Georgia Tech Language Institute Puerto Rico

October 7th, 2018

Our first full day in Puerto Rico, we had our breakfast in casa coral at 8AM. An hour later we headed to Viego San Juan, the colonial heart of one of the oldest European cities of the Americas. Historical places and the cobblestone streets that the European built were very enjoyable to know the story behind them. At 1PM we enjoyed a traditional boriqua lunch at one of old San Juan’s eateries, El Jibarito. Then we got back to casa coral to talk about our working days.

-Saeed

October 8th, 2018

Whether you’re a student, professor, or a private business owner, it’s important to spend time on things that you haven’t done before – including community service. With a collaboration with Global Works and the Villa del Rio community, we made it through our magnificent first day of work. In our first day, we had the opportunity to learn new things, get construction experience, and get involved in work that I couldn’t imagine myself doing in my life.

Enthusiasm reached its highest level. After the trip leader explained the project that we will be working on, I couldn’t wait much longer setting without starting the work. Everyone started yelling “Let‘s do this ”. With commitment, collaboration, and everyone’s hard work, the project was finished and it even took us less time than we expected. Thank you to the Global Works workers and my peers. Everyone was proud to be part of that fantastic community service.

-Yazeed

October 10th, 2018

We went today to a a house that required a roof to be complete. Me and 10 friends accomplished the goal to finish the roof on time. We were with two coordinators to help the local community. We started the work with preparing cement, but the machine did not work at first. We were surprised that the did not work. However, it was just for five minutes before the machine worked. We were motivated after watching the machine work, because it takes a lot of effort to mix the cement with shovels. Our job was to repair the roof of a local house for a woman in the community. The work was hard because we needed to take the buckets from the ground and gave to workers on top of the roof to fill the roof. We needed to fill the machine with 9 buckets of rocks and 9 buckets of sand and three bags of cement. We did the same work many many times to fill the roof. The work was really tiring, but when we looked at the women’s smile all the pain turned into happiness inside of us. We felt some sense of accomplishment after completing the roof. I can’t describe really how this experience changed me. I did not consider for second how the people working construction do their work. Also, I am now thankful for the fact that I did not face something like Hurricane Maria. This experience motivated me to do volunteering work in the future.

-Adel

October 11th, 2018

Today was a good day for everyone in the group. We finished 75% of the work and we will continue the rest tomorrow. Having a group that acts like one person is a magnificent thing to have, and our group works like that. Volunteering in Puerto Rico made me realize that there are other people suffering in their lives that need help like the families in Puerto Rico. It makes me happy to see the people who we are helping smile after our work is done and its an indescribably great feeling for any human being to see others with smiles on their faces. I would like to thank SABIC and Global Works for this opportunity to help the families who suffered from hurricane Maria.

-MK