Request Info Menu
All Posts

Friends Meeting School Puerto Rico 2024

May 17, 2024

We got to the airport at 4:30 am to board a flight to Newark at 6 am. We went through the TSA with very few pat-downs. Once we boarded the plane, everything went smoothly from take off to landing. As we arrived at Newark airport, we had a one-hour layover. After the layover, we hopped on the plane for a 4-and-a-half-hour ride to San Juan airport. After we landed, we immediately went to a pizzeria. There were multiple choices, and they were all delicious. As we finished the pizza we loaded back up in the van and headed to the Yellow House, we winded down the day with team-building activities.
Our expectation on this trip is to bring us together as a community and to help out the people of Puerto Rico. We will hope to learn new construction skills, which will be a good life experience for us as human beings in the future. Mixing concrete is a very necessary skill to have. We will do some good fishing, and spend time with friends in a foreign environment. we are very interested in meeting new people and introducing a new type of culture that is going to be upcoming.

We are excited to embrace their culture and to embrace the good moments in Puerto Rico. We greatly appreciate Global Works for inviting us to stay at their lovely establishment​. We hope to help the people who are less fortunate than ourselves in any way we can. This will be an excellent learning experience.

By Robert, Mathew, & Naomi

May 18, 2024

This morning, we all awoke around 6:30 am for breakfast at 7. We ate an American-style breakfast and returned to Old San Juan in the van. Once we arrived, we met our tour guide, Alvin, who showed us around the historic town. He told us all about the history of Puerto Rico & the importance of Juan Ponce de León. We also visited the oldest street in San Juan, called Calle del Cristo. Something interesting we saw in Old San Juan was one of the smallest houses ever. It was built in 1999 and is only 5 feet wide. We also were able to tour two churches. One was Juan Ponce de León’s church. We also saw one of four forts on the island. After exploring the fort for about 30 minutes, we headed to lunch. It was a 15-20-minute walk away. The food was excellent. We each got a choice of pork, chicken, or beef. We also got to choose white or yellow rice. To end lunch, some of us answered questions about the history of San Juan & won a dessert if we got it correct. The dessert was Flan. It is a Puertican dessert with a fluffy texture and a sweet taste. Following lunch, we broke off into groups of three to go souvenir shopping. I was in a group with Jade and Arno. Although slightly late, we all ended up where we needed to be. After we all came together as a group, we headed to Senor Paleta for ice cream or sherbet popsicles and sat to eat.
We watched a documentary about Zac Efron and Darin Olien visiting Puerto Rico. They learned how the people of Puerto Rico were recovering from Hurricanes Irma and Maria. This gave us a different perspective on the situation and how it affected the locals. We are looking forward to helping and working alongside the community tomorrow!
By Max, Emma, & Gavin
May 19, 2024
Today started with a large breakfast of eggs and sausage, and gluten free waffle fries yet again for our gluten free friend. We left the Big Yellow House around 9 to go to Villa Del Rio to help with home building. We were greeted by community members William and Angel. The tasks included shoveling sand and rocks to make concrete, shoveling the concrete into buckets, and make a bucket brigade to get the concrete to the wall of the house that was being finished. It was yet another scorching day, so everyone took lots of water breaks.
After a few hours, we took a short drive to another community member’s house, Maria. She served delicious chicken, beans and rice, and salad. After our meal we went back to the Big Yellow House for a couple hours of free time. Some people went swimming while others took a nap. Dinner was catered here around 6:30.
At 7:30 we had a salsa class! Yara, the dance instructor for Global Works of at least 15 years came to teach the whole group. A few feet were stepped on but everyone had a blast!
By Jax
May 20, 2024

We arrived at the construction site once again and put on our helmets, boots, and gloves. Each of us continued our jobs from yesterday. We mixed rocks and sand together to make cement, shoveled the cement into buckets, and poured them to make walls. It was hot outside, so we drank lots of water, and were provided with popsicles. We learned a lot about the construction of stable houses which can resist natural disasters. The money we paid to go on this trip paid for the materials used. We learned that each day the materials we used to construct the walls cost $1,000. That’s just for the materials! The family we were helping are unable to gather the money needed, so this entire project has been funded by Global Works and much of the labor by the students who go on these trips. We were group number 11 that had worked with them on this particular house, and they hope to be finished with group 12 or 13.

Once we finished pouring the concrete into the walls we drove to Maria’s house. There we were greeted by tasteful food including chicken, rice, and beans. Maria cooks for the groups because she is so thankful of the work Global Works had done in fixing her own house which was destroyed during Hurricane Maria. We all had a laugh with the workers and started to eat. After we finished our food, we were thanked by all the workers for the hard work. Once we were ready to leave we all said thanks to Maria who worked for us tirelessly to keep us full throughout our two days of work.

It was an hour’s drive to Luquillo, where we got to relax after a long day of good hard work. The house that the boys are staying in is the common hang out area, where we have dinner, and spend a lot of our free time. The guys’ rooms are also right next to a nice river that turns into an estuary to the sea that everyone can spend time swimming in. They also have a big patio and it’s really close to the beach. The girls’ rooms are in a separate building with a nice patio and good air conditioning. Everyone got to spend time swimming, resting, and hanging out. Tonight for dinner everyone got to have chicken, rice, and beans. After dinner we got to celebrate Elijah’s 15th birthday by singing happy birthday in both Spanish and English and then having some cake. It was a really eventful, hardworking, fulfilling, and fun day.

By Liam, Clem, Elijah

 

May 21, 2024

On Tuesday  we started the day with our breakfast consisting of bread, pancakes, baking and various fruits.
Next we started the main activity of the day, trail maintenance. We started off by walking down to the end of the trail that had a good view of leatherback turtle nests. We started to remove dead palm leaves and rake up the sticks that were laying about. There was also a few giant termite nests, they were the size of turtle. Then while we finished the trail we found and opened multiple coconuts, after we finished clearing the island of debris we cleared the trail of branches and leaves. When we all finished clearing the trail we took a break for lunch, we got sandwiches and sat on a boardwalk and it was very pretty. When Robert was cleaning up, it was funny.After the trail maintenance we went back to the house to relax and have fun.
A lot of people went swimming in the nearby river to cool off and play around, a lot of shells we found and there was a game of pirates.

By Wyatt

 

May 22, 2024

We went to El Yunque National Park, it was a long hike up the rainforest’ muddy trail, a lot of people tripped and got muddy. When we could see the lake we climbed down a small waterfall and roots, we got to the river and there was people cliff jumping with a rope. The water was cold, the current was strong and there was a lot of rocks. Some people were looking for special clay rocks that worked like paint when you ground them. On the hike back we all got very muddy and wet.
We drove to a restaurant and ordered, we had free time so everyone went shopping.
We all came back and went swimming in the river and had downtime. For dinner it was a cooking class to make stewed beans with pumpkin, they gave everyone the ingredients but it was our job to prep and cook. They had shortbread for desert and everyone got packing, it started to rain a lot when we left.

By Ryan