MARS HILL, Maine — Students in Paulina Sargent’s Spanish Club at Central Aroostook High School will embark on the trip of a lifetime on April 12 when they leave Mars Hill for Ecuador, a country located on the west coast of South America.
Thanks to fundraising efforts led by Spanish teacher and Ecuador native Sargent, a group of five current CAHS students, two former students and seven parents and teachers will immerse themselves in the culture and language that they have studied in numerous classes.
Sargent led a student trip to Costa Rica in April 2016, but said that she chose Ecuador as this year’s trip for a more personal reason. Sargent is from Quito, the capital of Ecuador, and met her husband Andrew Sargent after he had transferred to Ecuador as part of the work he did for a cable company. She had taken a job at that same company right after college and bonded with her future husband while working there. The couple later moved to Mars Hill, where she accepted a position as Spanish teacher at CAHS.
While in Ecuador, Sargent and her group will visit three regions of the country: the coast, the Andes Mountains and the Amazon rainforest. Their eight-day trip will include a visit to an elementary school in the Amazon jungle and to the Amazon Animal Rescue, a hike through the trails of the Terra Foundation, a guided whitewater rafting trip and tours through Quito’s Independence Plaza, Government Palace and historical churches.
For Sargent, who still has family in Ecuador, the trip will be an opportunity to share her culture with students firsthand and allow them to practice the Spanish language skills they’ve learned in class.
“I remember when I first came here, there were many things that felt strange to me because I was going from one culture to another. Something as simple as ordering a hamburger in English was a big deal for me,” Sargent said. “I want my students to get that same experience and really try to use their Spanish to communicate with others while we’re there.”
Instead of using a travel agency, like the club did for the Costa Rica trip, Sargent has organized the trip through a travel guide whom she knows personally from her years in Ecuador and decided to organize the trip from scratch to make everything more affordable for students.
The Spanish Club has held numerous fundraisers for two years to raise money to cover the $2,176 per person cost for all trip expenses. Their most successful fundraisers were two whoopie pie sales in which they sold 4,622 whoopie pies and raised $3,279 total. They also hosted a bottle drive, a “Pie in the Face,” event, set up a fruit punch stand outside the Mars Hill IGA, sold snow cones during Mars Hill Homecoming Days in August 2017, and are now selling Panthers Pride bracelets for $1 each based on the high school’s mascot.
The club has surpassed their fundraising goal with total sales of $4,828 from all their fundraisers thus far.
“We’re a small group, but everyone has worked hard to make the trip happen and we’re grateful for the parents who came after school to help us with the whoopie pie sales and to IGA for donating their lemonade stand,” Sargent said. “It can be hard to spread the word sometimes, but everyone has been great at helping each other out.”
In preparation for the trip, Sargent’s students have been learning new Spanish words that they might encounter during conversations as well as facts about Ecuador and its culture. Senior Isabelle Wright said she hopes to become more fluent in the language that she’s been studying.
“I remember in Costa Rica, it was a real confidence booster for me to know that I could speak in another language and have people who live in that country understand me,” Wright said.
Her classmate Janelle Tweedie, a freshman, expressed similar hopes for the trip.
“The farthest I’ve ever travelled is to Florida, so I’ve been excited about Ecuador. I want to see as much of the world as I can,” Tweedie said.
