Hello blog followers. My name is Nicole and I am going to give you a little background information our alternative break trip to Puerto Rico.

I made contact with Community Collaborations Interntional a little more than a year ago to look into the possibility of taking a group to Puerto Rico to help with hurricane damage. CCI has hosted groups in PR for about 8 years and I felt it was important to work with an organization that had already been established pre-hurricane and that was managed by people who live in PR.

As our blog posts are meant to give you a glimpse of what work we are doing this week. What I can tell you is that so far we have painted a lot of houses and heard a lot of amazing and harrowing stories from people who rode out Hurricane Maria. Some of these sound like the stories the news covered beiefly in the states, but it’s so impactful to hear them right from someone while you help paint their home. Here are some of the things we have heard:

Two weeks to contact family.

Having to drive to the highway and parking on the shoulder to try and get signal.

Two weeks with out power.

Nine months without power.

One year without power.

Having your roof torn off.

Trying to use a rope to hold the front door closed.

Coming home to three feet of sand with water on top.