“One, two, three, lift!” – Mexico Hero Holiday
BUILD BUILD BUILD!!! These past two days have contained nothing but, nailing, measuring, cutting, and painting. We arrived at the work sites around 9am Saturday morning, to see two separate slabs of cement and two piles of lumber awaiting our assembly. After a quick safety briefing we split into two teams, starting an instant rivalry. The first task included measuring and cutting the lumber to begin the layout. Team 1 (Heather, Kelsey, Kalia, Dylan, Brent, Ali, Keara, Isabel, Chelsea, Brooke, Robbie O, and Roberto) quickly split up into painters, cutters, and ‘layouters’. Working in our small groups we powered through and even got the family, as well as the neighbors, involved in the painting. The girls hopped on the chop saw and skill saw showing up the boys. Everyone couldn’t believe that we were finally building a house for the caring and deserving single mother and her three kids. By the end of the day we had almost had all the walls framed and painted, revving for more Sunday. Team 2 (Hannah, Emma, Madison, Lauren, Daniel, Giuliano, Mark, Megan, Mahsa, Alex, Andrew, Michelle, and Santi) quickly divided off into measurers, cutters, painters, and people in control of layout. We managed to get all of the family involved with all the tasks. Efficiently Team 2 managed to get all the trim painted, all the wood cut (the girls manned the power tools!), and parts of the roof painted. 
Getting to know the family, we played with the little girls, acting like monkeys we taught them their first English words “monkey lady.” As well, we played some soccer with the boys (wow they are good!). Despite the language barrier we managed to communicate with each other by actions, smiles and lots of laughing. We ended the day with applying the paneling onto the frame, prepping to raise the house Sunday morning. We still couldn’t believe that we were in Mexico building for this hardworking and passionate family. Some local families showed up to set up their markets, where many of us bought funky ponchos and local Mexican goodies. After a hard day work we went to relax on a beach close by, mainly washing off the paint and the dirt. What many thought were tan lines…were dirt lines! Back on the bus we headed home to clean up some more. For dinner we went to “Smokies” one of the local taco stands, all of us agreed that they were the best tacos we have ever had. Many of us having 4! For dessert we headed to the HUGE candy store next door having 4ft pinatas hanging from the ceiling, walls covered in Mexican candy, no one left empty handed. We also bought a Cinderella pinata for one of the little girls who’s birthday is tomorrow. After stuffing our faces with candy on the bus ride home, we were greeted by Abraham, a teacher from a local school, who has dedicated himself to teaching, this past year he has gone without pay from the government hoping to finally be payed this August, due to the complicated education system. Isabel kindly acted as our translator, many times forgetting which language she was addressing in. After a long day of hard work most of us chilled while others stared their chores. This contained Mahsa and Heather spilling the mop water EVERYWHERE!!!!! Hannah and Don quickly moved to rescue the new stereo, while Ali ran for towels. Once all the commotion died down people slowing started trickling off to bed, to prepare for another long and exciting day of building.Today was resurrection day. Both teams raised their houses before lunch, racing to see who would be the first. Team 2 succeeded with Team 1 not fair behind, as they had already painted their outside paneling. Throughout both work sites you could hear the phrase of “One, two, three, lift.” After all the hoisting and grunting the fun guns came out. Everyone was involved in the nail gunning of the houses, with many villainous and concerning laughing cackles. The houses were now in sturdy condition ready for the roof panels, but first came lunch. Once our bellies were full both teams set out to secure their roof paneling. Team 2 succeeded in also sheeting the roof and beginning to paint their exterior walls, which led to a huge paint and water fight. On Team 1’s job site we welcomed yet another kind helper by the name of Jonathan, a 16 year old boy, who thankfully spoke English. Yes!!!! As well as tickle fights began between the two girls and young boy. Before leaving the job sites both teams reflected on what they had accomplished in the past two days. With the houses now standing, it seems that as our houses grow so do our bonds with both families. Many smiles and laughs are abundant throughout the trip so far. Laughter is most definitely the universal language. Covered in paint and dirt we headed back to the home base again for clean up. One group has gone to the beach as the rest of us sit back and chill to some tunes, looking forward to our dinner of hamburgers and hot dogs. Construction = HUGE appetites. What an incredible two days it has been so far. All of us agree that we feel this trip is already too short. We are all itching to start again tomorrow.Until next time.Hasta luego.Hannah and Heather
The trip has began!Most of us started the journey with a 3:30AM wake up in order to make the 4:30AM airport meeting time. Our first flight was an exhausting 25 minutes, however, we managed to pass the time, and entertain our fellow passengers with doggy pile cuddles sessions. Arriving at the Seattle airport a little hungry (keara grumpy? whaaat) but we soon boarded the next flight to San Diego. We would say how long it was, but no one was conscience for entire duration. San Diego was our mini beach holiday prelude. After settling into the hotel and getting some groceries, we headed to the beach. There was tanning, soccer, football and wading to be enjoyed by all. Dinner was interesting. Not many places offer pizza, apple pie, and sushi all in one tray, but that’s an all you can eat oriental buffet for you. We all left full, if a little disoriented, and ready to enjoy our evening. Some of group went on a romantic sea side stroll, enjoying the art work, ambiance and cute rick shaw drivers (but not the Army naval ship). In an attempt to avoid some awkward romance, both Robby O and Guilano decided to go to the Padres baseball game, as did Meghan, Mark, Daniel and Alex. When asked about the game, Daniel responded “what baseball game?’Meghan responded with the more positive “mediocre at best”.
