Leaving home happened in two stages: months of scattered Zoom calls and awkward Spanish intros, followed by the actual eight-hour Amtrak down to DC. With every mile I was more aware of how little I really knew about what I was heading into: three weeks in the Peruvian Amazon, surrounded by strangers, immersed in a culture and ecosystem I had only read about.

What went well was trusting my preparation. Where I could, I put time into practicing my Spanish and shaking off the rust. I used extensive spreadsheets to manage my packing. And I ended the year committed to being socially open with my new colleagues, getting dinners after class before summer break began. I was already returning to that charismatic, “summer camp” version of myself, fully immersed in the social moment. While I probably came off as stressed to my peers as we were traveling, I knew that was just my reactive style—waiting, observing, then joining in once I had read the situation. If I could have done anything differently, maybe I could have advanced my research project more beforehand, or done more background research. But honestly, I had put in honest work, and the trip itself was always going to be what gave the project real meaning.

The real adventure began in the DCA airport, as we waited for our three-part trip to Loreto, Peru. The first few hours our research group spent together were packed with chaotic airline checked bag policies and redistributing camera traps and battery packs across our various bulging luggage. Besides meeting three of our colleagues for the first time during our airport hopping to Atlanta, this leg of our journey was also the first time we were meeting each other in the context of the expedition itself. Playing icebreaker-esque games and sharing our past outdoor experiences felt more natural now that we were removed from the normal college environment. 

24 hours later, we passed our first challenge of the trip, complete with a redeye from Atlanta to Lima, seven-hour layover in a foreign airport, and a final trip to Iquitos over the Andes and Amazon (although I sadly didn’t have a window seat this time around). Layovers left ample time to get to know each other, play hacky sack, learn Wingspan, and hear mythical stories about past Maijuna guides balancing on the edge of canoes with their shotguns and chainsaws, and of the trees along the rivers that “tiene madre” - meaning that, if you were unfortunate enough to collide with one, a guardian horde of ants would fall on you and inflict intense pain. In another story, Brian described how one time he was racing down a bend in the river when they came face to face with an unavoidable fallen tree that hit the rear driver and motor clean off the boat, but the driver laughed off the incident like it was nothing.

During our travels, I learned early on that being a good teammate sometimes meant not fighting for leadership. I noticed moments when others tended to jump quickly to lead, and I let them. Other times, when gaps opened, I stepped in. Already this was a group of “leaders,” but we each had different levels of awareness of when to push and when to step back.

Leadership here looked less like being the loudest and more like being calm, attentive, and adaptive to the situations at hand. Being in the moment and "participating, not anticipating" was a big part of this for me. Moving forward, I wanted to focus on trusting myself more—diving in without anticipating every detail, while still keeping a critical eye on the plan. I left week one on the edge of the rainforest in Iquitos, ready to leave “civilization” behind. The Amazon was still only a story in my head, but I had faith in my preparation, and faith in my new friends to share whatever I lacked.