Five Days In
I can’t believe we are five days into our trip. It’s been an amazing experience from learning Spanish, to playing with the crazy amounts of children. There are truly no words to describe how amazing this trip has been so far. Here we are, 17 high school teenagers in various grades with five different teachers. We have not only come together as a hard working group but we have become a family. On Tuesday night I became extremely ill and I can’t count how many times the other guys and girls had come to check up on me. It felt so nice to have people that truly cared.
Today we did A LOT of cement mixing. The process is frustrating at first but you soon figure out a system that makes everything much easier. It starts off with four wheelbarrows of dirt, then one wheelbarrow full of sand, two cement bags, and a lot of mixing together with water. There is never a dull moment on the site. Either you are playing with the children, the kids are chasing you around, or cement is being splashed at your face. The kids here are amazing and all they want to do is help. It’s great because they even try to teach you Spanish by either hand gestures or just repeating the word over and over again. They love us all so much, I feel like they are all my younger siblings. They just want to laugh, cuddle and run around. Nicole and Freddy have to be the cutest kids on earth. They are Pastor Garcia’s grandchildren! Nicole is adorable and follows me around with buckets to try to help us out and her smile is precious. Freddy is just crazy! He hides in the bushes with his friend and while you are working on the cement mixing they are screaming and tickling us. Trust me when I say that is hard to work when the kids are around.
The contractors do like to laugh at our weakness sometimes, which I respect because, man how do they do all that work as a living!! Props to them. On the basketball court sight all you hear is AGUA, AGUA, AGUA!!!! It’s HARD work and extremely tough on your Canadian muscles! But we showed them today by creating our own cement volcanos. Junior and Kent were definitely our cheerleaders throughout today.
After the half day at the site we got the go the Monkey Jungle. Let me tell you that is one thousand times better than the Toronto Zoo! Have you ever had squirrel monkeys climb on your head?! They just jumped on us and hung off us. They are adorable!! They love fruit and after they ate all mine they just use you as a object to get from place to another. You feel a little betrayed to be honest. But it was an amazing experience.
Well off to karaoke night now! Rubin and Marcel have made the band Queen a bit of memory now. It’s too funny. Sending love to all in Canada, we miss you all but I’m pretty sure none of us want to leave, hehe.
– Sloan, LiveDifferent Hero Holiday Volunteer, 2013