Written by Kathryn Waller
Spring Break: the ultimate college rite of passage. Despite this fact, most of us sleep right through this break, not knowing what might have been. This year, myself and 18 others took a chance to discover the Spring Break less-traveled on our trip to Costa Rica.
Stepping off the plane, we were met with a blanket of humidity that none of us had ever experienced and 90+ degree weather. Needless to say, this alone would have been enough to shock our Southern California palettes. Add in farm living, bugs the size of your fist, and cold showers and it was safe to say that all of us were well outside of our comfort zone…at first. It didn’t take long for us to realize that all of these new things were merely part of the great journey we were about to go on. None of us had any experience living or working on a farm, and yet by the end of the first couple days, we were shovelling compost like the pros. While farm work is hard, we all seemed to agree that it was far more rewarding than our desk jobs back home. Something about seeing a project from start to finish, like when we painted an elementary school in a day, gave us the sense that our tourist footprint would not be quite as large or harmful as many others who visited the country.
Even when we had moments of homesickness, the UCI Costa Rica program combated this by providing each of us with a homestay. Each homestay represented a pillar of the community; while I stayed with the elementary school’s cook, 2 other students got the chance to stay with a master wood-carver. Not only did these homestays provide us with a sense of home, they also showed us some rather extreme methods of handling any bug that was bothering us. My host mom even grabbed cockroaches by the wings and gave them each a kiss to help us be less afraid. In case it was not obvious from that last story, our host families did whatever it took to make sure we left knowing the real Mastatal.
By the end of it, all of us were dragging our feet to get on the plane. The universe clearly channelled our displeasure with having to head back to the USA so soon, and dropped us off in Panama instead. That’s right, our connecting flight from Panama to LA was pulled right out from under us! Initially, this thrust many of us into a panic of how we were going to tell our parents, boyfriends and friends that we wouldn’t be home when we had said. And this is when it all made sense. The uncertainty of not having an itinerary, not knowing what time it was, and not being able to control our surroundings in Mastatal had prepared us for such a moment as this. It was as though the whole week in Costa Rica had been the quiz, and learning to adapt to our change of plans was the final exam. Our patience and understanding was rewarded with a stay at The Hard Rock Hotel-Panama City and a fully paid buffet. By learning to handle whatever came our way in Mastatal, we had breezed through Panama without incident.
The very next day, we arrived back in LA, trying desperately to process all that had happened throughout our trip. Driving up to the place where our journey had begun just 10 days before felt foreign. Eating with 2 people instead of 20 that night somehow felt wrong. Not even a week back yet, and we are all still figuring out how to reconcile the amazing things we learned with our lives here. Though I don’t yet fully know how to do this, I take comfort in knowing that there are 18 others just like me, trying to figure it out.