Time of my Life
We spent our last full day in El Salvador Zip Lining from tree to tree, pouring buckets full of Chispa in the top layer of bricks on the house, sanding the walls from top to bottom, and dancing our hearts out with the community of Getsemani. It may have only been a few hours of working on our house today, but it was a full day of pouring our love and passion of change we have to the community.
The highlight of each day for me isn’t to see the progress our group has made on the house. It’s the smiles of the kids as we are walking down the street. A Highlight is the conversations with local business owners in the community. Yesterday morning we met a guy, Luis, he owned his own business; he sews and prints design or words onto uniforms for public schools. It was only three years ago that he was one of the ones receiving a new Habitat house built by volunteers like ourselves. Yet now he and his family was one of the unheard of middle-class families that lived in Getsemani. It’s the passion that he has that makes him so successful; it’s the same passion that with a simple idea makes a change in your own life or the life of others.
It was only a week ago when I wouldn’t have been able to tell you who was going with me to El Salvador, and if they were there for a beach trip to El Salvador or if they were there to spread their passion of making a different in the lives of others. Now, a week later I’ve witness the passion and commitment from my eight other team members, and it is safe to say this trip is all about the impact that only one person can make is so many different ways.
For me, this past week has been full of Spanglish I learned in high-school, lots of smiles, but the majority of it has been passion. When thinking of a perfect week it doesn’t usually include sweating in the heat, or sifting rocks out of countless wheelbarrows full of sand; but this week does. This week was perfect to say the least; and no I don’t mean I didn’t fall a few times and have everything go my way. I mean that with nine seemingly random people with some connection to Babson, I had the time of my life.
by Maria Cobb ’15