By Qianyu (Margaret) Cheng
How was your Thanksgiving break? Just as students came back from Fall break, Thanksgiving becomes a popular small talk topic on campus nowadays. Although after fall break, there will be only two weeks of study and the semester will be over, a week of break is still a good escape from the intense study.
Thanksgiving is an important holiday in U.S., while on that day family will gather together and have a delicious meal. For international students, some of us choose to go back home too, but most of us have to stay in States. However, stay in States does not mean there is nothing to do. It is always a option to stay in Champaign (like what I did in freshman year) and relax for a week or travel a little bit. Last Thanksgiving, I travelled to Chicago with friends. This Thanksgiving, however, I chose to do something meaningful and in the mean time, still have fun.
The trip I attend is facilitated by Alternative Spring Break ( many of you may hear of it before since ISSS newsletter has posted information about ASB), and the name of the trip is LaCaSa the Goshen. As the name tells, we traveled to Goshen, a city in Indiana, to help with community development by remodeling houses for low-income artists and entrepreneurs.
Before the trip, we had several meetings to get to know more about each other and had several fundraising events. There were 11 of us. The trip started on Saturday and we drove three hours and a half to Goshen, Indiana. We were both excited and wondering what we are going to do. When we arrived, the people from LaCaSa welcomed us and we settled down in where we stayed for four days. LaCaSa is a non-profit organization located in Goshen and its organized by 30 people. Besides remodeling, LaCaSa also work with homeownership and helping family saving money to buy houses of their own, and lots of others.
The branch that we were going to help with is rebuilding and renewing buildings. So far they already rebuilt a elementary school into an apartment, and what we will do is to help remodel a furniture factory that's been built on 1870. Remodeling instead of tearing down old buildings can save lots of cost. Another bonus is that, since the old building was a factory, the apartment will have a industry style. After rebuilding, the "brand new" apartments will be rent to low income artists and entrepreneurs.
The volunteer work started on Monday. We got to the place to be remodeled and one of the members from LaCaSa led us to a tour. I expected something more rough, but the draft of apartments is almost done and we could not even recognize that it was a factory before. However, there were still pipes that remained industry style. What we did is to paint some of the metal items so that it looked brand new.
Although I think myself as expert of painting (which is not true), I had never done painting on something other than paper before, but the principles were similar. As a result, I quickly adopted the way it worked and then I enjoyed it. But it took me time adopting the way to step on ladder and used brush to paint. In the end of day, everyone became a master of painting.
The second day was somehow the same. In the end of the work, we visited the office of LaCaSa incorporation and talked to the officer in LaCaSa. Some of them worked in big company before, but then work for non-profit to give back to community and they worked really hard to make a positive change on people's lives.
The things I enjoyed most is to spend time with members in the same trip and also talk to volunteers in LaCaSa and learn from their stories. Although we only have 11 members, lots of us didn't know each other really well but became good friends after the trip. And there were students from all majors, years and places. We had good conversation over many things and all learned a lot from each others. Also, when we cooked for ourselves, we got to practice cooking skill and how to keep up with budget. What is more, it is so refreshing for me to see that there are people work hard for community and work together for the goodness of human being as a whole. Overall, we spent a great thanksgiving and I would highly recommend you guys to apply for the trips.
Thank you and stay warm! Good luck with finals and everything. It might be last blog of the semester, and hopefully if I survive over finals, I will see you guys next semester after winter break! :) Thank you for another wonderful semester!