Today was spent mostly on the bus. Just after leaving San Diego we hit the Tijuana boarder. Luckily we passed the extensive “green light red light some god will smite you” test and passed without a problem. Everyone was struck by the difference of living standards as soon as we crossed to border. Driving beside the border we could see the large and tidy American homes complete with pools and green grass right beside the tin roof, graffiti ridden shanties on the other side of the fence. As we drove farther down the Coast though, it was easy to forget the poverty as we became preoccupied with the beautiful ocean views, and our Harry Potter audio books. The military check points were almost as eventful as the border crossing, and everyone we encountered was friendly. Stopping at gorgeous cliff overlooking some kind of sea food farm, we took a group picture and explored a little, finding a rusty playground to fool around on. After driving, and driving and just a bit of gravol induced slumber, we stopped at a road side taco stand. Any apprehensions of eating from a smokey open grill meat rack thingmabob, vanished with the first bite. Sliced and grilled steak on homemade tortillas, covered by salsa, “guac”, lime, hot sauce, onions and cilantro.After arriving at our home for the next eight days, we decided that we had enough time to go visit the families we are building for. Little kids ran out to meet our bus, excited to meet the gringos who were coming to build. The houses the families live in now are nothing more than cardboard and tarp with a dirt floor. Despite the small size and conditions, the families clearly have pride in what they have and kept their houses as neat as possible. An eye opening experience for North Van kids. We played with the kids, and have already started making friends despite the language barrier.We’re home now, enjoying some free time after our pizza and salad dinner and debriefing session. There are lots of games to play and computers to stay in touch with home. Everyone is looking forward to starting work tomorrow after a good nights rest tonight.Till next time!Keara and Madison.
There are many facts and insightful quotes that are recited to the youth of today, but these facts often ring in the empty heads of teens and lose their essential value. But I read one fact that I found riveting and eye opening. The fact that twenty-seven million slaves exist in a world I have prided myself with helping literally offends and disgusts me. I mean if you think about it, my city which has more people than I could ever hope to meet or understand in a hundred lifetime, is one twenty seventh the population of the world’s slaves. I cannot judge others and say they should be helping when they are oblivious to the cause. I can however, tell factual stories of my own encounters in various countries and hopefully sway the decision of these people from indifference to action.
I have been blessed, and gifted. This ability has granted me the ability to have profound insight on all experiences that shape my life. The first time I went and worked in Mexico I was dumbfounded and awestruck that a nation in which my family unloads so much material wealth into recreationally, in reality is starving just for our leftovers. Society plagues the youth of today into thinking that material gain and social status are the fundamental foundation to provide a long happy life. But societies vision is skewed. Prior to the experiences that LiveDifferent (formerly Absolute) provided to me I was lost. I was living in a world that seemed sheltering and almost imprisoning. My life was good, do not get me wrong. I have a solid family, amazing friends and a promising future. But there is more to life than the basics. I felt as though a huge component of my life was torn from me; as if some gaping hole had formed in my contentment that I did not know how to fill. I couldn’t ever quite describe the feeling I felt, and this only applies to me personally; not the general public, but the felling I now realize was essential meaninglessness. I felt as though my life held no purpose, and provided no change for the world. I felt as though no matter what I did, my life would not make a difference. Again it is a hard concept to explain, and to the recipients of this they might think I was depressed but this is not true. The trips I have gone on with Hero Holiday (this summer will be my fourth) have essentially lifted the shadowy veil of reality. The trips have shown me aspects of my own world I had only previously seen on television or newspapers. The kids I’ve played with, the fathers I’ve built homes for, the communities I’ve built schools for all have changed because of it. They are grateful and truly appreciate the gifts we have provided them with. This is one of the small facts that makes me allow myself a smile. I was a student who had just finished grade nine at a local Junior High. I used my parents’ money for my first trip, but once my eyes were opened I understood that in order for my change to matter I had to earn the right to help these people. For me to even begin to feel worthy of helping them I had to earn it. I worked for every single cent that I put into these trips and brought the leftover money with the intention of donating it for the last three years. 
