“I love you! I love you!” The little Honduran boy yelled those three little words again and again in his heavily accented English. After he had recently attached himself to my hip, I taught him how to say “te quiero” in my own dialect. He would not let me forget it. But after the long plane rides, the bug ridden beds, the longer car rides to the clinic, and the eight hour work days crushing and handing out pills, when my little Spanish “novio” said “I love you” it hit me. Being able to say “I love you” in any language is so important, but that little boy, and his fellow Honduran minions, had taught me how to say that tiny phrase with no words at all.

Frequently in my travels, details of different places have melted together to create a single Caribbean vacation. However, my journey, or perhaps pilgrimage, to Honduras was unlike anything else I had done. It was not a pilgrimage in common terms, but instead a pilgrimage of self-realization. It was a necessary journey to pull me out of my comfort zone and into a world so far from my life on Cape Cod. I was forced to see the poverty in the rest of the world, but more importantly I was given the chance to work with the Honduran people to make even the slightest bit of difference in their lives.

A year before, my mother had decided our family should go volunteer somewhere, a place where my father could doctor those less fortunate than us. I had let her wrangle over the details while I worried instead about getting report cards, riding my horse and attending to my social issues of sophomore year. But my mother’s idea now had us planted in front of the “clinic,” which was actually a one room school house. The “pharmacy,” where my brother and I would pass out medicine, was a table with suitcases full of pills and lotions stored beneath it.

My perception of the suffering country started even before my family and I arrived at the clinic. I watched men fight against the rising sun as they tirelessly picked bananas on a plantation. I was shocked as we drove by homes with no windows or doors, just holes to look or enter through. Rarely there were beds but instead the colorful hammocks that were sold to tourists like us. The contrast between the hammocks and the dirtiness of the surroundings was a common juxtaposition in Honduras. If there were dirty children playing in the dusty streets, each girl would be decorated with bright hair pieces.

The Honduran people are beautiful, with coffee skin and dark warm eyes. Those eyes met with mine a countless number of times, expressing their gratitude in a way our language barrier impeded us from doing so with words. Every time I handed a little baggy of chewable kid’s vitamins, or 60 tablets of ibuprofen, “Gracias” would come out of their mouths, but between the grasp of their hands on my arm or their simple nods of thanks, they said I love you.

However, it took the children of the town to teach me how to reciprocate this feeling of kinship and compassion. I learned how to master this by teaching them “Go fish.”

The boys and girls of Algodonal viewed me as a rock star. So when I attempted to teach them the simple game, they hung on to every word I spoke; it did not matter if they were three years old or seventeen. “Ve pescado?” I said hesitantly, and they giggled as I butchered my translations. But after an hour of struggle, the children finally understood and began to play without my aid. The kids clutched the cards like jewels, and watched me carefully to make sure I approved of their play. It was then, with all of us sitting in a circle in the dirt, that I felt it. One of the little girls had taken my hand as we played, and I squeezed it as she put down a pair. By teaching these children to play “Go fish” I had not said, Isn’t American entertainment awesome? Or Don’t forget to say thanks for teaching you this fun game. Or even Aren’t I a better person for giving these kids a fun time. I just said I love you.

This may come off as incredibly cliché, but this experience changed my life. I realized the world is a bigger place than I will ever understand but I want to explore it and make it better. I want to throw away my ignorance, and the belief that my problems are greater than those of humanity. I will be honest in saying that sometimes I put my misfortunes before others’. But it is a work in progress, and I continued on with the challenge this past summer when I went to stay in an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. As I sat with a boy there, making friendship bracelets, we said nothing to each other, but at the same time said I love you. The meaning of those three little words changed dramatically for me in Honduras, and most likely it will continue to change. But it is not important that we say it aloud for others to hear but that we show it through our actions so that others may feel it.