Day 4: July 11, 2016

For Day 4 of our dialogue we began the day with a group discussion and reflection. We discussed the pros and cons of our trip so far and we came to a mutual agreement that this group is pretty great! (Love you all!) After our discussion, we began our first editing workshop, which seemed to be a bit of struggle for some of us. The looks Myles and I exchanged reassured me that I was not the only one who was pretty lost. Thankfully we have some awesome classmates who were more than willing to help! (Shout out to Michael and Amber for saving me today. Y’all are the best!)   

From lunch, Ana, Michael, Dani, and I decided to find our way to FLACSO ourselves. It was a great opportunity to practice our broken Spanish, which we haven’t used since high school, when asking for directions. We got A LOT of practice considering we had to stop every other block, because we had either forgotten the directions we were just given or couldn’t piece together enough words to figure out where we were being directed. We eventually made it. (On time too!) It was quite the adventure!

During our time at FLASCO, we had the opportunity to listen maría belen moncayo talk about the New Media Archives of Ecuador. If you feel like checking out her site again, here is the link! (www.aanmecuador.com) At the end of the presentation, we watched a compilation of videos from the archive. The videos were extremely thought provoking. My personal favorite was “The Bullfighter.”

For the rest of the day we were given free time. As most of us were about to walk home, Juan stopped us and offered to walk with us. He ended up bringing us to one of the most beautiful viewpoints of Quito! The view was well worth the insane hill that we had to eventually climb back up. The altitude here is no joke and small walks make me feel like I have the stamina of an 80 year old.

I can’t wait to see what tomorrow holds! I am looking forward to having some more free time to shoot and explore Quito! 

J.D. and Amy working on their first video edits.

A clip from “The Bullfighter.”

Day view of Quito from Juan’s viewpoint.

Night view of Quito from Juan’s viewpoint.