Life

I've really been thinking about what I want to do with my life now. Not just what I think is expected of me, but what will make me happy and fulfilled. The number one thing I want to do is to continue traveling the world.

One of my favorite trips so far has been to Argentina. I went with my church a few years back to help build a convention center and start some churches. Before you go off thinking I'm some crazy fanatical "REPENT NOW OR GO TO HELL" type of person, let me assure you I'm not. I'm a christian, but I'll never push anything on anyone. The best thing about these church trips, honestly, are that they are incredibly cheap and you get to interact with the locals in a way you never could with a tour guide.

I had to share a room with 23 other women (bunk beds to be exact), a bathroom with 2 toilets, 3 showers, and 2 mirrors and sinks. If I was any kind of a high maintenance girl, it would have been hell. But fortunately my hygiene standards aren't that high, especially in foreign countries where no one knows me or cares.
I just remember getting up to the room we shared, after spending 8 hours in the hot sun mixing and pouring concrete, and listening to women bitching about how the outlets didn't work with their flat irons. They basically sat in the room all day unless they went shopping at a store across the street (basically the Argentine version of Walmart) or to the zoo or something. I almost felt sad for them because they were miserable not doing anything. They missed SO much by not being willing to help out.

I got soooo much out of just being around the locals. I remember one day on the weekend, we went to a store and we asked an associate to help us find something. He started taking us around the store to find it, when we ran into one of his friends. He stopped while we were following him and greeted his friend and started talking to him. He seemed to have forgotten about us, and I remember after a few minutes of them chatting, I started to get angry thinking "We're the customers, we should come first." Actually, we shouldn't. That was my first reaction as an American, but when I really thought about it, the relationships with our family and friends should be MUCH more important that a strangers. Our way of thinking is kind of twisted, we want what we want and we want it now. Companies are so focused on making money that our personal relationships have been tossed to the side. That way of thinking is wrong.

I want to continue to keep growing as a person and looking at the world from a different perspective so I hope I can travel for the rest of my life.