CAMINOS PRINCETON: Fourteen middle school students and two adult leaders, Alessandra Clemens-Lores (left) and Queta Alban (in Caminos Princeton tee shirts in front row center), gathered in Princeton Sunday before heading off to Quito, Ecuador for a 10-day immersion experience with the language, culture and people of the country.

By Donald Gilpin

Early last fall Alessandra Clemens-Lores, an architect, born and raised in Peru, who has worked for the past seven years as an aide in the dual language immersion (DLI) program at Community Park Elementary School (CP), received a phone call from a friend, the mother of a CP student Clemens had taught many years before.

The woman was sad that her eighth grade son missed participating in DLI and was finding nothing exciting to look forward to in the coming school year.

“I said, ‘Oh my god! I always told my babies that I was going to take them to Peru’,” Clemens recalled. “I like to call them my babies because they were with me for three years in early elementary. And I didn’t want to disappoint them, so that’s when I came to Queta and said ‘We need to do something.’” Queta Alban, a marketing and business professional born and raised in Ecuador who has been a DLI aide and Clemens’ colleague at CP for the past six years, agreed.

The two educators geared up rapidly, and their efforts came to fruition last Sunday, July 16, as they embarked — not for Peru, but for Quito, Ecuador, with a group of 14 Princeton middle school students on their carefully planned 10-day Caminos Princeton cultural travel program.

“The main idea of our program is that children be immersed in the culture and experience first-hand, the customs, language, and people of the host country,” they wrote in an email. “We believe there is nothing more exciting, authentic, and fun for children than to learn a foreign culture by having the opportunity to be a part of it.”

Clemens added, “We’re very passionate about our culture and what we’re doing. We love what we are and where we come from. We want to teach that and share it with our students. This is a wish come true for both of us.” They emphasized how supportive both their own families and the students’ parents have been throughout the preparations for the trip.

“You have no idea how many phone calls we had late into the night,” Alban said. “Our husbands were like, ‘Are you still living here?’ and our kids were like, ‘Mom, are you still my mom?’”

Most of the students have been learning Spanish since early elementary school, and on this trip they are putting into practice the Spanish they’ve learned while absorbing the culture and customs of Ecuador. In addition to guided activities each day exploring the attractions of the city of Quito and its surroundings, the trip will include a five-day, in-home living experience with Ecuadorian families.

“They are going to do activities as a family,” Alban explained. “They will enjoy and be a part of that family’s routine.” Working with one of the owners of a private school in Ecuador, Alban and Clemens were able to match up their students with appropriate Ecuadorian students and families.

Preliminary virtual encounters helped to pave the way. “We managed to have the Ecuadorian families and the American families together for Zoom meetings,” Clemens explained. “They met each other. They met all the children, and they all talked about what they like. The American families feel more comfortable knowing where their children are going.”

She continued, “And there’s something I learned. Being a Peruvian I didn’t know how welcoming Ecuadorians are. They opened their hearts. They opened their doors. They acted as if it was an honor for them to have these children in their homes. It was really beautiful. And we’re hoping next year we can bring those children back to visit the families here.”

For the Princeton students, this week and next are packed with activities as they “discover the similarities and appreciate the differences between themselves and the Ecuadorian community to become true global citizens,” as Clemens and Alban describe it.

In addition to Ecuadorian cultural awareness, the Caminos Princeton program also includes serious environmental education and social service components. The students will learn about permaculture in a workshop focused on designing, producing, and maintaining an environmentally sustainable “huerto” or vegetable garden.

They will raft down the Napo River in the Ecuadorian rainforest, surrounded by the Andes Mountains, and observe first-hand how illegal mining is affecting the environment and the whole world. Also during their ten-day stay, they will make a trek through the Paramos Mountains, participate in a reforestation project with native plants, meet with a group of chagras (cowboys of the Andes), and visit a community of women who produce chocolate.

A city tour of Quito led by a group of actors role-playing as historic colonials will introduce the group to Quito and its history dating back to colonial days and the pre-Incan period. On their last full day the students will team up with the Red Cross to help assemble aid kits for the city of Esmeraldas, a coastal city in the northwest part of Ecuador that has been devastated by flooding.

The group is bringing with them donations they’ve collected, as well as essential supplies like diapers, toothbrushes, over-the-counter medicines, gently used clothing, and some stuffed animals. Together with children from the Ecuador private school the Princeton students are going to put together aid kits for the residents of Esmereldas.

“It’s lovely to see the kids learn our language, to teach them Spanish, and this idea of Caminos started because we wanted to teach kids not only the Spanish language but also the culture,” said Alban. “There’s no way for you to learn the language if you don’t learn the culture and the traditions, That was part of how this whole idea started. All the effort that they’ve put in over these past years, now they’ll be able to actually live it, in person, in real life, to speak the language, to hear somebody else speak the language they’ve been learning.”

Clemens pointed out that the students are eager and well-prepared for this immersive experience. “They are ready,” she said. “They are looking forward to this trip, to applying everything they have been learning and being able to interact with other students over there.”

She continued, “We want them to travel not only as an American group but as an American-Ecuadorian group. We’re adding children from Ecuador to the tours so they will all be forced to speak in Spanish.”

Alban emphasized that this Caminos Princeton program is not a typical vacation trip. “Our mission is not just to take the kids like a travel agency,” she said. “It’s more like an experience that we want them to have. You can do a trip to Ecuador through a travel agency, but we want these kids to have a life experience.”

Alban explained other important ways in which Caminos Princeton and their long-term connections with the students transcends the normal travel experience. “We are very passionate about what we do, and we put a lot of love into what we do. We have close relationships with the kids, and the relationships are based on trust that we have created with the parents. If they were not able to trust us with their kids, this wouldn’t happen. We have been able to create a bonding with them.”