This summer, I went to Costa Rica on a three-week community service trip through a company called West Coast Connections. I hadn’t gone on any sort of teen tour or a trip like that before, and I was really excited to have the opportunity to do something new. The experiences exceeded my expectations. I met people from all over the country and I feel like I made some lifelong friends. Not to mention, the community service itself was also very rewarding, ranging from playing soccer with kids in the slums of San Jose to carrying cinder blocks down steep sets of stairs, to building a wall for a house missing a fourth wall. It varied from drawing with kids who were seeing markers for the first time, to mixing cement in order to create a floor for a family of 12 who didn’t have one. It was definitely a summer that I won’t easily forget.

However, I was faced with a couple of things this summer that I realized that I don’t often have to deal with. You see, everybody has some sort of bubble that surrounds them. These bubbles that surround us can be vastly different. A person’s bubble can be incredibly small, like how someone who only plays basketball is used to using their hands and doesn’t know what it’s like to use their feet and play soccer. Or, someone’s bubble can be incredibly big if they happen to be a vampire and can’t see sunlight and therefore have no idea what it’s like to be outside during the day. The point is that everybody lives a different life and is sheltered from different things. My trip to Costa Rica and the unfamiliar things I experienced there helped me to realize the confines of my own bubble.

It occurred to me the night before my trip that I would know absolutely no one on the program. That’s not a very common thing for me. Sure, I’ve had some extracurriculars where I didn’t know anyone, but those only meet once a week and I don’t spend extended amounts of time with those people. CESJDS is an amazing school and I am incredibly lucky to be able to go here, but it’s no secret that it is a small community.

While small grade sizes are not a bad thing, it does mean that there are far fewer opportunities to meet new people. Not to mention the fact that the 80 or so students in my grade have consisted of mostly the same people since kindergarten, with the exception of a handful of additions and subtractions over the years. So, needless to say, meeting 25 new people all at once was refreshing but different.

I also met a young boy named Alberto in a slum of San Jose called Guarari. Alberto was one of the lucky boys in Guarari because he had shoes. He was around four years old and became a favorite of mine and others on the trip due to his extreme friendliness and unbelievable cuteness. One day, we were handing out the donations we had brought from home to the kids of Guarari and I got to give Alberto a toothbrush. When he took it, his eyes lit up, and he ran around in circles cheering.

This kind of celebration over a toothbrush was mind-boggling to me. I tried to imagine a scenario in my life in which I would celebrate receiving a toothbrush. Except for maybe when I got a Tooth Tunes Musical Toothbrush, the idea was inconceivable to me. That was when I realized the most defined confine of my bubble.

I have absolutely no idea what it feels like to be Alberto. Even more so, I probably didn’t even make that much of a difference in Costa Rica. No one’s life is significantly changed because of my contributions. Alberto probably lost the toothbrush I gave him, not because he wasn’t grateful, but because he was 4 years old and four-year-old kids tend to lose things. Everything considered, I know my experience in Costa Rica has taught me an invaluable lesson.

That lesson was that there are so many things in this world that I might never begin to understand living in Montgomery County, and going to JDS. There are small things like not having many opportunities to meet new people, but there are much bigger things like not knowing what it feels like to celebrate a toothbrush. These new experiences enable people to understand the significance of the differences in people’s lives. This cannot happen without escaping your bubble. Just because we all live in some kind of bubble, doesn’t mean we can’t try to learn about what lies outside.