Perfecting my Spanish and my Life in Honduras

Of course I would make a stand with the men of Villa Verde. The noise of it was deafening. The wind it generated roared though the draw below the house, and whipped past me hot and dry. I stared across the river and watched it serpentine through the canopy. The forest fire grew, exploded, and then retracted as if planning its next move. It consumed all in its path. Through tear clouded eyes I saw Luís approaching from the knot of village men. The patriarch asked me, “¿Va a ayudarnos en la mañana, Omar?” I looked back to the ridgeline. I felt the searing heat pass through me. Suddenly, the fire intensified, as if to challenge me. “Por supuesto, Luís. Estaré listo con el sol,” I responded.

I came to Honduras to perfect my language skills and to gain a more intimate knowledge of its culture. When I attained my Bachelor’s degree, I closed a chapter of my life. I wanted to know the man into whom I had grown. I thought this was going to mean sorting emotions, desires and experience. Never did I dream that it would mean summoning up my courage, facing my fears, and preparing to risk my life for others. The next morning, as sunlight began to bend over Montaña Verde, I stared up Celaque into the haze and destruction and realized that that was exactly what I was to do.

When I was seventeen, life passed like an abandoned raft I once saw on the river by my grandmother’s house. I watched as it floated effortlessly on the current and disappeared around the bend. High school never challenged me and college was being laid out by counselors, teachers and parents. Like the raft, which eventually would be barreling towards the small waterfall a few miles downstream, I was on a collision course with my first “life’s lesson:” that which you attempt...

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...oped part of the park to which much of the local economy is dependent.

In terms of the self, a summation of success and failure is no measure of worth, nor is it an accurate indicator of who we are. It is in the moment that we define ourselves. It is how we step up to a challenge that etches our identity into the mind’s eye of not only ourselves but of others as well. We are able to demonstrate integrity through the intention that we set to face this moment, and through the principles with which we execute this intention. When I returned from Honduras, I realized I left behind a part of me in the ashes. Anchored by the principle to place the needs of others first, I was able to stand against the tide of fear that once carried me along on a raft. I look forward to facing the challenges a career in law offers; they are but more opportunity to show my own integrity.