School’s out, summer is here, and my blog is back! I’m excited to start sharing what I am doing again this summer, particularly this trip.Right now I’m in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico working for All Hands and Hearts. AHAH is an organization that is committed to disaster relief in affected areas. They are all over the world- Florida, Nepal, Dominica, Mozambique, among many more. They are also here in Puerto Rico, working with the community to help rebuild what they can from the mess Hurricane Maria left as she passed through in 2017.Yabucoa is where Hurricane Maria touched down. This destroyed a city of over 37,000 people who call Yabucoa home. The storm hit the hardest here and so many of the people are still recovering. AHAH has committed to being here, but only until November 2019. I’m looking to help Yabucoa, AHAH, and the volunteers here by trying to raise some money for the organization. It helps tremendously. It allows the volunteers to have sleeping quarters, food, and water so they can do amazing work all over! If you can, please donate just a little bit to the cause. Everything helps. Whether it be $1 or $10, it’s all loved and appreciated.I’ll be here for the next two-ish weeks, learning about AHAH, Yabucoa, and the people that live here.Today was day one, which of course was filled with traveling and getting here. I flew from LAX to JFK to SJU. At SJU I was picked up by the kindest man, Gerardo, and brought to base! I really messed up on tipping Gerardo and it’s stressing me out, I feel so bad. I’ll see him again, I just feel like a jerk who is too cool to tip. So, you know, carrying that around until I can fix it.

The vibe here is nothing but love, support, and acceptance. You really feel it from the program leaders here. We met Nick, he’s been here over a month and he gave us (me and a couple) a tour of base. He showed us the main office, the solar panel spot, the home garden, tool and boot sheds, sleeping quarters, kitchen, free stuff, bathrooms, showers, everything! They’re switching over to making everything gender neutral which is pretty fabulous. There is a pavilion, hammocks, and a roof. From the roof you can see an adjoining baseball field, as well as watch games on it, and local houses around the city.It’s so beautiful here in Puerto Rico. There is green EVERYWHERE. It’s magical and jungle -y and just… an enchanting place. I’ll take more pictures of the site and around base later share.After the tour, Nick showed us our bunks and that was it. Work is Monday- Friday while the weekends are free to do whatever as the volunteer sees fit. There weren’t a lot of people here and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself to be honest. So I set up my bunk.

And rested a minute. Took my Kindle outside to read. Talked to some people. Raided the fridge for some cucumber and eventually sat down to work on a community puzzle of Mt. Rushmore. Working on that I got to talk to quite a few people! People who had gone were returning, other new people arrived. A group was going out to get burgers and offered to bring me back one! This was great news because I was starving but didn’t want to walk to the store. People are kind.While they were out, I finished the puzzle with some help, met more people, and read my book. There are SO many people here from New York. There’s two schools, colleges, doing some type of volunteer trip and they come here.I ate my food as the sunset and got in bed by 7:30. I’m real tired and have to be up by 6 tomorrow! The adventure has started off slow but I have lots of hope and excitement for tomorrow! Hopefully I’ll make some friends! 😅