“He was learning lots of new things. Some of them were things that he had already experienced, and weren’t really new, but that he had never perceived before. And he hadn’t perceived them because he had become accustomed to them. He realized: If I can learn to understand this language without words, I can learn to understand the world.”
I decided to go with a cheesy quote from Paulo Coehlo from the Alchemist to go along with this blog post because sometimes its easier than making up my own words. I figured this goes with the title of my blog about learning new things (remember when I said I would post a new thing that learned every single? yeah, that didn’t turn out so well) and really hits the hammer on the nail with my reflections on my week working with Habitat for Humanity.
ANYWAY, let my jump into my post about my week spent volunteering with Habitat for Humanity down here in Paraguay.
I decided to go with a cheesy quote from Paulo Coehlo from the Alchemist to go along with this blog post because sometimes its easier than making up my own words. I figured this goes with the title of my blog about learning new things (remember when I said I would post a new thing that learned every single? yeah, that didn’t turn out so well) and really hits the hammer on the nail with my reflections on my week working with Habitat for Humanity.
ANYWAY, let my jump into my post about my week spent volunteering with Habitat for Humanity down here in Paraguay.
SO, some of you avid readers and my biggest fans out there may remember when I worked with Habitat for Humanity on two different builds last year. Those of you who don’t remember, let me fill you on on the basics. Habitat for Humanity (or Habitat para la Humanidad) has a team down here in Asunción, Paraguay and builds homes for families throughout different parts of the country. My district, Arroyos y Esteros, is fortunate enough to be on the list of areas that Habitat supports, and once-twice a year we get a team that comes through that builds homes in a community right next to where I live. I got to spend last week helping out on the build and had such a dope time. I had fun getting my hands dirty and actually getting to work on the construction of the house (okay, I was mainly responsible for the cesspit) but what I really enjoyed was getting to share my favorite parts about Paraguayan culture with the volunteers from Habitat.
ALRIGHT, so here’s a couple sequences of photos so you can see our progress throughout the week.
ABOVE: Progress of the house. First we dug out the foundation, filled it in with rocks and then cement. Filled the rooms back in, leveled them out. Finally, the walls started going up.
BELOW: I worked on the cesspool most of the week along with two other volunteers. Here's the progress, the brick laying, the cement mixing, and then the final product.
BELOW: I worked on the cesspool most of the week along with two other volunteers. Here's the progress, the brick laying, the cement mixing, and then the final product.
So there you have it, that's about what a week of building a house with Habitat looks like. Not pictured: morning yoga classes with my build team, amazing food cooked by the mothers of the community, and all the amazing people I met and got to share stories with.
WELL, I figured I might as well end with another cheesy quote while I’m out here re-reading the alchemist for the seventh time, (I know, I know, pretty basic, but I never fail to pull something new from the book every time I re-read it). So, after working with the volunteers who had spent their past week exhausting themselves to do as much work possible on the construction of their houses, who interacted with the kids and Paraguayan community members even though some had little to no Spanish speaking abilities, I found something that stuck with me…
“He learned the most important part of the language that all of the world spoke- the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love.”
LASTLY, wanted to send a huge shoutout to ALL the habitat volunteers who helped make the week so great and reminded me how grateful I am to be in Paraguay!
WELL, I figured I might as well end with another cheesy quote while I’m out here re-reading the alchemist for the seventh time, (I know, I know, pretty basic, but I never fail to pull something new from the book every time I re-read it). So, after working with the volunteers who had spent their past week exhausting themselves to do as much work possible on the construction of their houses, who interacted with the kids and Paraguayan community members even though some had little to no Spanish speaking abilities, I found something that stuck with me…
“He learned the most important part of the language that all of the world spoke- the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love.”
LASTLY, wanted to send a huge shoutout to ALL the habitat volunteers who helped make the week so great and reminded me how grateful I am to be in Paraguay!