Ama la Vida — My Experience at Ailola Quito

Travel Prep — Between freaking out and being freaking excited

Panoramic view over Quito from the Panecillo Hill — © Laura Straub.

While lots of my fellow students chose the ‘safe’ way to do their internship which was part of our studies, I decided to go on an adventure. I looked for some internship offers far away from well-organized and efficient Germany. I found the vacancy of Ailola Quito and applied to it. I didn’t get any answer for a while but then, when I had almost lost hope, I got an invitation for an interview and some days later the firm offer which I signed.

Trying not to go crazy about my big journey, I booked a flight to Quito and started getting stuff done.

Bienvenidos!

Ailola Quito Spanish School — © Laura Straub.

My first days in Quito were really impressive. This city has almost 2 Million habitants and so much to offer. I couldn’t imagine this place being my home for the following 5 months which made me appreciate the family I moved in even more. As I arrived on a Saturday, I had some time to do all the tourist stuff before school and work started. Monday morning I arrived at the Ailola Quito Language School where I was shown around and explained everything. Half of my day I had really useful Spanish classes with a professional teacher and the other half I spent getting to know the working process via Skype which was way easier and efficient than I thought it would gonna be. My tasks here were:

Social Media management of Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Youtube and Instagram
Feedback and quality management concerning the student’s needs, requests and complaints at the school
Maintaining parts of the website (Student Reviews)
Creating and supporting promotional marketing projects
Editorial content creation for the Ailola Quito Blog
Creating video clips about Ecuador and the excursions the school offers
Shooting and editing photos
Translations (English — Spanish — German)

Ailola Quito School

Quito Spanish language school office team & teachers — © Laura Straub.

The Spanish School is located in the historical center of Quito and offers a lot of opportunities to eat lunch and visit sights around. The school consists of nine classrooms, a break room, a kitchen, two bathrooms and the office. Part of my contract was taking Spanish classes three to four hours a day either in group or one-to-one. This helped me a lot, in a way that I could improve my Spanish from really basic level to C1. The teachers were all highly professional and I never struggled understanding them.

Living in Quito, travelling around

Life in Quito sometimes exhausts you a lot. There is a lot of traffic, noise and pollution. Nevertheless this city offers a lot, getting bored is basically impossible. Most of the time, I finished work and just wanted to go to bed. Few times I could actually carry out my plan because either some of my Ecuadorian friends or some other students from school asked me to go out. This made me even more feel like I enjoyed my time here at its best.

Besides that, my weekends were full of activities travelling around Quito. I had the possibility to visit the Quilotoa Loop, the beach, the huge market in Otavalo and several other beautiful cities in Ecuador.

A special thank you to my host family, the office ladies I worked with every day, the Spanish teachers and all the inspiring people I met during my internship at Ailola Quito.

Originally published on Ailola by Laura Straub onFebruary 19, 2017.