"...I have had so many memorable moments working with Habitat, I really don’t know where to begin. It has been such a privilege to lead this club at a school where so many kids want to make a difference. I was lucky to have a place on my most recent build in Thailand, because the trip was full within an hour after signups were opened. If I had to tell a story about my experiences with Habitat, the first one that comes to my mind is from my last day working in Bangkok, Thailand.

Because it was in the middle of our school year, the 2006 Bangkok build was very short, a duration of only 5 days. But the intimacy that this type of trip inspires allows many meaningful relationships to form. Our group was split up to work on two separate sites fairly close in proximity. On the last day, however, the site I was working on did not have as much work to do as the other one, so several members and I were transferred to work on the second site. That morning was the first time I introduced myself to this homeowner, Mrs. Sangwien, and perhaps the only time I addressed her directly.

I knew that this would probably be my last build for years to come. I knew that while my peers and I were hot and tired now, we’d never have to work this hard again for months, and that we would have a proper mattress to sleep on within hours, and air-conditioning, and clean water, and all the commodities that modern life provides. And so I worked. I took the hardest jobs: carrying buckets of gravel, water, and sand, shoveling and mixing concrete; I didn’t even stop when it started raining and the local workers took a break. But I also knew that this would probably be the last time I ever saw these people, these workers who were so open, so friendly, so willing to share their lives with us, and let us play with their children. So I talked while I worked, I learned the numbers in Thai and counted buckets of water and sand and gravel with the other workers. I learned how to say water, shovel, concrete, hot, I love you, hello, goodbye, words that I can’t remember much of now but it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that in the middle of it all, Mrs. Sangwien, a woman with whom I had exchanged two words, a woman who spoke almost no English, looked up and said, “Cat, will you come and live with me in this house?”

"Will you come and live with me in this house?"

I was shocked. Pat, our team leader and translator, came over to translate as I stuttered out, “But, I…have school”.

“You can go to school over their in our village”, Mrs. Sangwien said in Thai, pointing behind her.
“But I don’t speak Thai!” I responded uncertainly.
“You can learn Thai in 4 months!” Pat translated from Mrs. Sangwien’s response.
I laughed disbelievingly, and replied “I have to stay with my family… but I really want to come back and stay someday!”

I never understood how much it meant to the homeowners that we flew all the way from Hong Kong to help them build a house. A house is much more than it seems. A house is stability. A house is protection. A house is something you can leave for your children to inherit. And if you’re lucky, a house is your home. That someone wants to partake in this journey of building lives with you is worth so much."

A house is much more than it seems.