Mission trips, Florida trips and chances to have fun or serve are flowing around this time of the year for students on spring break.
Sophomore Sangjin Woo is the student leader and coordinator of the Haiti missions trip. He and his team will leave March 25 and return April 1.
“I started planning from October 2017,” Woo said. “I was just promoting – trying to get more people in [and] coming up with more details and information.”
Though the idea of being the leader of his team is something that has been on his shoulders for the last six months, he has put his effort into it because going to Haiti is something he’s wanted to do even before coming to HU.
“I saw my brother going to Haiti,” Woo said, “and he told me lots of good thing about it. I wanted to experience the same thing that my brother experienced.”
Woo mentioned that spring break might be a good time to rest from school and other responsibilities, but he thinks that because he is from South Korea, his time in America is limited, so he wants to experience and explore countries.
Because of his opportunity to attend school in the USA, he gets to travel more easily.
“How can I go to Haiti from Korea?” he said. “That’s a longer flight than going to Haiti from here [in the US].”
Sophomore Hannah Williams was also presented with the opportunity to serve over spring break.
“Initially, I was going to go with campus life at the high school,” Williams said. “We were going to go to PCB with them in Florida.”
She said campus life at Huntington North High School could take a volunteer with them, so she would be able to go for free and hang out with the campus life kids that she’s had all year.
Williams’s plan didn’t go through, though. She got a call Thursday, March 8 — two weeks until the trip — saying she couldn’t go for free anymore, leaving her to make new plans for her spring break.
“It was funny because I was talking to my friend on a Wednesday,” Williams said, “and she was talking about what she and her friend are doing for spring break. They talked about how if they’d ask someone to come, they could come. So, when [the trip was cancelled] on Thursday, I was like, ‘I could just catch a trip with them!’”
Williams said college has turned her into more of a planning person, so the sudden cancelation of her initial plans left her worrying a lot. Still, she said she is happy with her new plan since it’s still cheap, which is a key factor to her.
“I had the Florida trip planned since the end of January,” she said. “I’m going to do my best to make sure that plan happens. I don’t like changing things.”
Now her spring break will be for rest.
“I just want to, kind of, lay by the beach, read a book that I don’t have to read, listen to music, catch up on sleep and just do stuff like that.” she said. “But if we go and do, like, fun things – like fun, touristy things, that’s going to be awesome.”
Williams said spring breaks are meant to be for friends. Her family resides in Huntington, so she gets to see them a lot. Now, her plan is to spend time with people that she usually doesn’t hang out with, which, in the end, will strengthen the bond between each other.
“I get to know them on an area which is not school-based,” she said, “which is nice.”
Though the relational part is something important, Williams said finances play a bigger part.
“I don’t make a lot of money during the school year,” she said. “I’m not going grocery shopping this week. I’m not spending any money I don’t need to this week just so I can have lots of money during spring break.”
Junior Danielle Boxill also takes into account how much there is in her savings account before planning a trip.
“The cheaper, the better,” Boxill said. “I think that the most fun happens when it is not very expensive. When you just go and you are forced to find fun things to do rather than pay for things to entertain you, I think it’s way more fun, and you have more interaction with friends.”
Boxill is planning to go to Florida with friends, but it hasn’t been very stable since they started to put all the little details together.
“At first, we didn’t know who was going to drive us because one of the drivers pulled out.” she said. “But now we know … well, we don’t know for sure for sure, but we have an idea of what we are going to do for transport, and we know who we will stay by because it is going to be a long drive.”
Though her last spring break was spent on campus, Boxill liked how quiet the campus is since it’s mostly empty, but she wants to try new things, hence her trip.
Being an international student makes it difficult to visit family.
“As an international, I am far away from home,” she said. “It doesn’t feel weird to just be with friends. I don’t think of missing family time during the spring.”
Boxill said spring break is a time to rest, be with friends, and prepare for what is left of the semester.
The Huntingtonian 