My Last Blog, Ryan

So here it goes, my last official blog post of the first official DSBNi trip. The last 12 days have been...incredible. Like anything in life, it wasn't perfect, because if the world was perfect a trip like this one wouldn't be needed. We had had some fantastic highs, and some self-realising lows as well. Personally I believe that this trip has re-energized me. Things that used to take me down, like getting a bad grade, or a girl not liking me, you know, the things that teenagers view as "the world", suddenly seem incredibly unimportant. My world has increased to the size where things like that are a tiny speck compared to real issues. I am still a typical teenaged boy, but I also like to think of myself as a not so typical human being. What I am is not what makes me different. The people who surround me, the experiences I have had and what I have seen make me different. Before this trip, we were all 19 different people. We are still 19 different people, but we now all have an experience that makes us the same. For some of us, it was the people that changed us. For others it was the extreme poverty. I could go on forever, because every one of us has been changed by something different. We will all carry on our own lives as the different people that we are, but hopefully we will all continue to have this one experience in common as we live our lives. I am writing this post at 1 a.m. so I'm sure no one will read this until tomorrow, but I would like to thank every one of the 18 amazing people I shared the last 12 days with. Some of you inspired me, others supported me, and you all are now a part of me. I would like to thank you for everything you did for me, big or small. I feel like you have become my second family and I do not want to lose that now that we are home. If, for some reason, we do, I would like to say to each one of you, that each of you have changed me as much as the experience did. I could go on a million more trips, but not one would be the same as this one. Thank you for being a part of my life, and now a part of me.

Love, Ryan