March 13th Thursday

Thursday, March 13th

Hi everyone, I'm Tara, a sophomore at Wooster. I am leading the trip this year, after attending last year. The trip is different because we have a much smaller group, but in some ways this makes it easier. For example, we don't have to do huge reflection meetings because we are around each other so much that it's easy for us to share what we thought about our previous activity.

Today we laid the foundation for a floor of a new room in someone's house. We dug trenches around the parameter so that we could lay the rebar inside of them. Meanwhile the other group (from Providence college) worked on bending re-bar with hammers.

We were unable to finish this project, unlike all the other projects on this trip (we are finishing wednesday's project tomorrow). I am still proud of the progress we made though. Sarah was definitely the hardest worker of the day with her pick axing, which I completely sucked at! I will post photos of this building site soon (probably tomorrow).

For cultural activities, we have visited a girls orphanage as well as Casa De Migrante (house of the migrant), where people who have been deported or are planning on crossing the border are allowed to stay for 12 days. At the orphanage, just as last year we listened to the girls as they performed a song in Spanish for us. At the migrant house I had a conversation (in Spanish, so proud) with someone from Modesto, which is near where I live. I learned that after 33 years in the US he had been deported. It was almost eirrie how calm he was about this.

This made me think of something someone said in a reflection circle last year. They had been morally struggling with how nice everyone in TJ is to us, while meanwhile in the US so many Americans are completely rude to Mexicans. Sometimes it just does not seem fair.

-Tara.