In which Josh talks about his experince in Honduras

A little over a year ago 399496_4306952557709_316389232_nI had the amazing experience of traveling to Honduras for a service trip.

During my freshman year of High school, I attended a Model United Nations conference. Each year at the conference there is a key note speaker, and for my freshman year that speaker was Shin Fujiyama.
Shin started an organization call Students Helping Honduras. I was very much interested in doing global service work, one for the service part and two for the chance to go somewhere new. So, three years later I found myself to be the president of my high school’s own Students Helping Honduras(SHH) club.

July of 2012, five high school students boarded a plane ride to Houston, preparing for their first adventure out of the country without their parents. I still remember being so entirely excited about leaving, mostly because I didn’t have ANYONE to watch over me. We were dogs without leashes, unbounded and excited.
The plane ride to San Pedro Sula was not really all that exciting, no bags were stolen and the tiny aircraft shook violently upon landing. But when we finally touched down, the humidity of the country greeted us with a punch to the face.

The five of us wandered around the tiny airport looking for anything that might be related to SHH. Eventually we came across a smiling honduran gentleman holding a sign with the SHH symbol on it, “are you the students from America?”
Once the formalities were exchanged, he took our bags and lead us on an old school American School bus.

3 hours bus drive finally led to the compound that SHH built. It wasn’t anything impressive, a chain linked fence, rows upon rows of cinderblock homes with aluminum roofs. There were a few kids kicking around a soccer ball in the middle of the compound. We eventually meet Shin Fujiyama, the president of SHH and he explained to us what we were there to do for the next few days.

I won’t get into all the fun we had and the hard work we put into building the school and orphanage. (I’ll you show you guys a picture of cementing though.) Instead I’ll explain what Honduras was like.205321_4306614789265_328688862_n

The compound was in a rundown state, there were barely any spaces between the homes and there was one water tower for the entire compound. The ground was packed earth and there smelled of sewage almost everywhere you went.
Yet…It was one of the happiest places I’ve ever been.

Shin explained how an earthquake a few years ago tore down an entire village close by and almost everyone here was a refugee at one point. They had many options to move but choose to stay at El Villa De Soliada because of the education that SHH could offer their children.
I realized the happiness of a place wasn’t based on the wealth of it’s residents or the amount of fancy infrastructure it had, it was based on the people. The town people almost never have hot water, a family of 5 live in a house the size of two dorm rooms and the idea of having home internet was astounding to them, but they were truly the happiest people I have ever met.

It’s experiences like these that makes me want to travel. To meet people who are happy and grateful, for how much or how little they have.

The next post will be a location all of you should soon be very familiar with.

If you have any questions about SHH, please feel free to ask! It was one of the greatest experiences
486220_4293626181591_994281634_n I think I will ever have

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