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When I was twelve years old, my family and I traveled to Ecuador, a beautiful country teeming with life, color, and happiness. We spent fourteen days on the Galápagos islands, feeding iguanas flowers, and swimming with sea lions and turtles that hadn’t learned to be afraid of humans yet.
The sun was soft and bright in the equatorial sky for our whole stay. The stars at night were the most beautiful I’d ever seen, reflecting into a calm ocean. The crystal water was teeming with fish. The birds chattered in the air. I can still hum the tune of a local dance we watched where talented children piled tall towers of decorative fruit on their heads and swayed with the warm breeze.
Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, the first day that I went snorkeling. We stopped by the main island for supplies. The whole country and world were excited, shouts and applause poured from the bars, and I never felt prouder to be American.
The whole vacation was nothing short of paradise.
On the last day of our trip, my sister and I played cards on the hard, black airport seats of Quito airport. A young couple honeymooning on our ship — one with long dreadlocks and the other with a dozen piercings and endless crop tops — had taught us new…
