Finding the spring in Spring Break
Many student organizations at USU will be opting out of the cold and windy weather of Logan for a warmer Spring Break involving rock climbing and hiking across the red rocks, sun tanning on white beaches, snorkeling in the ocean and engaging in various service projects.
Emily Blotter, a senior majoring in biochemistry, arrived in Maui, Hawaii, last week, along with 60 other sun seekers.
“I’m just excited to see the sun and have nothing to do with school for a week,” Blotter said. “I graduate in May so I just need a break.”
Blotter said most of the people in Hawaii with her heard about the trip by word-of-mouth. The trip was organized by Daniel Barrello, a USU graduate who works as a travel agent.
Before working as a travel agent, Barrello said he planned trips to Jamaica, Oahu, Cancun, Playa del Carmen and an annual Havasupai hike. Last summer, Barrello and a friend went around the world using $2,000 in airfare vouchers. By mid-March, he said, he will have traveled around the globe twice.
“Guess I just don’t have the ability to stay put,” Barrello said. “In the beginning, motivation for planning was self-centered. Back in high school, homework was virtually non-existent, and my mind was free to dream up experiences I was dying to have.
“Nowadays, motivation is somewhat the same but with a twist. Corny as it may sound, I have come to believe that travel is essential to true education. Traveling has provided some of the most pivotal experiences in my life.”
Drawing from his travel experiences, Barrello said he believes to be competitive in the global market, individuals must have a global awareness.
“Americans sometimes are seen as ignorant, rude and just plain out of touch with the rest of the globe,” he said. “I realize the party in Maui this break probably won’t give anyone the experience of canoeing across the Okavango Delta with a native, but at least it gets them off the motherland.”
The Maui trip has a price tag of about $640 per person, Barrello said, adding that he’s found condos equipped with kitchens and a fleet of minivans to accommodate travel. Individuals will provide their own food, however.
Spencer Pugmire, a senior majoring in biology, said he went to Oahu with Barrello two years ago.
“The memories from last time are just so vivid,” Pugmire said. “It’s funny because it’s only a week long, but I will never forget Hawaii. I love the hikes. It’s so beautiful with the jungles — there are no scary bugs like Africa — but everywhere you turn it’s beautiful and always a picturesque moment.”
This isn’t the first out-of-country Spring Break trip Blotter has taken. She said last year she traveled to Tijuana, Mexico, for a humanitarian trip with the Charity Anywhere Foundation.
“I was debating to go to Hawaii or Mexico this year,” Blotter said. “I would love to go to Mexico again. I learned about different cultures and how everyone is the same but also unique. It was fun to be immersed in that culture. The friends that I met there (were) the best because that kind of activity drew in similar types of people.”
Gordon Carter, the president and founder of the Charity Anywhere Foundation, said six or seven years ago USU students who had volunteered in the past started a new club chapter.
Kaden Harding, a senior majoring in biochemistry, has been the club president of USU’s chapter of Charity Anywhere for more than a year. Harding said he has traveled to Mexico with the foundation four times and has developed a love for providing service.
“It’s really fulfilling,” Harding said. “You get to forget about yourself, school and life and just give your time to other people. One thing I’ve enjoyed is learning from the other volunteers and seeing how much joy they get from helping others.”
While in Tijuana, volunteers build houses for the poor and perform dental work, Carter said.
“This is not a classy, fancy or highbrow type of experience. We stretch the dollar as much as we can,” he said. “We are mostly about work, but we will probably go play soccer with some local kids or go to the beach.”
According to Charity Anywhere’s website, the mission statement of the foundation is “to give ordinary people the life-changing opportunity to provide needed medical care, dental services and basic shelter to less-developed countries, while concurrently forever changing the mind and heart of the volunteer for good.”
“It’s an opportunity to experience something outside of yourself,” Harding said.
Members of another USU organization, the Outdoor Recreation Program, have planned a service-learning trip to Moab this Spring Break. Senior Paul Jones, a psychology major, and senior Walter Gould, a pre-veterinary student, are the ORP trip coordinators who planned the venture.
“A lot of students that come to USU don’t realize the resources Utah has,” Jones said. “(The) ORP’s mission statement is to provide adventure and discovery for USU students.”
Saturday, USU students will load into a bus and ride to Moab where they will have six days of hiking in places like Arches National Park, rafting the Colorado River and aiding Rim to Rim Restoration, a local Moab nonprofit organization, with revegetation efforts, Gould said.
Participants will spend time together in the evenings and mornings, but during the day they will split into three groups that attend separate block activities. Each block is two days and will be led by student trip leaders who are certified wilderness first responders.
“You don’t have to be an employee of the ORP to be a trip leader,” Gould said. “It gives students an opportunity to get out there and adopt a leadership role.”
Gould said ORP program coordinator Brian Shirley is the driving force behind the idea of an annual service-learning trip to Moab for Spring Break.
“It’s always nice to get on the ground floor of a beginning tradition,” Gould said. “This is intended to happen yearly, so to be in the middle of the first one is pretty cool.”
“I can say it in two words, ‘Hell yeah,'” Jones said. “I am dying to leave the snow and ice. It’s going to feel great to feel the sun on your skin and get a tan and even a sunburn. I just want to get out of the freezer.”
– kristi.j.lambert@aggiemail.usu.edu