In early January, Vanessa Espinosa ’26 was at a community center in Quito, Ecuador, huddled with young kids, chanting “Si, Se Puede!一边大声喊着，一边为团队障碍赛做准备. Moments later, a volunteer at the center abruptly put an end to the fun, 用西班牙语向参加课后项目的学生宣布，国家处于紧急状态，对平民来说不再安全. 一名翻译将这一消息传达给了其中的15名电子游戏软件学生.
As part of the Arrupe International Encounters Program, which promotes awareness of racial justice, community, and faith issues through firsthand experiences, 埃斯皮诺萨和她的同伴们计划在为期一周的旅行中沉浸在厄瓜多尔的文化和社区中. But by their third day in the country, 随着国家武装部队对不断升级的帮派暴力做出回应，紧急疏散计划正在进行中.
“There was so much fear and disappointment, and seeing all the kids leaving was really upsetting,” says Espinosa, a marketing student at the Carroll School. “No one really knew what to do. We decided that we should pray.”
Monetta Edwards, the director of the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics 这次旅行的一位教师导师一直在和他们的社区伙伴组织合作， Rostro de Cristo，以跟踪全国政治不稳定的发展. 尽管学生们说他们在他们所住的静修中心感到安全, 爱德华兹和随行的其他领导人清楚地认识到，留在厄瓜多尔已经不安全了.
“We could feel the tension. We could feel that there was something changing,” Edwards says. “我们注意到，就连(中心)的工作人员也被正在发生的事情分心了. You could sense it.”
The next day, as a BC extraction team worked to book flights 并找到通往机场的安全巴士路线，将这群人庇护到位. 情绪高涨的埃斯皮诺萨说，学生们互相依靠以寻求支持. The trip’s theme was “Called to Community,埃斯皮诺萨指出，这段经历无疑是社区建设的重要一课, just not the one she had originally expected.
“虽然我们没有得到我们想要的沉浸式体验, I definitely found a community,” she says, 谈到其他14个欧盟成员国，以及他们会见的厄瓜多尔人. “我看到每个人都或多或少地站出来安慰别人.”
尽管与当地社区联系的时间比预期的要少, 在封锁期间，东盟成员国仍试图积极了解厄瓜多尔. 这群人观看了一部关于亚马逊地区石油危机的纪录片，并通过Zoom与位于四小时车程外瓜亚基尔市的两位修女交谈. 其中一位修女向他们保证这次旅行的价值和他们学到的教训, even as violence disrupted their original plans. “她告诉我们，她相信这一切的发生都是有原因的, and now we needed to do something about it,” Espinosa says.
Dylan Breen ’24, one of the student leaders on the trip, helped lead an abbreviated “Examen,” a Jesuit meditation on one’s daily experiences, 为了促进学生之间有意义的反思，让他们在离开这个国家之前有一种封闭的感觉.
“这看起来太突然了，”卡罗尔商学院金融和创业专业的学生布林说. “我们希望以一种让人们感到踏实和理解的方式进行反思, and also acknowledge that yes, our immersion was cut short but there's bigger problems at hand.”
反射仍然是Arrupe团队体验的核心部分, 在采取了广泛的措施确保他们返回后安全返回波士顿. The following morning, 学生和教师导师们在校园里聚在一起做弥撒，并进行了一天的反思，在这一天里，他们分享了自己对这场磨难的矛盾情绪.
“Once we touched down there was a sense of immediate relief, but then the worry was about the people that we met,” Edwards says. “我们有幸离开，而这是他们的新现实. 直到今天，我仍然有一种巨大的负罪感.”
尽管许多学生回国后感到失望, Breen, 他之前曾在2022年与Arrupe一起去过萨尔瓦多, says the experience still taught him valuable lessons.
“这可能是我们所能得到的关于厄瓜多尔社会正义现实的最好例子,” he says. “我们确实亲身体验了这种不稳定是什么样子的，以及它如何影响人们的日常生活.”
After the crisis, Arrupe成员正在努力向前迈进，以一种尊重他们在撤离前遇到的人的方式:那些分享家庭故事的厄瓜多尔人, faith, and the value of community.
“很多厄瓜多尔人告诉我们，这不是厄瓜多尔的暴力事件. 他们告诉我们不要让这成为我们对他们国家的看法，”爱德华兹说. “This incident is not going to define Ecuador for me. 当我想到厄瓜多尔时，我就会想起我遇到的那些人.”
Now that they are home, 该组织的目标是吸取他们所学到的经验教训，并在校园里分享. 他们将在整个学期继续会面，共同努力，以有影响力的方式向前发展, 但埃斯皮诺萨说，她已经注意到这段经历对她的影响.
“我绝对认为这次旅行在很多方面改变了我的人生，”她说. “回到校园，回到学期的日常生活中，让我对自己所接受的教育有了新的认识, and I don’t want to take that for granted.”
