I am back from Mexico! What an amazing experience! I hope every one travels out of the country at least once. I went straight from the airport to Costco. Wow, was that a shock. I had spent two weeks in Mexico seeing poorer people than I have ever seen before, people living in piles of trash off the sides of mountains and trying to feed themselves from the $0.70 they had earned that day, and now I was in a place with huge amounts of food, supersized furniture, and almost every luxury I could want. Costco had never looked so queasily extravagant. At first, it made me angry. Why was I here and they were there? I pondered as I ate a free sample. How do I settle my conscious over this? Should I give up every luxury and live as they do to even out the injustice? I couldn’t decide. As I looked out over all the varieties of cheddar crackers that came in packs of 100 and heard a disgruntled mother angrily complain to a bakery employee that a letter had been left out of her daughter’s name in icing on her birthday cake, I felt so… embarrassed…ashamed. Although these were uncomfortable feelings, I think it is good that I was exposed to another place to realize that the extravagant luxuries I was so used to being called “rights” in the U.S. really were incredible opportunities and, in some cases, obsessive trivialities. I’ve decided that the best thing to do is to use the amazing opportunities I have in the U.S. to help others as much I can. 
