Junior Project. Those are two words that every
high schooler attending Rivermont Collegiate will encounter. Together, they
mean fifteen hours of community service and a speech in front of the whole
school. Now, oftentimes the service hours are completed at local hospitals or
nursing homes, which is great, because, after all, volunteering is volunteering
no matter where you do it; every little bit counts. In fact, I was thinking
along the same lines up until the moment my mom pointed out that I should be
thinking differently. I should be thinking in terms of originality and
creativity. I should be doing something new and exciting, something that I may
suddenly realize is my thing or that I learn I don't like at all. 
So, I stayed up late and completed a little
research (that is to say googling "volunteer opportunities") and this
is what I found, "International Volunteer Opportunities for High School
Students". That was the turning point in my hunt for a project. That was what
changed my thoughts from local to global. I ran with it. I started searching
things like "volunteer abroad," and anyway, somehow I found my way to
GLA.
My first thought was that I'd like to go to the
Galapagos Islands, but my mother told me "no". Her one stipulation
was that I had to find a place with a direct flight from O'hare to there. Long
story short, once a week there's a flight from Chicago to Liberia, Costa Rica,
and that's the one I took.
Before I left, I found myself thinking typical
teenage thoughts. Like "What if I hate it there?" or "What if
nobody likes me?" and as a French-speaker, "What if I get lost and
don't know enough Spanish to ask anyone?" The questions went on and on,
but I just tried not to think about all the bad things that could happen instead
focusing on the good. I was really looking forward to meeting new people—both
locals and other kids in the program. To be honest, though, I had only a vague
idea of what the program was about. I did not know what to expect at all.
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