Going Far, Doing Good:
Making Twelve Best Friends in One Week in Guatemala

Shaina Patel | April 14, 2008

Shaina Patel (third from right) and her fellow UCSD students in Guatemala.

Travel had been one of the main experiences I was looking forward to in college. No more touristy family vacations for me. I wanted authentic experiences including cultural immersion, philanthropy and self-development.

As a freshman, I decided to take part in the first travel opportunity I found: Alternative Breaks. I have always been interested in Latin America, so I chose to apply for the Guatemala trip. I was hoping to get a good feel for the indigenous Mayan culture. This was going to be my first-ever volunteer abroad experience and after finding out I was accepted, I was more ready to go than ever.

I was especially excited to be going with Alternative Breaks because our group had spent about five months before the trip just getting to know each other. I thought it was going to be interesting to see how people changed during the trip.

The organization we worked through in Guatemala, Cross Cultural Solutions, had each day thoroughly organized for us. This made planning easier but made the trip feel more like a vacation than an authentic service trip. Also, because of we had such great living accommodations, we were not able really able to see poverty first hand.

Patel (first on left) poses with a Guatemalan woman in her store.

But now that I am back from Guatemala, I can honestly say that I gained more from this trip than I could ever have expected. As the week went on, the reflection activities that took place at the end of each day grew more and more personal. We grew more comfortable with each other and these activities became a special time for us to begin to look below the surface and analyze ourselves and our direction in life.

People in our group were able to open up, not just about how they were feeling about the trip, but about personal goals, fears, walls they had put up in their lives—or even family problems. We became not just a group of people traveling to Guatemala together, but also a support group. It was amazing for me to just sit back and listen to people's problems and realize that they were opening up because they felt more comfortable in Guatemala than they did with some of their friends back home.

A group picture of the Alternative Break team.

That realization made me really appreciate how rare it is to find even a few people in your life that you can really open up to. Yet here I was surrounded by 12 of them. Finally, I was surrounded by like-minded people with similar passions and experiences with whom I was able to have open conversations.

For the first time in my life, I really understood how empowering pure dialog can be. This dialog brought us closer together than imaginable. I learned so much from this trip about group dynamics and how you can create the right space and energy for a group of people to really open up and share an experience together. Although this spring break trip was not the trip I had imagined, I definitely was able to gain so much knowledge about the power of dialog. I know I will be using it soon.

Related links:

Going Far, Doing Good Main Page

Falling in Love with a Small School in China

Alternative Breaks Web site