Service Trips vs Vacation- What’s the difference?

Imagine you’re lying down on your favorite beach towel. The warm sun dances across your back, white sand is beneath your toes. Fifteen feet from you is the entrance to the resort pool. You can hear the sound of children playing in the water, and adults gossip about people back home who weren’t as fortunate to be on the trip. In the opposite direction is the clear blue ocean that calls your name as the sun radiates down on you. Your piña colada in a real coconut sits next to you, ice cold and sweet like sugar. This is day two of your vacation, and you’re already thinking of missing your flight home at the end of the week.

Piña Colada on the white sandy beaches in the Dominican Republic

Now you are sitting in an elementary school in the North Coast of the Dominican Republic. Across from you is an eight year old girl, trying to memorize how to say “Hi, how are you,” in English. You hold cards with two cartoon characters having a conversation in English, you use them to help teach the young girl. She smiles. Slowly she says, “Hi, how are you?” With a smile and giggle of joy, she gets up runs around the small desk and hugs you. You pull away and reach out your hand for a high five. You smile to yourself. You helped change a life today positively.

As someone who has been to a Caribbean island for both vacation at a resort and for a service trip, I am here to tell you that both experiences are rewarding in their own ways. To begin, with vacations, the motivation to take one is to relax, spend some time in the sunlight, get a break from the workload you have back at home, and spend quality time with either yourself or those you go with. On a typical day, you can spend time taking surfing lessons, splashing around in the ocean, basking in the sunlight to get the perfect tan, visiting the resort swim up bar for a Piña Colada (as long as you are legal age), and the list goes on. Along the way, pictures are taken to make the perfect scrapbook of the trip for you to look back on fifteen years later.

In Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, I spent time from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the beautiful beaches in the private seating area for the resort. Sipping on tropical drinks (yes, I was 18- their legal drinking age) and reading my favorite Colleen Hoover book, Maybe Someday, in the sunlight. A very different experience from my service trip to the Dominican Republic.

American student teaching a Dominican Republic student english

In a typical service trip, while you are able to spend free time doing recreational activities such as surfing lessons, walks through local towns, and boat rides through lagoons; most of your time will be spent preparing and completing service at different locations. Instead of basking in the sunlight, you will be sweating as you plant ginger and cocoa plants deep in the forests of the country. You won’t be spending your time sipping on Mojitos, but instead drinking plenty of water after building a bench for a local environmental school. And while this seems like a lot more work, in my opinion, it is a lot more rewarding. I am not knocking vacations spent at resorts. Service trips just allow you to have both, and are the ideal situation for those who, like myself, spend some time during their trip at a resort thinking about those on the same island who have less than myself.

Overall, in the end, whether you are wanting to spend time laying on the beach or teaching an elementary level student English, the Dominican Republic is the place for you to create the memories that will last you a lifetime.