Rewind to the beginning of last summer, and you'll find me graduating high school with 543 of the same people I had spent almost every day with for the past four years. Fast-forward a couple months, and everyone is starting to go off in their own directions to create their unique futures. But while most of my classmates stuffed car trunks and suitcases full of college essentials, I threw a few pairs of clothes, bug spray, and hiking boots into a 65 liter backpack and boarded a plane to South America to begin the best adventure of my life. I took a gap year.
We grow up thinking there is a set path for each of our lives: we attend preschool, enroll in primary school, and spend the next twelve years of our lives sitting in desks, while teachers throw numbers and textbooks at us and expect us to learn. And we do. But the greatest lessons I have learned come from experience, and that is why I deviated from the path - to get out and explore the world, to immerse myself in different cultures, and to soak up as much as I could. It was the greatest decision I have ever made.
In the eight months I was gone, I volunteered within four different countries, living and working alongside the locals and creating a home in places most unlike the only one I had ever known. To volunteer in another country is to experience the culture in a way that cannot be experienced through mere tourism. It is to establish a home, relationships, and a familiarity with the unfamiliar. It is to adopt a new lifestyle, and to throw oneself into it with an open mind and a willingness to leave the comfort zone. It is challenging, intimidating, and at times, scary; but it is also love, happiness, and a greater understanding of the world around us.
I debarked my first set of flights in Argentina, the land of lively tangoes and the best empanadas. Here, as in all of South America, English is hard to come across, yet very quickly, I discovered how many other means of communication there are. I woke up at 8am every morning and walked across my village to an elderly day care, where I called myself a friend to a whole room of abuelitas, who greeted me each morning with smiles and mate gourds. Some days we'd create crafty masterpieces and practice Italian, while other days we would just talk, opening up to each other more as time went on.
From Argentina I flew to Peru, and wound up in the middle of the Amazon rainforest for six weeks, doing jungle conservation work on the Río Madre de Díos. I spent my days traipsing through endless shades of green, tripping over sprawling vines while monkeys played in the branches above me. My job here was with the flora and the fauna, practicing alternative methods of sustainable farming, and tracking various animals across the jungle. It was a lot of sweat, dirt, and mud, but I learned more about the environment here than I could have from any teacher.
By January, I was on another continent, teaching English to Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka. For the most part, I had a group of 6-12 year old rambunctious, orange-robed boys, who never failed to make me laugh as we struggled to make it through basic English lessons. For one week, I went to live within a monastery, to teach to another group of monks, and to spend the rest of my time practicing meditation and studying Buddhism under two of the head monks. Another week, I found myself in a tribal village, teaching preschool and learning to appreciate the simplicities in life.
I ended my volunteer work in Thailand, in the northern province of Chiang Rai, working with the local hill tribes to create a sustainable economy through the construction of rice terraces. Here, I had home-stays every other week; working, eating, and sleeping alongside the various hill tribes. Arriving to timid smiles, we’d make memories over bamboo campfires and the week’s project. We watched the children warm up to us and the gratitude shine on the villagers faces, finally parting with mountainside barbecues and the greatest feeling of accomplishment - having constructed something that meant so much to these communities, and to have done so with them.
Each of these experiences was so unique, and were I to go back and redo it, it would be different still. More than anything, my time in these countries is defined by the relationships I built and the memories I forged. I look back on nights of laughter in Argentina, as my friend José tried teaching me Latin dancing. I remember camping out with my Peruvian coworkers and Pisco Sours on an island in the Amazon. I smile at the endless games of duck-duck-goose with my crazy, little monks in Sri Lanka. I cherish the picnics at local rivers in Thailand with my friends, where the village children would run down to splash-attack us, shrieking in laughter when we retaliated.
This is why I chose to take a gap year; this is why I chose to volunteer. I cannot recreate these memories, nor can I share my experiences with tourists, because I knew another side of each country. I visited the landmarks, explored the popular sites, check-marked my way through plenty of guidebooks, and I had a blast doing so. But the real experience was while I was trying to make a difference, in villages that one won’t find in any guide books, in places that gave me a home... so far away from home.
Traveling brings with it inevitable challenges, but I look at myself now, and I feel more mature, independent, and open. Open to stepping outside comfort zones, eating the bizarre, seizing opportunities, communicating with strangers, and not looking back. I have fallen helplessly in love with this planet, and the people and places within it. I start college this fall, with reinvigorated passion for the world around me. I spent the past year learning more than I could have learned in any classroom, and I am ready to keep pursuing those lessons.
Gap years are not for everyone - I get that. But it was the best decision I could have made, and I am a better person because of it. It takes a lot, to stray from the path we feel obligated to follow, but in leaving it, one will find there's a whole world out there.
