In the middle of May during my school year, my mom told me that I would be going to El Salvador to help people build houses and teach the local children. When I first heard this, I didn’t expect it to be so much more than just placing down bricks and teaching english. At the airport 3 months later, I met the 10 other people that I would be spending a full week with. I was scared because I’ve never gone to another country by myself before, but I would come to realize that this actually helped me feel more emotions for these people. From the airport to the small towns to the forest covered villages, I realized that these people had hard lives and I wanted to help them.

Thankfully, that’s what we were there to do. The first day of work was very harsh for me, a person that has never done any construction work before. We were moving bricks large enough to fit in a fish tank, and they were all made of concrete. The group set up a suitable system to move them, but this still took a toll on our hands. Once the work finally ended, I was ready to crash into the bed at the hotel and almost forgot about the children. When I first arrived there, the children were all so happy to see us.

This warm feeling that this caused was, however, cut short by some of the children in my class screaming. The classes were divided into 4 classes: 2 beginners, 1 intermediate, and 1 advanced. I didn’t believe I would be able to teach my beginners class enough for the upcoming presentation on Friday, but thanks to a lot of help from other people, I was able to stick it through. Although there were many distractions from some of the kids, the full class was able to do very well on Friday.

I was also able to develop a relationship with some of these kids as well! Afterwards, we would go back to the hotel and discuss about the day and our feelings about the trip and people. On day 4, I spilled my heart out and told the group about my feelings and what I wanted to do for this trip. This trip has made me learn and realize so many things about myself that I never would have realized if I didn’t go on this trip.

I’ve met so many new people that I never would have met if I didn’t go, and thanks to them, I was able to overcome most of the anxieties that I had. I plan on going for as long as I can because this is an experience that I want to go through again.

<Yule Park / Woodson High School 12th grade>