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Miami Palmetto High School senior Paulina Handal once spent 10 days in the rough interior of the Dominican Republic on a Blue Mission Trip to supply water to a remote village.
“We go to these smaller communities in Dominican Republic that don’t have running water,” she says. “It was a lot of manual labor. But it was by far one of the best experiences of my life.”
Handal says she’s not a huge fan of manual labor, but she loved helping the community.
“They have such joy with the little they have” she says. “It was so incredible!”
In those ten days, the teens hiked up the mountain to dig a ditch on the side of the road.
Once the ditch was done, they carried the pipes up the mountain to install them.
The teens stayed in the local school, the boys in one classroom and the girls in another.
“We had cots and mosquito nets,” she says. “It was simple and not so glamourous. Still, after a hard day it was nice to go to sleep in a somewhat bed.”
They took makeshift showers in tents using buckets of water. They used latrines because there was no indoor plumbing.
Handal said the first day was difficult.
“At the end of the day, I’m so excited to take a shower even though it was a cold bucket of water,” she says. “After that, I didn’t even notice it.”
At the end, there was a ceremony to bless the water coming to the village.
At home, Handal volunteers at St. Louis Catholic Church.
“We buy gifts and donate them to the church,” she says. “They give us a description and lists of things that they like. We get to give the gifts to the family.”
She likes being able to give the wrapped gifts to the families.
“One little girl was so excited,” she says. “She wanted to show me her room. She was so excited to show me their home.”
At school, she was the freshman class president and she was on Student Council where she spent her time on Special Events. This year she is the Special Events chair.
She’s vice president of Outreach for the Social Science National Honor Society, now called Rho Kappa.
She helps organize the History Bowl tournaments, but she participates in Quiz Bowl events.
Handal wants to be a lawyer so last year she started a Mock Trial Club and convinced the school to start a Law Studies and Trial class.
“I realized there was nothing at school about law,” Handal says. “I pitched a class, and I found someone who could teach the class.”
For fun, Handal joined the bowling team.
She’s a member of the National Honor Society and the Health Information Project, which trains students to teach health to freshman classes.
This summer, she interned at the State Attorney’s Office. She was assigned to the Media Department.
“I learned so much being in the media office,” she says. “I got to see every part of it. It was very interesting.”
The previous summer, she attended a Law and Trial program at Stanford, taking classes at the law school.
“That’s how I got introduced to mock trial,” she says. “We would take classes during the day and in the afternoon, we would have a case.”
In college, her major depends on which college she attends. The majors include Communications, Business, Pre-Law or Political Science.
Her application list includes Northeastern, Tulane, Villanova, University of Indiana (at Bloomington), and Wake Forest.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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