{"id":2267,"date":"2012-02-13T16:36:48","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T16:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.globalroutes.org\/?p=2267"},"modified":"2012-02-13T16:36:48","modified_gmt":"2012-02-13T16:36:48","slug":"pick-up-the-trash-and-change-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/2012\/02\/13\/pick-up-the-trash-and-change-your-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Pick up the Trash and Change Your Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m so glad I picked up that piece of trash.<\/p>\n

I was a junior at the hyper-competitive Boston Latin School and I was racing down the hall to my next class.\u00a0I hated the drudgery of my high school life and its monomaniacal focus on getting into college, I had virtually no intellectual or political passions, I felt uninspired and lost, and I was grasping for identity. Looking back on it, I was a pretty melodramatic teenager, but aren’t we all?<\/p>\n

I spotted a rumpled, footprint-laden flyer on the ground in front of the guidance counselor’s office, with an image of African plains on it, and picked it up. It was a Global Routes pamphlet, advertising a community service trip to Kenya that would combine a stay in a rural village with a safari (I still remember the phrase “stargaze at the Serengeti”).<\/p>\n

\n
\"Sam<\/a>
Sam in Kenya<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

I have no idea why it was on the ground or where it came from, but it was one of those auspicious moments that I immediately recognized would alter the course of my life. It was just what I was looking for: something that would challenge me, expose me to a new environment (I had never travelled outside of the US, let alone lived for a month in a mud hut with no electricity or running water), and afford me the opportunity to make some small difference in the lives of other people. Also, I thought stargazing at the Serengeti would be pretty cool.And here’s the amazing thing: it changed my life ten times more than I even anticipated it might. It was the first time I’d ever been exposed to dire, life-threatening poverty, and it awoke a consciousness in me that I don’t think will ever go away: that such realities really do exist — they’re not just clich\u00e9s your parents spout when you won’t eat your broccoli — and that we have some responsibility to do what we can to alleviate these problems. It exposed me to a radically different culture — a slow-paced, tight-knit village whose inhabitants had their share of problems (alcoholism, child and animal abuse, etc) but who seemed to value laughter, dance, storytelling, and community soccer games a lot more than material things (this was particularly eye-opening for me, a consummate materialist who obsessed over my wardrobe and the latest gadgets — and to some degree, still do). Most importantly — and here I credit my trip leaders Devin and Josh — it taught me how to question things, like,\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0question things. I remember thinking, at one point towards the end of my trip, that Global Routes had lifted a veil from my face and allowed me to see the world — in its infinite complexity, chaos, and color — for the first time. Yes, I was a melodramatic teen, but that’s how it really felt!<\/p>\n

\"Sam<\/a>I’ve chosen to be a writer and journalist — basically, to professionally question and make sense of the world — and I love it. If it weren’t for Global Routes, I’d probably have gone to business school or law school — that’s certainly the track I thought I was on before I saw that rumpled flyer. There’s so much more I can say about Global Routes, but I don’t want to — I want you to experience it for yourself. Sign up but beware: it’s guaranteed to change your life.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m so glad I picked up that piece of trash. I was a junior at the hyper-competitive Boston Latin School and I was racing down the hall to my next class.\u00a0I hated the drudgery of my high school life and its monomaniacal focus on getting into college, I had virtually no intellectual or political passions, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni","category-globalroutes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}