EMU students recently came back from a week-and-a-half long break that marked the halfway point of this year’s spring semester. Many students traveled away from campus to visit family, friends, or take a well-deserved vacation after working hard for the first few months of the semester. 22 such students spent their spring break exploring the country of El Salvador.
During the fall semester, senior Isaac Andreas had conversations with friends about wanting to visit the intercultural group that would be in Guatemala this spring. Over Christmas break, he decided to look into flights. “We were monitoring tickets and nothing seemed very cheap,” Andreas said.
With seemingly no luck at finding affordable tickets to Guatemala, he widened the search to more of Central America. “We decided on San Salvador because the tickets were $133, they used USD, it used less carbon, and their economy relied more on tourism so we would have more impact on local communities.” So Andreas got tickets, and began to reach out to people he knew would want to come along.
Out of the 22 people who ended up going on the trip, a few had never traveled outside of the U.S. before. First year Anna Tieszen said this about her experience traveling abroad for the first time: “There were definitely times when I felt a little unsafe, but overall I was really grateful for the chance to be immersed in a new culture.”
Communication and safety were the biggest priorities of Andreas when he was planning this trip, as San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, was only recently released of its title of “Most Dangerous City in the World.” After getting everyone in the group local SIM cards and heading away from the capital city, Andreas was able to take a deep breath and really enjoy the trip.
Students traveled the country by bus, foot, or back of pick-up truck, and explored the local scenery by hiking up a volcano and swimming at the beach. Junior Lindsey White was a part of the intercultural group in Thailand last semester, and reflected on the differences she felt between Thailand and El Salvador. “I really enjoyed communicating with the locals,” White said. “Especially after Thailand and only being able to talk with a person if they spoke English, being able to communicate in Spanish was super freeing and lessened the power dynamic.”
During the spring semester of 2020, senior Andrea Troyer was part of the Guatemala intercultural that was cut short due to COVID-19. “I felt this immense joy that I haven’t had in a while,” Troyer said, when asked about how she felt on the trip over spring break. “After not getting the full experience in Guatemala, El Salvador was another chance to experience the awesome way of living that Central Americans have.”
Part of that way of living is the great food, which everyone experienced plenty of. But unfortunately, some of that food caused some health complications. Just two days before the end of the trip, five of the students got food poisoning from a pupusa stand.
Junior Veronica Horst got the worst of it. After having trouble falling asleep due to stomach pains, Horst’s food poisoning hit with a vengeance in the middle of the night. “I threw up six times over the course of sevenor eight hours and didn’t fully recover until getting back to EMU, so yeah… I’d say that was the worst part of the trip for me.”
But although the back half of her trip was ruined, Horst still had a wonderful trip in the days before, citing interactions with locals as her favorite part. “I was continuously reminded of how much goes on in peoples’ lives that we simply have no way of knowing about. Learning even just bits and pieces of peoples’ stories creates really cool connections!”
