I'm richer than I thought

How was your spring break? Did you hit the beach? Head home for free laundry and balanced meals? Or, like me, did you do something more unusual, perhaps? \nWhile my friends headed to New Orleans, I headed to Central America with 25 other IU pre-med students. We traveled to Honduras with a team of doctors on a medical brigade. Although I tried to keep from forming expectations before the trip, I was still unprepared for what I encountered there. Honduras is poor. Honduras is hot. And Honduras is dusty. Picture any Clint Eastwood Western and you'll have an idea of the landscape. I've discovered that there's nothing like a week in a poor, hot and dusty third world country to make one appreciate all that American life has to offer. \nFirst of all, my concept of "clean" vs. "dirty" has changed forever. Pre-spring break, I didn't consider myself "clean" unless my shower included shampooing, conditioning, exfoliating, leg shaving and moisturizing. However, when my daily shower consisted of three minutes beneath an uncertain trickle of icy cold water, "clean" rapidly came to equal roughly, "most of the mud is rinsed off." Similarly, clean clothes become "any garment previously worn only once" -- bonus if all the dirt stains formed a pretty pattern.\nMy perception of "rich" vs. "poor" has similarly been altered. Poor people in Honduras (which means nearly everyone) don't have access to even the most primitive creature comforts such as indoor plumbing or climate control. Here in America, even the homeless can walk into a 7-Eleven to enjoy a little AC in the summer or use the bathroom in McDonald's. In my entire Honduran week I didn't enter one air-conditioned building, and outside the capitol city even the nicer private homes had outhouses.\nSomething else that proved difficult for me is that Hondurans don't speak English. I don't speak Spanish. Yet it's interesting how quickly one can grasp simple language skills if, for example, that's the only way to know exactly what you're ordering for lunch.\nAnd medical care? For all that we Americans like to kvetch about the sorry state of our health care system, the bottom line is that in the U.S. if you collapse on the street an ambulance will whisk you off to the nearest hospital within minutes. The doctors on our brigade treated people who had left their homes before dawn to hike hours through the mountains simply to beg for a little medicine to treat their children's chronic intestinal worms. There is no health care system in Honduras at all. \nNow that I am back in home in a "first world" country, I'm trying to apply a little of my Honduran experience to my everyday life. I take shorter showers. I amuse myself by tossing every Spanish word I learned into its appropriate place in otherwise English sentences. But I'd also like to think that I've gained an appreciation for how well off I truly am. It's not simply that I have clean clothes and air conditioning, but also a solid roof over my head, fluorinated, parasite-free water and immediate access to doctors of every kind. The list is endless.\nI spent a week completely outside my comfort zone, removed from everything familiar and taken for granted, including basic communication. It was an eye-opening, life changing experience that I can't wait to repeat, dirty clothes and all.