Bienvenida

Welcome to the University of Michigan Rotaract club's travel blog for this year's service trip to Guatemala.  Prepare yourselves as it is through this medium that you can catch up with our talented team as we learn, experience, and define what it means to do service, give back, and open our eyes a little wider to see and work to solve the problems in this world.

We will regale you with the personal memoirs of each member of the team as they reflect and draw from their time in Guatemala.  Some will choose to write poetry, some will take pictures, some will record quotes, etc.  In these posts, you will see our individual personalities reflected.  As there are many methods of expressing our thoughts, we also come from different backgrounds and varying values.  As we approach this trip, though, we are coming together through a commonality present in all of us, a desire to help and create an impact.  That is the thread that ties us together, which this blog will reveal and strengthen.

In Guatemala as well, we will search for that human connection and seek to disavow the notion of an "us" and "them," but realize that we are all just "people."  Despite the different cultures and languages we possess, which seem to resurrect barriers between us, people are still connected.  It is this empathetic link that will bring us together and allow us to gain the most understanding.  We must go into this service trip not with the mentality that we are saviors there to help, but see it as a reciprocal relationship between equals as we have much to learn as well.  Only then can we create sustainable relationships and our own remembrances of the trip and our work there will be much more valuable.  We are going to Guatemala to learn and improve ourselves just as much as we are traveling there to do what we can for service.

We hope to take you with us on this journey of self development that we have set out on, one which for some of us may change our worldview, our dreams, and our decisions.  We know that this trip will be one  to truly affect us and bring us together, one week we will never forget.

Love,

Rotaract International Trip Team 2012