Here I am, sitting down again at the laptop,at the resort I am staying in, trying to reconcile the truth to how I feel…I met a little boy today who made it hard to accept…
I watched him the whole morning. He had orange hair and a distended belly under his threadbare t-shirt. His shoes didn’t match, and he was filthy. His hair was orange because he eats the food out at the dump and his belly is big because
Hello!You are receiving this email because you had signed up for LiveDifferent (formerly Absolute) Leadership Development’s email newsletter list in the past (probably at a school presentation or through our website). We have not sent out newsletters very regularly in the past, and if you do not remember who we are, LiveDifferent (formerly Absolute) is a charity organization that speaks a message of hope and purpose through our school Motivational Experience, and takes hundreds of students to do humanitarian work in developing nations on our Hero Holiday trips. Now we have a new website that will help us send out newsletters regularly, so expect to hear from us more often from now on and we will keep you informed of what is happening with our cause! Our new website is LiveDifferent (formerly Absolute).org.
Hey, everyone. Loving all your comments. I’m still trying to get the printer working. Might have something to do with an unnamed someone who dragged the hockey bag container the printer down a flight of stairs 
Tomorrow I hope to print off all the comments. If you post a comment and don’t see it right away, you don’t have to post it again. All comments go into a queue for approval before being posted so it might take a couple of hours for it to show up.
I have a new friend: his name is Beto, and he is the boss man out at a dump where I am taking a group of Hero Holiday students everyday this week. We go to the dump and we hand out groceries, meet the Haitian refugees that are there, and we learn to see life from where they are and realize that we are not all that different.
Today, Beto wrecked my world. He has kind eyes, and when he smiles, I see someone who
Lots of busy little bees at this work site today. I think the kids in the village have multiplied abundantly since last summer! They are so cute. We taught them how to twist rebar and put the smooth layer on the bricks upstairs. They were covered from head to toe in cement! Had some good trench diggers today. Most of them were girls. They are pretty good at swinging those pickaxes. Everyone came home with all limbs and fingers attached
Yep, we feed them too!
Hola, amigos! I can’t believe the amount of work completed already. These guys are machines! I guess pics are the best way to show what’s going on, so here you go!
Team Five jumped on the bus to Santiago yesterday to visit a little orphange tucked away in the middle of the city. This facility is government-run and resources are few. There are 33 children currently living in one room the size of some people’s living room/dining room. There are 70 more kids on the waiting list. The exciting news is that they have been given a brand new building on the adjoining property. It is beautiful. They move in one month.
The unique thing about this orphanage is that most of these kids have parents who are still living. These kids have all been abandoned by their parents due the inability to care for them because they are special needs kids: Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Downs Syndrome. We have so many resources available in Canada that it can be so easy to judge these parents for giving up their children. However, when you understand the living conditions and obstacles that some of these parents face in order to survive, it makes a little more sense. I came away with the realization that life can sometimes be cruel. While we were there, a young mum came into the orphanage to visit her little one, who lay on the cot. She stayed there for a long time, holding the baby in her arms and looking into his eyes. I wondered about her life. What brought her to this place? Does it break her heart to say good-bye? Last week, while Charles met with Anna, the lady who runs this orphanage, a mum showed up, placed her baby on the doorstep and ran away. My heart is breaking into a million pieces because I know those mothers love their little ones so much that that did what they had to do to see them survive.
I am so proud of our students. You will hear me say this every day, but I can’t say it enough. They took these deformed kids who had no ability to communicate and loved them. They played with them, coaxed smiles out of them and fed them lunch. We were all a bit messy when it was over, but a garden hose and some cool, refreshing water did the trick! The kids loved it!
Sorry everyone! Internet was down all yesterday evening and has just been fixed. If there is ever a day where there is no blog update or your comments don’t appear, this is why. I promise we won’t disappear off the planet! I’ll write an extra long story today to make up for it
We believe that parents, friends, family and supporters back in Canada play a very important role in making Hero Holiday an incredible experience for our participants (after all you are the ones that will have to listen to their stories for hours on end) and through the use of this blog we try to do our best to make you feel a part of this experience (last year we had a video producer that made a number of amazing video montages as the trip progressed). To start our trips off this year I thought that you might like this interactive map of what we are doing:Click this link to go the full version on google mapsOn some of the areas you can zoom in quite far for a detailed view. More details and photos will be added to this map very soon!
Well, at least some of us slept this morning. The construction site next door began just as I lay my head on the pillow to have a little sleep. The weather is a bit “cool” today, only about 35 celsius today (45 with the humidex)! After lunch we all jumped on the trucks to take a tour of our projects for this summer.
1. School in Arroyo Seco
We are continuing our school project from last summer. When we pulled up to the school, we were a bit emotional, seeing the product of our labour and I think I even saw a few tears. After we left last summer, a few teams came through
