Research in the Amazon

After almost an entire semester in her World Ethnographies class, I finally met Dr. Erazo when she walked out of the elevator next to where I was studying. That was my first semester at FIU, and because I had been enrolled in the online section of her class, I recognized her but she didn’t recognize me. I introduced myself, we chatted for a bit, and she eventually invited me to apply to a summer research opportunity she was embarking upon the following summer. The weeks went by, and I submitted my application. An agonizingly long uncertainty period followed my Skype interview, but eventually, I received email confirmation that I had been accepted. I would later learn that I wasn’t one of Dr. Erazo’s first options, but that didn’t matter. My experiences on the Sustainable Development in the Ecuadorian Amazon research trip were some of the most transformative and enlightening in my life. I could talk for days about what I learned, but thanks to the skillful journalistic workings of Marisol Medina, a fellow student on the trip, many of our findings are condensed on the following video. Enjoy!

You can read more about the actual research and our findings in my Trip Conclusions post.