The way I see it, I could spend money here in Edmonton on clothes, fancy food, or expensive clubs or movies… or I could literally keep food on a table that provides for three children. It was an easy choice. Last time I interned in Mexico I got very sick. There was some sort of virus not allowing water to get into my cells (the doctor explained). And it was explained to me in broken English while I lay there alone in the hospital that I might not make it. The thought terrified me. Even imagining never seeing my friends or family again makes me shudder. The reason I had received this lovely virus is because I worked too hard, sweated too much, and in my ‘brilliant intellect’ did not drink nearly enough water. I had no one to blame but myself, and that may have been the worst part. It’s a long story but nevertheless I got through it, and was allowed to leave the hospital later the day after.At first I was brought to the project in which my digging of the outhouse provided my sickness. A few of the other workers had happily finished the nearly completed hole in my absence out of respect to me; which was an amazing compliment. However the biggest compliment I have ever gotten was when I went in the family’s terrible shanty of a home. Sheet metal attached to chicken wire and cardboard built up a small box-like frame. My house is three stories, with a vast backyard and a hot tub. I say this not out of conceit or arrogance, first of all I did not earn it, my dad did, and secondly because I know that I would give all this extra space, and all these extra materialistic innovations up if this family was given even an un-leaky roof to sleep under. I walked in the house and immediately the mother had started to cry, she wrapped her arms around me and I could feel her appreciation with every shake, and every harsh sobbing breath she took in. She then showed me a drawing her daughter had made.Her daughter had been with me every day that I worked in that hole, she had ‘helped’ me dig (though usually she ended up pushing more dirt into my half-dug outhouse hole) and she made me smile and feel as though the project was worth doing. She was only about six or seven, and would clumsily walk hand in hand with me whenever I visited the water cooler or other students. She provided me with motivation to keep swinging the pickaxe into the devastatingly hard clay even when I thought my muscles would burst from exertion. Anyways, her mother showed me a drawing that the little girl had made while I was in the hospital. Apparently they had heard that I was hospitalized because I worked to hard and they understood it was serious. The drawing was of her and her family holding hands in front of a brand new house. They were unskillfully drawn stick figures, with crazy hair and misinformed coloring… but the picture was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Her family and her stood happily in front of their home and I was drawn above them… with a Halo and angel wings.
Hero Holiday provides an amazing opportunity for people. Whether they are happy but need something more like me, or depressed and need to realize the beauty of their own lives, Hero Holiday works. The main thing it does is provide homes, schools, shelters, food, and general affection to those in the world. I understand that and I see the amazing beauty in that. We are helping those who essentially are not able to help themselves. But Hero Holiday does so much more. It provides hope, purpose, and the sense of feeling whole to people. This is a lesson that has changed my life.When I first got back from the hospital I couldn’t work .I ended up writing a small note down as an attempt to organized my mixed thoughts. ââ¬ÅNorth American Society is plagued by malcontent and misery in direct contradiction to the amount of the worlds wealth it has obtained; wealth that is supposed to naturally create the byproduct of happiness. In hindsight of its material fortune North American Society has lost sight of the essence of life’s true beauty. To the wealthy the meaning of life is to compete, impress, achieve, and sustain wealth for their eventual use as they age, or the eventual use of their children. Understandably, however, countries that do not have that fortune and wealth have held on to something of much more intricate value: the true meaning of life, which is to enjoy it. In absence of our material superficial goods they retain a philosophy of intimate satisfaction with the simplistic things in life, ergo causing them to enable themselves, and guarantee themselves a general contentment throughout the entirety of their lives.The poor will always envy the wealthy for their material goods, yet the wealthy once exposed to the world’s poverty will always envy the poor for who they are as people. Which is more valuable? 
The shack is a memory I will never forget. The rock picking, clamming, field work, and everything in between. Doing something like this builds you up so much, and it most defiantly changes you. I was so happy to have my friends (or now i guess you could call them family) with me. I know now that having people with you to encourage you can make the world of difference. I don’t know if I could have made this journey without them. I now truly understand why family is so important down here in Mexico. It’s beacuse it has to be, it’s because you couldn’t face all these challenges without support, without people helping you on those tough days. The days you don’t wanna get out of your shack to go work another 9 hour day, when you have those thoughts going through you head like ” why, is it even worth it?”
