Original: So Here I am

My name is Olivia Talevi, but everyone just calls me Liv. I come from Wells, Maine which is a small town in southern Maine, 40 minutes from Portland. My parents own a campground in our town, so I grew up surrounded by seasonal friends and almost lived in a summer camp. However since my parents had the winters off we spent it traveling, and that made me love this beautiful world we live in and it made me love exploring it.

I have been to Central America a handful of times, specifically Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. My family tends to prefer renting houses in the heart of town, in order to immerse ourselves into the culture and everydayness of the place we are. There is so much to be learned from watching and interacting with the local people and places of a new country. This has been a life changing experience for me because it made me realize how happiness and gratitude is not expressed or gotten through material things. The natives of Nosara, Costa Rica are not bathing in material items, or expensive clothes, they are getting through by fishing for their dinner for the night, and they are the friendliest, happiest people I have ever met.

This class excites me because I will hopefully be able to read other peoples stories about their adventures and learn something from it. I am nervous about the workload, that is not super specific to this class but just in general since its my first year at college, I am a little worried about the amount of work I will have to do night to night. I know this course is about travel, but after today I realize it is going to be more than just writing out my experience and i’m actually excited about that because I did a little bit of analysis in high school and I liked it. I hope to really improve my writing skills during this class, I think that writing is very important and a great skill to master for the future, because things can come across the way you need and want them to when you know how to write it. Overall creating and working on the skill of writing is my goal for this class, so I am hoping that will happen.