Writing essays is never easy, but have you tried writing one in your second or even third language? This is the challenge we posed to some of our advanced English language students at the end of this academic year. We asked one class to write about their day-to-day lives and what it is really like to be a teenager in Felipe Carrillo Puerto today. Essay writing is not part of the high school education here in Quintana Roo, so this was a new experience for most of the class. With the guidance of their fantastic teacher, Erick, the students learned how to develop an introduction and structure their writing to convey their message clearly and concisely. We had originally intended to select a winning composition and publish the essay as a blog post about life here for our students. However, we couldn’t pick one  when we saw the high quality of submissions from the students, with great writing covering a number of different aspects of their experiences. In the end we narrowed the choice down to our four favorite essays but felt each deserved to be published for different reasons.

Below you can find links to each of the four winning essays. We hope you find their insights into Carrillo as enlightening as we did.