Janauary 28th, 2019

Wow! We have now completed two full days of hard volunteer work! Today’s temperature hit a high of 83 degrees today! It was definitely a hot one, but our day was filled with amazing experiences! We started the day off working with homeowner titi Sarah. Titi Sarah is an 82 year old women whose home was hit hard during the hurricane, ripping the entire roof off of her home and creating extensive water damage. During the hurricane, titi Sarah decided to stay home along with her grandson who’s around 20 years old. She explained how the powerful winds were pushing her door open and the use of a rope to keep pulling the door back shut almost feeling like a game of tug of war that was not fair. With the powerful winds, it was enough to flip the panels of the windows inside out, damaging. We as volunteers spent part of our day taking out her old windows and replacing them with brand new ones with the help of a local carpenter. Titi Sarah’s was such a wonderful person to be around for all of us with her wonderful music and dance moves!

For lunch we visited the local community leader, Onida, who helps organize things such as locations for volunteers. She cooked us a wonderful lunch that had all of our stomachs full and happy. After lunch we visited two homes that were next to each other and split up and did touch up paintings on one and started to finish the second house with more exterior painting. The owner of the first house explained during the hurricane that he stayed in his bathroom tub for five hours and said it was the most terrifying thing he’s ever experienced. He almost began to tear up with emotions speaking about his story which shows the pain of such a horrific experience due to hurricane Maria.
After an eventful and awakening experience hearing everyone’s story, we got done early and headed to the beach! We swam and took videos/pictures capturing a defining moment of team bonding bringing us closer during this experience in Puerto Rico.

Window install

Helping paint another house

Eliot and titi Sarah