“An amazing experience.. worth every cent and hour I put into it”
This journey was one of the most, if not the most, fulfilling experience of my life. It is an amazing experience that will stay with me for the rest of my life and enhanced my qualities of life that are so important such as leadership, and will help shape me as a person for who I am for the rest of my life. This experience also taught me how to truly appreciate what I have and how lucky I am to live in one of the top countries in the world. Especially when there are so many people in Poland who live the same kind of lifestyle that we do in Canada. Yet there is such extreme poverty in so many places at the same time and this is what makes it so much for real for someone like myself because it is easy to connect with.
The people that you meet on this experience are amazing because there are so many people within months of death yet they are so full of life and it is truly something special. These kids make you realize how truly precious life is and how it can all disappear so fast and one of the most important things that they have taught me was to live life how you want to live it and not how other people want you to live it.
One of the things that is really tough on this trip is that there are so many kids with diseases that make them look completely healthy and its tough to imagine that they might not be on the Earth in a couple of months when they look the same as you. The way that you have to adjust to each kid’s personality is something that is difficult to do as well. This is because there are so many kids who, when you walk through the door, will want to talk to you and say hello and will want to play with you. Yet there are also a lot who are very timid and only really communicate with there parents, like Adrian for example a boy who was four years old and had cancer. He was the shyest kid that I met all trip and only wanted to really talk to his mom and dad and also had a really tough time warming up to us at all and expressing his gratitude for bringing a bike amongst other toys. The thing is though we were able to tell how excited he really was when we made his dream come true. The thing that Adrian and all of the other kids that we met made me discover is the true value of family and how, when your friends aren’t there, your family will always be there for you no matter what you do or what happens to you. As well, not to take your family for granted because they will be the ones you can always rely on.
I would recommend this trip to anyone that asks me about it and I plan on telling a lot of people to try to do this trip. I also hope that I can give a presentation along with many of the other kids I went with to our school to show them what an enriching experience this is and that anyone can do it. Although raising thirty six hundred dollars sounds like a lot of money it really isn’t as tough as it seems because there are a lot of people out there who are willing to give sponsorship for kids doing this trip. I for one left it to the last month and it was nerve racking but I was still able to raise all of the money before I left and it was worth every cent and hour I put into it.
