Gearing up for Ecuador! (and the rest of the semester)

I am part of the Florida Fly-Ins program, run by Prof. John Kaplan, this year at the University of Florida. Every year the Fly-Ins program goes to a South or Central American country to document a city and culture in words and pictures. This year is the first year traveling to Ecuador and I'm super excited because it's the northern neighbor to Peru, where I just was this summer.
We've only had one meeting at this point. But the class meets once a week to prepare and research the country and area before departing. After the trip, Sept. 29 - Oct. 7, the class will continue to meet once a week to wrap things up and prepare everything for the online magazine that is published every year and for the gallery showing that happens near the end of the Fall semester.
This year is also the first time photographers are going to be REQUIRED to do multimedia work. YAY! We haven't discussed it very much yet but I think this means we will just be creating a short soundslides project with our photos and narrating it ourselves. Hopefully we can incorporate some sound from Ecuador.
I'm not sure yet what story I'll be working on, but with the departure date about a month away, I'll have to know VERY soon. So for now I'm hitting the research books and I'll be trying to make connections for my story before we even arrive.

This is going to be one fun last semester for me.

I'm also piling on 3 other classes with the Fly-Ins class. Those include Advanced Design (dealing with newspaper design and photo editing), Advanced Ballet (my body is regretting that choice) and Renaissance Art in Northern Europe (my last Art History class for my minor).

Also I'm seriously starting to look for winter internships to follow my graduation. So on top of everything else, I'll be sending out applications for those this month!