Who needs a schedule anyways? ME. That is who most certainly needs one. I thrive with routine, punctuality and above all; A SCHEDULE. While living in the United States my desire (i.e. need) for plans and specific time frames that correspond with those plans is rarely ever questioned. In fact, the overwhelming majority of my peers support me and see it as an expected part of life. It became all too apparent that what I had believed to be “common sense” was far from that for my new Nicaraguan friends. I was challenged to see that people can feel successful, productive and worry-free with or with-out a concrete schedule/plan for  the day. I saw that people could also feel lazy, stressed or disorganized without a schedule. This forced me to see American “productivity” in a new light. Our success through out each day is often measured by the number of things we checked off of our list in the shortest amount of time (I know you college students out there understand that one all too well). However, there is no correlation to success and punctuality/scheduling here. This has stretched me greatly. Mainly because it forced me to see that I had somehow allowed personal success to mean something that I could not achieve in this culture. Coming to Nicaragua to intern on a pineapple farm in Nicaragua had meant in my mind that I would be able to serve the locals and the farm well, learn, and gain new insights – all while being actively “productive”. I am still in the midst of this “slow paced” life driving me a bit stir crazy. But, at the end of each day I feel myself one step closer to seeing the value in this style of living, respecting the culture, the people and their decisions (even if they are far from what I am accustomed to).

Megan