Reflection Paper

Until the last day of my final examination in Spring 2016 semester in University of Maryland, I did not have any particular opinions or thoughts about the education that I have in United States. Before I went to the global medical brigade to Honduras this summer, my education was solely focused on academics; grades, extracurricular activities, clinical experiences, and etc. to get in to a good college and get a stable and high-paying job. This thought of mine was greatly influenced throughout the whole school years in Singapore, South Korea, and the United States. For about six years of education in middle school and high school, every decision, act, or learning purposes were preparations for myself to get in to a good college. Even right now,

I was very traumatized how there were no clean water, light, transportation, reasonable amount of money, and food for the people, while I get to have more than enough of everything that could supply a whole household. It is not that I did not know about all of these facts about developing countries. I have learned and watched these facts, data, and videos, from Human Geography class in University of Maryland. But, my mind was blown when I actually experienced the truth and the facts that I learned from textbooks. I learned that no matter how much people learn and memorize about the poverty rate, standards of livings, food sources, and etc. from the textbooks, they would not be able to learn or understand the truth by heart unless they experience by themselves. Because after all, I would eventually forget most of the things that I studied just to do well on

The house that I was assigned to renovate have a big family; there were about 20 people. But not all of those people live in that house, it was their grandmother’s house and their family came to visit us. We visited their house for three days to completely build new cement floors for their rooms and kitchen. There was a guy called, Emerson, about same age as I am, 21. I wanted to talk to him and get to know him better as a friend. Despite the fact that I could not speak any Spanish, I was able to at least have some meaningful and interesting conversation with the help from translators and my friends. We got closer every single day, but not too close to know in depth. So, on our last day of that house to finish what we have started, every other people were here except Emerson. I asked his mom where he was at, because I was planning to give him a little present. His mom replied by saying that he was at work, and I understood as him working like a part time job or any other jobs to earn some money. But when the time had arrived when we were saying goodbyes to each other, his mom told me in tears that, Emerson really wanted to be here with all of us, but he had to go up to the mountain with his dad to harvest beans to feed the family. Her words so shocking to me, as I realized that how the