Post Trip Thoughts: Never Only One Way (Britton)

It has been roughly two weeks since we have arrived back home. While I was in Belize I have learned a lot not only about the country, but about myself as well. There were so many AMAZING experiences that happened in the short amount of time that we were in Belize.

During the reflection with Dr. McCubbins, He had laid out a bunch of post cards with different pictures on them. We were to pick a card that explained what he had done/ learned from the day. The post card that stood out the most to me was one with a road sign that said "one way". During the day I realized there is never just one way of doing something. 

The Most Important concept that I picked up from Belize, is the ides that there is never only one way to do things.

The first time I came into contact with this Idea was at Mr. Polo's farm. On his family's farm they raise over 26 products to be able to sell and make a living from. This is different than in the United States where there are a lot of monocrop farms that raise and sell one product. Mr. Polo and his family were really welcoming to us and were open when telling us about their farm and their products. They have so many products that sometimes not everything gets harvested on time. 

The second farm that we toured was Mr. Rudolpho's beef cattle farm (I talked about this in one of my previous blog posts). I had an ability to connect with Mr. Rudolpho because we are both beef cattle producers. He raises Brahma cattle, even though they are not the highest quality breed, they are the only breed that Guatemala will buy. This was new to me, being that even though back home (in the US) we raise a lot of angus cattle for their good quality meat. This is when I realized that something that is good in one place might not be good in a different place.  The same one item might not mean anything to people in one community, but in another community it means a lot more. 

I think that I was better able to take in my surroundings once I realized that there is never one way from doing something. 

Britton is an agricultural extension education major at Penn State