I have visited/been a tourist a couple of countries in Latin America including Panama, Venezuela and Colombia. Panama I’ve visited multiple times. The first was probably the most memorable. I was around eight and my family and I were visiting a costal town really close to the division between Colombia and Panama. Somehow my family ended up in this tiny “lancha” motor canoe that fit around eight people and we just went to Panama for a couple of days. It took fifteen minutes to get there and I remember it being such a fun experience cause it was raining hard and the boat was close to tipping over. I was little, so I was not too aware of my experience as a tourist.

However, now thinking about my different experiences the word “tourist” is an interesting one for me, because it is not about being in a place you’re not from, but more about how you feel about the people in that place.

Capurgana, near the Colombian-Panamanian border.

I mentioned Colombia as one of the places I’ve visited because even though I was born in Colombia, the country is so large and diverse that I have felt like a tourist many times while I traveling within it. My experience in Venezuela was completely different I went when I was older and I got to experience the lack of products in stores and supermarkets as a result of government policies. It was interesting because although the situation was not as difficult as the media made it out to be, it was clear that many locations were really under stocked or they only had one brand of each product. I really felt like a tourist there because I didn’t not share the same struggle this people had with food. I had all the food I wanted, because I was just ate out and once we left the issue completely disappeared from my mind. I think this shows that  being a tourist has to do with how you feel about the place, but mostly the people in it.

CARACAS, VENEZUELA – JANUARY 13: A shopper walks past nearly empty shelves at a supermarket due to a long term shortage in Caracas, Venezuela on January 13, 2015. Sliding oil prices have sent Venezuela on a downward spiral and sent President Nicolas Maduro on a trip to China to make an urgent appeal for cash. Country’s economic woes have triggered severe shortages of some staple product, with government-controlled supermarkets now limiting the amount of certain products customers can purchase. (Photo by Carlos Becerra/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

The volunteer work I’ve done outside of the United States was in Colombia. I worked with a couple of the low resource schools in impoverished areas of the city of Medellin in order to provide them with children’s books. The books were donated from people in my high school and community. I took them to the schools in Colombia to supply their English classrooms. As I visited the schools I also got to work with some of the kids and that was an awesome experience, because seeing their happy faces as they played with the brand new books felt great.