By Michael Bernaschina, Staff Writer
This past summer, from June 17 to July 2, I, along with 11 other Susquehanna University students and program directors Keith Spencer and Molly Roe, traveled to Puerto Rico for our GO Short trip.
For the two weeks we were there, we stayed at the Universidad del Sagrado Corazon in Puerto Rico’s capital city, San Juan.
As obvious as it might seem, what immediately struck me about Puerto Rico was the culture shock. There was a lot of Spanish influence in the architecture, and many of the road signs were in Spanish.
However, because Puerto Rico is a United States territory, there was a lot of visible American influence, which I thought made for a very interesting blend of cultures.
A major focus of our trip was service work, so while we were there we worked with two different service groups, namely Enlace Cano Martin Pena and an Events Management graduate class from the university.
The first of the two we worked with was Enlace, whose goal is to one day clean up the heavily polluted Caño Martin Pena: a body of water that runs from San Juan Bay to the Laguna San Jose.
In our experience working with them, we went on a bicycle tour around the neighborhood affected by the pollution and worked on a service project, in which we worked in a community garden, setting up seed-beds and making signs. While working with the graduate class, we helped them advertise an event that they had been planning by handing out flyers in the surrounding area.
In addition to the service work, we visited a number of notable sites including El Yunque national rainforest, La Marquesa forest park in Guaynabo: where we were able to observe various exotic birds, and Old San Juan: the city’s historic district. We also had the opportunities to learn a little about the history of the island through our visits to the sugar cane and coffee plantations, as well as our “Birth of a Puerto Rican Nation” class, which was held by a professor from the Universidad del Sagrado Corazon.
This trip was big deal for me for a couple reasons. Not only was I going to be leaving the country for the first time in my life, but I was going to be experiencing another culture in person. Overall, I found our trip to Puerto Rico to be a very worthwhile, eye-opening experience that I’m very glad I went on, and I hope to one day be able to go back.
