Getting Ready for Ecuador

It's been fun to reread posts from previous years at the field school. Tomorrow morning we leave for the fourth year of the Field School in Sustainable Development and Health in Ecuador. John Brett and I will be the faculty this year working as a team with twelve dedicated and enthusiastic students with majors or graduate study in anthropology, biology, international studies, public health, health and behavioral sciences, and business administration.

This year the agriculture group will focus on assessing the status and functioning of the various systems created as part of sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry at the colegio and lodge. The health group will focus on documenting the health transition in the region by looking at changes in health care delivery and what services people access and changes in family composition such as family size and age of marriage and childbearing.

Once again, as most years, it is snowing here in Denver and quite cold. The contrast between winter in a dry, high plains ecosystem in Denver and perpetual summer in a tropical rainforest ecosystem in Ecuador makes the journey all the more exciting.

More to come as we enter the field . . . .