The most important thing I learned about traveling in foreign countries is that you must keep a journal. While traveling you will be rapidly hit with a culture shock. You will be observing new experiences and sights and sounds all at once. It is beyond necessary to take some time at night to reflect on your day and write it all down. What did you see? What did you do? What did you eat? Who did you meet? Many years from now you will want to look back into your journal and remember the names of the towns you visited and the people you met. So far in during my life time I have traveled to Costa Rica and India and I have big fat journals from each of my journeys. I would spend time each night nestled under the covers of my bed on the floor of my home-stay house, using my head-lamp for light in the dark, moist room, using my pen to swat the flies away as they buzzed in my ears, reflecting over my days events and writing it down in my journal. I never want to forget the time I spent traveling into other cultures. With the aid of my journals of my journals I will remember them until I'm old and grey.
The thing I love most about Habitat for Humanity is that it brings people together. Everyone taking a hammer, a paint brush, a rake or a nail to that house has helped to piece together a house that will eventually turn into a home for a very deserving family. The family will live their years in this home growing together feeling love and appreciation for all the people who contributed to build their habitat home in such a nice neighborhood. Not, only does Habitat for Humanity give the family a close bond to the many workers and volunteers on the house, but it also brings those groups of volunteers and workers together in ways only dangerous, manly activities can do. Yesterday I went on a day build with the board of my school paper. After a tour of all the problems that old house contained many of us braced the wobbly ladder and headed up to the roof which had a steep slant towards the cement driveway. One by one as we neared the top on the ladder we grabbed hands and secured the person from becoming flattened by the cement. As one of the workers said, "falling isn't bad. The bad part is hitting that hard stuff at the bottom." We didn't want anyone to hit the hard stuff. Our job as amateur roofers was to strip what we were standing on down the the support beams. Each layer was a new surprise; the shingles came off first, under that was a layer of rubber and installation of some sort and then after working together in the warm sun pulling up the nails, cutting the thick rubber with a small, fragile razor and using a pry bar to pull away the layers and throwing them down to the people on the ground trying, but not always succeeding, not to hit them with the flying pieces of shingles and rubber. Once the rubber was piled up in the backyard we could finally see the wood we thought our mission had been accomplished, but then we were told that the wood had to go too. After the wood was piled up in the backyard as well we had to climb over the support beams, trying not to look though the giant gaps at the floor of the first floor of the house, through the hole in the roof onto the ladder and to the ground to go sledge hammer the walls down. Braced with goggles and masks the Eastside board simultaneously took out their aggression on those poor defenseless walls of the house until all we could see was the wooden frame. At the end of the day we had successfully managed to devour the house with no more injuries than a few shingles to the back and some dust in our eyes. We all hopped back on the yellow school bus laughing about our attempts to be carpenters and thankful that no one fell off the roof.
In India jewelery is used in celebration and as a symbol of respect. During the Hindu marriage ceremonies women are adorned with gold bangles, anklets and nose rings as a symbol of wealth and beauty of the women. During the Hindu holiday Raksha Bandhan, Indian children wrap cotton bracelets around their brothers as a promise of protection. Brothers promise to protect sisters from harm and trouble and sisters pray for
their brothers’ protection from evils.
When I traveled to India I noticed that many of these boys were wearing the strings their sisters had tied around their wrists. I immediately felt a special bond toward these people and their Hindu traditions. From my duffel I pulled out a giant zip-lock bag filled with friendship bracelet string. I never leave home for a long trip without this zip-lock bag. Throughout my travels I have discovered that the act of making friendship bracelets brings people together. I lugged my bag of string over to the tea garden in the little village of Tashi Jong, India eager to teach the women of the village how to make friendship bracelets. As it turned out, they already knew how. We sat around the tea garden until the sun went down teaching each other our unique ways of tying the knots to form different patterns and exchanging the completed products. To this day I still wear the bracelets that these women made me during our time in the tea garden and I know that all the way across the globe these women are wearing the bracelets that I made them. Although we are now practically worlds apart we can still look down at our adorned wrists and feel like we are sitting right next to each other enjoying a warm glass of chi-tea.
