, culture and adventure. Everyday we would have classes either in the morning or the afternoon for just like 4 hours at a time and then were free to explore the beautiful city of Quito. They also had weekend trips planned for us to visit all over Ecuador like the cloud forest of Mindo, Las Galapagos Islands, the Amazon Rainforest and of course South America's largest open air market in Otavalo. This program changed my life so much that I moved back to Ecuador when I graduated. It balanced the practicality of learning Spanish and making sure that we understood the local culture enough to feel like we were at home.
What would you improve about this program?
The only thing that could have been improved was our Andean Culture class. In this class we were taught a lot about the one of local indigenous people's rituals and culture. It could have been a really practical and helpful class since we met Andean people literally everyday in the streets. However, our teacher was really nice-but a little disorganized so it made that class a little hard to learn from.
