Back to reality

I’m back!

 

For the past week, I have been spending my days in a small village in El Progreso, Honduras with an organization called Students Helping Honduras.

 

 

I’m so excited to share this amazing experience and re-live it all over the next few days. Since there is no way I could do this trip justice with just one post, I’m going to be writing about my time in Honduras in a mini-series of posts this week.  There are so many thoughts, feelings, and events that happened in Honduras that I’m having a hard time organizing what I want to say, and how I want to say it. So, each post will have it’s own theme; all will be significant to this past life-changing week I’ve had. 

 

Excitement.

 

This simple word describes much of my trip-- before, during, and after.  As soon as I decided that this was the year for me to finally go to Honduras with SHH, I began to get more and more excited for the week to finally arrive. My boyfriend, ST, has been going to Honduras with SHH for the past two years.  He always comes home with so many stories, pictures, memories, and a genuine passion about his time spent there, and the people he had met.  I was ready for this experience to become my own. I’d heard the stories, seen the pictures, and now I was ready to create some of my own memories with this awesome organization, in a country I’d only heard about.

 

{Some of the homes built by SHH in Villa}

 

When we landed in Honduras, the whole group of us from UMD {22 total!} were greeted by a mob of children and other SHH trip leaders.  I was finally here! I couldn’t get over the immediate affection of the children and how friendly everyone was from the word go. Even with a major language barrier, the kids weren’t the slightest bit afraid to jump on your lap or give you a huge hug. I knew I was going to love it here from the very first bus ride leaving the airport, on our way to Villa Soleada {the village in El Progreso, built from the ground up, by SHH.}

 

{SHH’s first completed project in Villa: the education center}

 

I stayed in the volunteer lodge in Villa Soleada for the week with the rest of our group, but during the day, I spent my time in another town in El Progreso, working on building a school for the children that live there.  SHH’s goal in the next ten years is to build 1,000 schools for the children of Honduras.  For the past couple of years since Villa Soleada was created, the school-building goals have kicked off with full force. 

 

Pimientera Elementary. That would be our school; the school we would help build. I couldn’t wait to see the village, the school’s foundation, and meet the children that would grow and learn there.  After spending Saturday exploring Villa and getting settled, we spent Sunday in Pimientera meeting the families of the school and getting to know our worksite.

 

 

Pimientera would have three classrooms and hold about 70 students in total. We learned soon after arriving that our week would be spent mixing cement, leveling the foundation {aka passing dirt buckets}, and laying cement blocks. Manual labor at it’s finest. Typically, I would not have been thrilled for this part—I mean, who wants to haul around heavy buckets of dirt in the hot Honduran sun?  Maybe I can change your mind.

 

How?

 

With these faces.

 

Meeting the kids, getting to know the kids, and spending my days with the children of Pimientera lit a spark inside me, every single day. They helped us work, they put smiles on our faces, and they made us constantly excited to get to the worksite bright and early every morning.

 

The children that I met in this village truly inspired me. Their families have little to nothing, yet they’re always smiling.  They had never met us, yet they weren’t afraid to hug us immediately or hold our hands constantly. The genuine affection of the people I met in Honduras was mind-blowing.  They are people who have so little, yet love so much.  Truly inspiring.

 

The original excitement I had when arriving in Honduras did not stop growing all week for so many reasons… even into the plane ride home. More on that later, but I’ll just say this—I can not wait to fundraise with UMD during my final semester in order to finish funding this project and give these children a school that they absolutely deserve.

 

Buenos dias, chicas! Stay tuned…

 

 

xoxo