Emily Rachelle Writes

Today we end the 30 Day Challenge, which has certainly taken much longer for me than 30 days or even 30 weeks.  However, I've managed to pull through and complete it, so I'm happy with how it went.  If you'd like to read the previous days, just scroll down until you see my cloud of tags or post categories in the right-hand sidebar and click on "30 Day Challenge."

Read A Summary, Part One ; A Summary, Part Two ; Lessons Learned ; and Dominica vs. America. the campsite we stayed on and ran for the dominicans

Read A Summary, Part One ; A Summary, Part Two ; and Lessons Learned . On July 31 at 11:16 PM while on the last flight home, I wrote a comparison between Dominica and America.  All week I'd been keeping a list of categories with noticeable differences and paying close attention during my conversations with the Dominican campers.  Obviously, this is not a comprehensive list.  A person can't learn everything about a culture in only ten days, and I can't share every single detail I did learn - it's simply too much, and a lot has to be learned firsthand through experience.  Below is what I did share in my final journal entry.

Read A Summary, Part One  and A Summary, Part Two . On July 27 at 5:58 PM I wrote this in my Mission Trip 2012 journal: Today was... interesting. Definitely busy, but not the good kind of busy.  Lunch was good - fish cooked three ways.  I learned Americans, myself included, don't like breadfruit.  Then during free time was the girls' hike, and that's when things went south.  The hike was divided in half so those who wanted could go back to camp midway.  By the time we got to that point I was out of breath and very weak and tired, so I went with Jonathan, Katie, Andrew, Ashlee, Alex, Adina, Zach, and later Mrs. Bartow.  I never made it back to camp - I pretty much collapsed on the side of the road. 

Read A Summary, Part One. July 27 6:17 AM  Adina and I get up for the sunrise to see only a golden glow through all the clouds.  The world is wet and it rains again. 11:25 AM   More rain, camp games, and Dominicans using my camera.  They love taking photos!

As many of you know, I just got back very early yesterday morning from a ten-day mission trip to the island of Dominica.  When you spend ten very busy days with almost thirty other people immersed in a third-world island country - no cell phone, internet, computer, television, air conditioning, or hot water; plenty of bugs, sweat, heat, strange foods, new people, new lingo (but thankfully still English) - it takes time to adjust to your life. A simple example is the fact that I'm writing this post in August wearing long socks, a wool head wrap, and a hoodie because the air conditioning is freezing my nose off. All that to say: I'll try my best to share my experience with my lovely readers, but you really had to be there.

As you read this, I am either on a plane or in an airport somewhere between Georgia and the tiny third-world island nation of Dominica, where I will be spending the rest of July, along with twenty-one other teenagers and five adults from my church. We'll be helping the Cornelius missionary family host a VBS-style summer camp for native children, as well as helping around the church with services, maintenance, and anything else they need.