"A monumental part of me being here was the Costa Rica trip," I smile as Ms. Lopaz, or Lopaz as I call her, states this with alacrity, "All these people told me it was too expensive, that we didn’t have enough time to fundraise money for all the kids, and that I was in over my head, and I just kept thinking 'I can do it.' No one had used the word impossible.”
"Talking about Costa Rica, what made you want to do the trip?" I ask as she clicks around on her sleek silver computer, her brown bangs falling in her eyes, which she brushed away in an attempt to titivate herself. The small cluttered office around us is full of the same warmth and love as any person's home.
"I love traveling and I wanted to do it with students because it hadn’t really been done,” I smiled as one word, determination, came into mind, “I'm competitive so as people were saying I couldn’t do it, I was all 'well yeah, I think I can do it.' It just felt like such a unique opportunity and authentic place for learning. The students could learn about nature, the environment and currency without having to sit in a classroom all day." Not only could I hear the determination in her voice now, I could also see it on her face. It was the same face she bore at the first meeting for the trip. Both of us were extremely competitive and loved the look on peoples’ faces when we completely blew them away, when we accomplished something they defined as “impossible”.
"How did you feel when you realized we were actually going to Costa Rica?" I say, trying not to be loquacious when I asked the question as my mind came up with more.
"I felt that feeling of 'I can’t believe this'. We spent so much time figuring out all the ways to fundraise so we could go that I didn’t take enough time to realize what a great experience we were going to have there,” I nodded in agreement. It's strange how when we were fundraising for Costa Rica I never once said to myself 'what if this doesn't happen?' There was no 'what if'. There was no 'isn't going to happen'. There were only the words “Costa Rica” implanted in my mind. But sitting here with Lopaz I realized how many things I had overlooked. But maybe, that was for the better. Maybe without all the 'what ifs' and 'isn't going to happens' I wouldn't have worked nearly as hard. It was because of her and Ms. Weisberg’s blatant display of faith in us that we got to go. Suddenly Lopaz passes me a sheet of paper, the movement of her arms moving towards me dragging me out of my thoughts and into reality.
"It's about a moment in Costa Rica," she states as the passes into my hands, still warm, a chocolate chip cookie hot out of the oven that I couldn’t wait to have fill me up.
"In over our heads," the title blares out. Silently I read, laughing to myself as I remember the crazy bus driver who drove through the river when the bridge was shut down and the noisy discussion of the latest scuttlebutt being overruled by piercing screams as we wobbled in the white water, our faces as white as a group of ghosts, but the memories became fugacious when my eyes reached the last paragraph:
As I think back to the interview on that bus, and the number of times Amy used the word “overwhelmed.” Looking back, I think that perhaps Amy and I were in over our heads. But then I remember the giant smiles plastered across our students’ faces as they finished their last zip line, and I wonder if we would have had it any other way.
Overwhelmed, I mouth as I finish. The single word made me realize how much she and "Amy" (Ms. Weisberg) had done for us students. Ms. Lopaz once told me that her goal as a Director was to ensure that students love school, and she had really made that true for me. She truly had redefined the impossible and started my initial drive.
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