To best describe my in-country experience I am going to try my best to split up each day and try and talk about each event to provide as much detail as possible. Saturday 3/1 we had an early start to the day with a 5:30 am flight to Baltimore and didn’t get picked up at the San Juan airport till around 5 or 6 and then we just went to Café del Parque for dinner as we did all night. Sunday, we got picked up and it was a bit of a touristy day as we went an visited Old San Juan and we were able to walk through the streets and visit many of the very old buildings that the city offers. Jaisa was our tour guide that day and she shared all the history that the city has to offer as we walked through the old gate that initially let visitors of Puerto Rico in and walked past the 1500s walls that were built for protection for the city. We also visited El Morro which is the fort that was built in the 1500s as well for protection against any attackers that were coming from the sea. The US also used it during WW2 and built additional pieces on that were more suitable for the machinery and guns of the time. Old San Juan was so beautiful and unlike anything I have ever been in before.  The views around and inside El Morro were breathtaking. You look back and you can see Old San Juan and all of its colorful buildings, and then you look the other way and can see the ocean along with where we spent the rest of our time Cataño. We were also able to visit some of the tourist shops there, so I was able to pick up some souvenirs for my family and friends. On Monday, we spent our day learning about LabCom and Juan, who is the program coordinator, an ex high school teacher, and coordinates the environmental events for the students gave us a basic overview of Puerto Ricos environment along with what they do to try and help it. The rest of the day was Adrianna driving us around with Juan and Juan explaining Caras’ different sites they have such as micro forests and pollination gardens and explaining why they are important. We also went to a site that used to have an orphanage and was used as a community meeting place, but the government tore it down for one reason, however, Juan said it was basically to stop giving a place to come together as a community and instead start to push people out of the area so they could use the waterfront land for rich people and build more luxury homes and buildings there. I wanted to point that out to show the corruption and unjust practices going on in Puerto Rico. Juan also explained how they collect their water samples and what they test for in the water and how that could affect the local plant and wildlife. Tuesday morning, I spent most of the time weedwacking thick and tall brush at one of the micro forest that Caras was building. The goal was to cut down all the overgrown, invasive brush that was soaking up all the nutrients and turn it into a grass field where they can instead plant native species of plants. After lunch we went back to the LabCom location of Caras and started learning and planting little plants at their nursery. This included mixing topsoil and dirt together to help promote growth of plants along with putting the seedlings into a bigger bag, so it had ample room to grow. Wednesday, we started off at LabCom again where Caras had just received an order of more topsoil, so we shoveled that into the respective bins it was supposed to go in. I wore khakis that day unknowingly of what was to come so I sweat through those pretty bad, so I chose a bad day to wear some of my bus cas. After that Juan took us through some of the equipment, they use to test the different water sources and how they do it. He also took us the communities little stream they had where they test that water source and he also explained how most of the community used to dump their trash their because they had nowhere to put it and how it has been a struggle to try and stop them from doing that because they were so used to it and ultimately didn’t care that much. We gathered some water from the stream and Juan helped us test it for the different substances they were looking out for. After lunch that day, Adrianna and Jahir took us to look at some of the community murals in a part of the city and they explained which each one meant. Many of them were showing how the government wants to keep the people quiet and is always watching, so they can continue to take advantage of the country and its people to make life better for themselves. Others showed the beautifulness of the country’s women and the strength they have. Thursday, we went to the Yunque National Rainforest where Yahir showed us some of Puerto Rican plants, we were helping plant back at LabCom and some of the invasive plants that is in the rainforest as well. We got to see some pretty amazing views while we were there also. After lunch that day we spent the rest of the day chilling at the beach, and it was so peaceful and was as close to perfection as life could get. I got pretty burnt because I chose not to put sunscreen on to try and get some sort of tan while there and was compared to Larry the lobster for the rest of the day. Friday, we started the day off helping paint a woman of the community’s house that hadn’t been painted for two years, and she was so happy and excited that we did that for her, and it was so cute to see.  We then went to La Marquesa Forest Park and got to see some absolutely amazing and peaceful views. I didn’t want to leave the tower we climbed up because of how calming it was up there. We also got to go in one of those cabin zipline things that we got to see a cool view out of as well. That took us to the bird sanctuary they have there, and we got to check out a ton of different bird species and we were able to walk right up to them as they were chilling on the railing or trees that were in the exhibit we were in. There was also a little butterfly exhibit as well. Saturday was another travel day and wrapped up an amazing trip that was filled with tons of learning and meeting awesome people.

I honestly did not have many expectations going into this trip as I did not fully know what to expect, but any expectations I did have were exceeded. I guess the one cultural expectation I had was that not as many people were going to know English, but a lot of people knew English and were able to have good conversations with us. I don’t think our group had many challenges throughout our trip and it was honestly pretty smooth sailing. I think the worst thing to happen was that the bus on the way back to Oakland broke down in Crafton and we had to uber back the rest of the way.

I think all of the readings provided insight into the trip so I can’t pinpoint one exact one that benefited me the most as all of them helped prepare me for the trip. Wether that be telling me what service learning is and what it is about to the teachers explaining some of the things they thought they did wrong on their trips. All of them I feel like I kept in the back of my head knowingly or unknowingly during the duration of the trip and throughout our experiences there. Additional thoughts that I wanted to put in was that almost everyday lunch was made by a women in the community where LabCom is and she was such a good cook and it was awesome to get some homemade Puerto Rican food as well as one of the other women in the community sold us some Limber which is a icy Puerto Rican desert that hit the spot after being out in the sun during the day. Our host Adrianna and the rest of the Caras crew were so insightful and were such great hosts and they blew me and any expectations I had out of the water.