wward1's Travel Journals

wward1

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  • 25 years old
  • From Florida, United States
  • Currently in United States

My Community Service

When I think of community service, I think of something that someone does for the community that not only helps the community but makes the person doing the service feel good. An example of my community service would be in the summer when I coach kids in Jacksonville Universities Upward Bound Softball, Track, and Spades. Upward Bound (UB) is a program for aspiring high school students that want to get ahead and prepare for college. At the end of the summer UB has an Olympic Ceremony were kids from UBs all over Florida meet and do a variety of events, everything from spelling bee’s to billiards to swimming and basketball. This is my favorite part of community service, because not only does the staff tutor the student during the program we get to watch them develop and make friends throughout the 6 week program. These kids aren’t always from the best areas and sometimes aren’t necessarily the most college ready individuals, so it makes me feel good to show them that if I am making it so can they. The Olympic Ceremony is something that is frequently talked about, but teacher and the rest of the staff have the constantly remind them that if they don’t have above a 2.0 in week 5 when grades come out then they cannot participate in the Olympics or the Mr. & Ms. Upward Bound pageant. It is a good feeling when kids that graduate from the program come back and tell how much the staff helped them succeed not only in the classroom, but in life.

Journal 8

Ecuador Cuenca, Ecuador  |  Mar 24, 2008
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Day eight, we get ready to board the bus to take a tour of some of the local villages around Cuenca and then head back to the hotel in Guayaquil. The first things we see on this part of the trip are some small villages on the mountain side. We stop close to one town and walk down to it. This town is a lot smaller than the ones we have been use to seeing. All they had was gift shops, a huge church, and a park with a monument in the middle of it. This city was really close to where Ecuadorian people mine their gold so there were a lot of jewelry stores in this little square of a town, which made it easier for me to do all of my gift shopping(I only spent about $35-one item was a 18k gold necklace=$20). We board the bus and head back to Guayaquil, and coincidentally there is a valley that we can cut thru since it isn’t flooded. Of coarse it rains and now we not only have to worry about the driver flying down the side of a mountain at 60 mph’s we have to worry about mud sides. We make it back home safely and before it got dark. This is our last day in Ecuador so everyone wants to try and do everything, but we just head to casino since the people their love us since we were repeat customers.
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