By KRISTINA AMARAL
STAFF WRITER
Jackie Bellagamba, a junior transfer student at Rutgers University, is charitable compared to most college students.
This past July, the 20-year-old took a 15-hour plan ride to Australia in which she spent two weeks volunteering by planting trees.
Being in Australia with 15 other strangers allowed her to not only learn how to be eco-friendly but also to become more cultured and open-minded, she said.
“I realized this kind of moment would never really happen again. I was learning things that tourists who go to Australia would never experience. I was going through Australia with Australian leaders…it felt more like it wasn’t a vacation. I wasn’t a tourist. I was living there” she added.
While heading to Australia, she felt a little anxiety about leaving her family, but more so about meeting the 15 other people she would be living and working with, she said.
As a member of International Student Volunteers, Inc. (ISV), a nonprofit public benefit corporation in the United States, Bellagamba and her team focused on making the environment more eco-friendly.
Out in the mountains of Murrurrandi, a town with not over 50 residents, Bellagamba spent 4 to 5 days weeding, tearing down dead trees and planting new ones. For Bellagamba, it was the first time she felt connected to the earth.
“It was nice having my bare hands in the earth. The first day I thought it was going to be lame, but you grew to appreciate it more and more,” she said.
Bellagamba spent most of her time with the other volunteers, her two leaders and the older people at the sites. It was from these people that she learned about Australia’s history and its notorious delicacies such as fish and chips and kangaroo jerky.
Her second week was spent in Newcastle, Australia in which she stayed at what used to be an old nunnery, located next to a graveyard, she said.
Although her days consisted of planting more trees, she was still able to experience the Australian nightlife by going to Sydney, hanging out at local pubs and restaurants and experiencing a night sleeping in a hostile – a college style hotel, similar to dorming for only $30 a night.
As the journey came to an end, Bellagamba was more than ready to come back to the United States, “being with that many people, especially girls, when you don’t have the same ideas as the other people so it’s hard to be yourself.”
“ I loved the traveling part of it, the environmental part and the learning---but it was a one time thing,” she said.
Although she does not anticipate traveling abroad to volunteer again, she aspires to continue her charity work by working with animals next. |
