Day 2: Orientation

Not much happened today here in Miami Florida, however, because of the ease of the day provided, I was able to interact with some of my peers and get to learn more about them. It's crazy, when you come to national events, how different we all are and the cultures we come from, even within the states. When having casual conversation some individuals find the terms and phrases that are common in Michigan to be unique. For instance, the great carbonated beverage debate on whether or not it's called soda, pop, or coke is clearly regionalized. Not only this, Euchre is an unheard of term in many states. There are 75 individuals on this trip and just 8 knew how to play, many of which were from Ohio. You can always tell when you're playing Euchre with someone from Ohio, in Michigan many use both of the 5's to keep score, but in Ohio they use the 6 and the 4, and the four must be placed on top of the 6.

The hotel we are staying at also has an interesting layout. You see, one of my peers, Robbie, discovered that there is a pipe in the ceiling that is open for liquids to drain through into your sink below this pipe. Yeah, I know strange to me too.

When we didn't have down time we were learning about stereotypes that other countries perceive about US travelers. Some of the things that stood out to me was our clothing style being dressed down, our loud and outgoing personalities, and we smile too much. We also learned about what is it like to be a good host and guest, discovered who will be in our small groups, and even came up with team names. Ya girl is part of the Winner-rich's group because we were the first group to finish our puzzle and our team leader is Ashli Weinrich. We received a t-shirt and booklet during this time, containing all of our information needed for the trip. It also included our CQ (Cultural quotient) results to see where we fall as an individual in our ability to recognize, adapt, and talk about culture. I even got to do some Spanish Smack Down to determine I am one of the worst in the group when it comes to knowing Spanish vocabulary. We played twice and your girl got 54th and 70th out of 75. Turns out not taking Spanish in high school didn't help me much on this trip 🤷

Some of the best memories from today was I learned a new line dance, which I am still figuring out what song that was so I can take it back home to MI and teach y'all, and a new game called Questions Only. I am so behind excited to be enjoying this experience and already gaining knowledge I can take back into my hometown upon return.

Tomorrow we offically depart to Costa Rica and will arrive in country by 3:00 PM. Prayers for more safe travels would be appreciated 🙏

Update: Song name is "Church Clap"