From all my experiences down here in Mexico, the shack experience has been completely different. It showed me things I could have heard or learned about but not actually fully understand until experiencing it. Waking up in the morning was quite peaceful in my little cardboard home, that I was most definatly attached to, for about a 30 seconds. Then I started to think about everything you’ve gotta do to survive. You start the daily process with “gotta wake the rest of the family up, gotta go start the fire, hope the woods not to damp, gotta start breakfast, hope the pans are clean, hope we have enough torttias..” and so on.I found myself thinking for the first time, in my perfectly protected easy life, about how money is really most important when it comes to feeding yourself and your family. Life in the shack doesn’t allow you to think about new stylish clothes, or about “drama” in high school, or how much better your life would be with that new “thing”. You live day to day, paycheck by paycheck. This semester we were only paid 300pesos (30 dollars) with deductions for bills and medical we were left with 175 pesos (17.50 $) for food for 2 girls and 3 always hungry teenage boys ( that’s a lot of bellies to fill). We learned that you should eat as much as you can when you had the 3 meals you did , because you never know if the next meal might be smaller , and might not fill you up.
There will be so many things from the shack experience that I will take with me, and hope to remember for the rest of my life. One being that food is very important. I don’t think many people I know, including myself appreciate food as much as we should. That was constantly on my mind. Food to me in Canada is ” oh what will taste the best” “what’s the biggest” or you just open the fridge and there it is. But here, as well as most of the world think about if I can afford the next meal, and if its going to fill me, your taste buds are of unimportance.Another thing I know that I take for granted is our health care. For example, a member of our family on the second day got heat stroke, but lucky for us he just got to walk across the street and sleep in our real house and got better. For most people in developing nations, you don’t get to go to a nice bed with cold/warm showers, good food, and clean drinking water to get yourself better. You either have to go to the hospital which is usually 50 pesos (in Mexico) which sometimes isn’t feasible. Or you have to miss a couple days of work which means missing out on pay for is needed for food, bills, and everything else necessary to live.It was unfortunate that we lost a member of our family for a couple days in the shack but I know this realization wouldn’t of hit me as much as it did.Although there was a couple rough patches throughout our experience, what felt like a never ending week, there was a lot of good times and memories. I had some great laughs playing cards at the end of each day, singing in the fields, trying to finish 99 bottles of beer on the wall (never ended up happening), and just being together as a family. I know I had fun, eating, breathing, living Mexican!~ A School of Leadership Student living in Mexico
Sunday was a day off for the students in The Shack. The goal of that day is for them to feel what its like to go through a day with nothing, not having an income for a day but still having to buy food and water and to go for a period of time with none of their regular entertainment items. As I am not sure if many of them have ever gone without their computer Ipod or Xbox for very long.The day before, they knew they were going short on cash, because they were not working, so they went to a neighbor and asked him if he had any work for them. He did, so the next day, instead of taking the day off, they got up bright and early did what they had to do. They started working on what he had for them. Detailing some vehicles and cleaning out a shed. That kept them busy for the morning and after that they went back to their shacks, had a Sunday afternoon nap, sat around for a bit and made supper.Monday was another day in the fields. A friend of a friend has a small field just out of town that needed to be de-weeded. They got up early that morning not knowing what to expect. All they knew is that it was another day in the fields and they were not looking forward to it. When we got out to the field it was a small bean field and the “Rancher” showed up in an old beat up Suzuki Samaria. A little different than the typical F-350’s the other Ranchers have. We soon realized that we are helping a regular guy weed a piece of land that he would have normally done himself. The guy gave them some hoe’s and they went at it. It only took them a few hours to weed the field but our new friend was extremely thankful for helping him out. The students felt good about helping him out because they realized it probably would have taken him days. They were done early, so they came back and finished up the day doing some yard work and then got off a little early. Later that night they invited the neighbors and their boss over for a feast. They saved money for a few days to be able to do that, but I think by the end of all of this they really got the sense of what it might be like living in poverty. They realized some of the stresses involved, unpleasant living conditions, and the value of a community and sharing the little that you do have with the community. I believe they have grown a lot this week and I think they will take the values they learned from this experience with them for the rest of their life.Brett: Mexico Facilitator – School of Leadership
This morning was a cold morning. The fog was thick and the sun was no where to be found. Not a good thing when you are planning on spending the morning at the beach up to your waist in water, digging for clams.We met up at the highway at 7:00am and travel to the supervisor’s house. That is where all the people that work for him meet. He gave us some pitch forks and told us where to meet him on the beach. We were on the beach around 8:00 and after a quick instruction, the students were ready to clam. They dug through the sand for the next four hours and found quite a few clams. Their biggest challenges were staying warm and finding clams that were large enough to keep. They took a few warm up breaks but they dug until the tide started to come in at noon. They found a total of 51 clams that were the proper size to keep. The supervisor told us that he sells the clams for 35 pesos per dozen, which is a little less than $3. The students, made about $12 all together. They were unsure of how many clams that they would find that day which gave them an idea of what kind of stress is involved with not getting a steady paycheck but still having bills to pay.