Post Trip Reflections: Renée Larios
Our Costa Rican travel experience brought us closer together than we thought possible. The 17 of us stood together in awe of nature and of life itself to witness the cycle of death and rebirth before our very eyes. We learned that nothing in nature goes to waste and that everything has a purpose. Everything can nurture something else, and we nurtured one another. We shared stories, laughter, and pain, shed tears and cackled gleefully. We learned to sit silently and listen - to nature, one another, and ourselves. We began to live pura vida and became huggers. We know we’ll never experience those exact moments again, but we also learned to accept that life comes and goes, and we need to appreciate life on life’s terms if we want a chance at happiness and peace. At the end of the trip, in our final circle, we all answered this question: “If this trip, this Costa Rican experience were a person, what would you hear it say to you?” Here are the students’ answers: ~The trip would say to me,