Building Homes in Guangdong

On Saturday, November 5th, Habitat for Humanity left for their biannual build trip in Guang Dong Province. Some of the members that went were Max Chen, Vivian Kang and Angela Lin. The leaders of the trip were two new faculty members that arrived earlier this year, Mrs. and Mr. Owen. This community service group focuses on building houses for homeless people to live in. They only have two build trips per school year so they have to be extremely productive on those days. They left on Saturday and came back to Guangzhou on Monday afternoon.

Part of the students of the Habitat for Humanity group volunteered for the trip and some of them described their feelings and experiences throughout the course of the three days. Queenie Hsiao thought the best part of the trip were the dinners they had with the family that they were building the house for. “They made such delicious food and the family made the whole experience so gratifying.” she explains. Another Junior, Max Chen, states that the highlight for him was looking at their final accomplishment after all that hard work.

Student Jenny Kim also described the experience as a chance to get out of her comfort zone but she also mentioned a lowlight of the trip which was how the trip could have been more efficient if students alternated between jobs. She said this would have helped everyone “learn about other roles they could be doing and also, it would have made it a more fun experience.” Some of the students assisted the builders by lining up the bricks for the outer walls of the house, as you can see in the photo above. They did this by mixing cement with mud and other elements. Some other students had to use more physical strength because they had to dig out the mud out of the ground using a shovel. Other people had a less tedious job because they had to take the bricks and the cement from one place to another using a utility cart.

Overall, the trip was an overwhelming success. All the students managed to help the workers make the building process for the house faster. The workers were very joyous to see people volunteering to help them. It was a very significant learning experience for many students because they managed to learn something new about themselves and about each other. The family was filled with immense gratitude at the end and all the students felt that all the arduous work they had done for three days suddenly became worth it.