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When I first heard that I was going to Jamaica to do some construction work, I had little idea what to expect. I expected there to be construction work, and I expected there to be Jamaicans, but everything else was shrouded in mystery. Having never been outside my own country before, I could only base my expectations on life in the United States, and surprisingly, my limited expectations weren’t too far off.

They watch television, they have cell phones, they play similar sports, they eat similar meals, and they drive just as much as we do—albeit with more liberal use of the horn. Though I had never before seen Jamaica or any other country in the Caribbean, it did not take much for me to pick up a sense of familiarity after arriving, which contributed in making the trip so much more enjoyable.

However, nothing made the trip more pleasant than the people we encountered. From the second we stepped out of the airport until about halfway through the week, people continued to welcome us to Jamaica, both with their words and their actions. The country’s hospitality showed us absolutely no leniency. No matter what the time or the location, it seemed that there was always someone nearby to offer a kind word or a helping hand. Of the dozens of people I encountered over the week, a man trying to sell me his products a bit overzealously was as unfriendly as it got.

The time and effort we spent constructing the bathroom for the primary school was rewarding both as a service for the school and as a means of enhancing my perspective of these sorts of projects. The type of work we did was tedious, repetitive, and taxing, which helped all the more to provide me with a better understanding of the amount of work that goes into the construction process when using less than optimal tools. Though mixing cement and bending rebar have no real correlation to my major, not once did I believe any of the work I was doing felt like a waste of time.

Overall, the trip was a wonderful experience that gave me some much-welcome insight on the world outside of my own country and the difficulty of construction work. Though I did learn a few aspects of Jamaican culture like language and food, it was the similarities between my culture and theirs that stood out to me the most. I have a feeling that this experience is one that I will always remember.