Photos by Margaret Monteith

Every year, the 8th grade class at GUS goes on a service trip that incorporates elements of our science and humanities curriculum.

This year, the Class of 2024 was lucky enough to go to Puerto Rico, where we worked with the organization Global Works to help with Hurricane Maria relief. 

When thinking about Puerto Rico before going on this trip, we thought about beaches, palm trees, hot weather, tourists, and vacation. That it is a warm soothing island with a tropical breeze filled with flowers and fun. Now that we have been there, we also think of van rides, cement, hard work, the most amazing people, cats, Polaroid pictures, the Spanish language, Hurricane Maria, chickens, lots of chickens, and the poor living conditions some locals face. That one bombed island where the Navy used to practice. After visiting the island in the wake of Hurricane Maria, writer Jaquira Diaz wrote in the The Atlantic, “Every day, people see that there is only them, doing everything for themselves. Every day, more of them come to understand that Puerto Rico has always stood on its own… The people take care of one another… the people, not the government, will ensure Puerto Rico’s recovery.”  

What we learned in Puerto Rico is not just that people take care of one another, but that they cared for us too.  We wanted to share some of our experience with the GUS community, hoping they will also see how big, complex, and wonderful Puerto Rico is, and why it will always hold a special place in the hearts of the Class of 2024. You can read about our trip here, on the blog we maintained while in Puerto Rico, or below, where we detail how we spent our days.

Day 1: Airport into Big Yellow House

For our first day, we started early! We were all at the airport by 4 am, and then we spent a total of 5 hours on two planes plus who knows how much longer in the airports. We were all so excited to get there, and once we landed, we met our wonderful team leaders, Randall Vargas Guido and Nahely Negron, who greeted us warmly, gave us snacks, and then we started our first long van ride. As we rode, we admired the beautiful hills, mountains, and flower sprinkled trees, and then we stopped for delicious pizza: two themes of our week, long drives and amazing food. After lunch, we headed to the Big Yellow House and settled into our home for the next few days before walking to the nearby beach for a swim and then dinner, some volleyball, and lights out.

Day 2: Old San Juan

On our first whole day in Puerto Rico, we met up with Alvin, our tour guide, and walked around old San Juan, learning the history of colonial Puerto Rico, seeing sites related to explorers and pirates we studied in humanities, and did some of the usual site seeing too. We ate at one of the oldest restaurants in Old San Juan, saw La Casa Estrecha, one of the narrowest houses ever built, and lots and lots of monuments dedicated to Juan Ponce de León. The fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro or El Morro whose construction went from the 1539 until 1790, was impressive, and so were the number of cats. We saw a ton of cats. We had a bit of shopping time at the end of our walking tour, enabling us to get souvenirs and such things, which Alvin also assured us helps the local economy, and then we got fresyj7uyu7hj6hjhly made Puerto Rican ice cream popsicles called paletas(Can you tell the food was great?) Because it started to rain on the long van ride back to The Big Yellow House, we didn’t swim that day and instead enjoyed a peaceful afternoon relaxing, playing basketball and volleyball and Jenga before dinner. 

Day 3-4: THE WORK/THE HOUSE

We had two days of hard, focused work. We were helping out with Hurricane Maria relief, which still impacts Puerto Rico. In 2017, Hurricane Maria made landfall with 155 mph winds, causing massive damage to homes, businesses, infrastructure, and the landscape. Maria knocked out all power and cut Puerto Rico off from communication for weeks. The family whose home we visited have been helping others to rebuild, and because their house is a kind of home base for people working with Global Works, they need a bigger bathroom to accommodate so many people changing clothing and using the restroom. Our job was to work with them to put down a new cement floor for this new big bathroom. 

The first day, we carried bags of cement and shoveled sand and rocks into buckets to be mixed together and then poured. We filled in the bumps on the floor, and the rebar was put down. We were also able to begin pouring cement onto the floor after a wonderful lunch made by Maria, the matriarch of the family. We saw a lot more cats, lots of dogs or satos, a boar, and tons of chickens too. At the end of the day, we had completed the work they expected us to do in two days, so from then on, any work we were doing was more than they had expected! We were tired but proud, and we headed to the beach to swim before dinner and then had our salsa lesson at the Big Yellow House. 

The next morning, bright and early, we were up again and rode back to the house to finish the hard work of mixing more cement by shoveling sand and rocks into a mixer alongside water and cement powder. We did this work in shifts, and we had lines set up to transfer the materials back and forth. In between was another yummy lunch, and after work day #2, we had finished the whole floor! That afternoon, we went for another swim, and then the whole family came over for dinner to celebrate our work together. They gave each of us a pretty bracelet, and they also had beautiful earrings for the teachers. 

Day 5: El Yungue/Luquillo Beach

Our work finished, the science fun began! We headed to El Yunque National Forest, “the only tropical rainforest in the national forest system.”  Randall and Nahely led us to a cool swimming spot, at the end of a waterfall, where we swam, sat on enormous rocks, and floated on bamboo sticks. We then headed to Luquillo Beach for lunch at Terruño Comida Artesanal and did some more shopping for souvenirs along the beachside street. We then checked into our new homes for the night, the Surfing Turtle and the Casa Coral before another swim in the river leading out to the ocean where a riptide meant we could not go in those tempting waves. After another wonderful afternoon of community building, games, relaxing, and swimming, we had dinner and headed off on our last adventure of the trip: a kayak ride into the bioluminescent bay in Fajardo.

Day 6: Back to Massachusetts

We woke up and had breakfast, sad that our adventure was almost over. We had a last meeting with Randall and Nahely, where we each shared our thoughts about the trip, and then we headed for the airport, and our long commute back home, but we didn’t mind. We didn’t want our trip to end! We enjoyed these last moments together on the plane and exploring the airport in Baltimore between flights. 

Our trip to Puerto Rico is something that will stay with us for a long time. The community bonding and lessons we learned, the people we met, the way we balanced hard work with fun and came out better for it than before. It was wonderful to experience first hand the amazing local culture, traditions, language, food, and history that we have read or heard about in Spanish, humanities, and science class. We hope you enjoyed reading about it, and that you get to go to Puerto Rico too! We know we’ll go back as soon as we can.