Name: Diane Morrison Age: 21 From: Stornoway, Isle of Lewis Previous experience of foreign travel: Visited New York, delivering a plaque from the Stornoway Fire Brigade to the Ground Zero site.

We finally reached Guatemala after about forty hours of travelling! The heat hit me as soon as I stepped off the plane in Guatemala City, it was so hot! When we reached Antigua, a small town outside of Guatemala City  where we'd be staying for the two weeks, we went for a wee tour around. It's a lovely old town with lots of beautiful, historical buildings.

We were going to be staying with a family in Antigua. The parents, Luis and Veronica, and their two young daughters, Ana and Stefanie, were lovely! They didn't have much English but the two girls were learning it in school. I'm not sure if we helped them much but we tried!

We were in Guatemala for a very special reason. We were going to be helping with a project called 'Houses to Homes'  which meant we were going to be helping to build a house for a very poor family. We worked on this project for a week and in that time we moved wheelbarrows of stones; fetched water; moved bricks and mixed cement - very hard work! There was a group from America and also two Gap year students from London helping us and through the week, the house went up as planned! I have to say it was a very good feeling to watch the house going up as I've never done hard work like this in my life! There were two men from Guatemala - Juan and Edgar- who did most of the work. They were lovely! Although they didn't have much English and we had no Spanish at all, we could always hear them singing and laughing! It was sometimes very hard to understand them, especially when they were trying to tell us how many bags of cement we needed, but we got there in the end!

At the end of the week, when the house was finished and painted, (yellow on the inside, blue on the outside) we handed the keys over to the family. The family, the parents and three gorgeous little girls, had been around all week so they had seen the house going up in front of them. I don't think I've ever seen anyone so happy as them when they finally got into their new house. Although it was only one room, it was so much better than the shed they'd had before. Miguel, the father of the family, gave us each a letter to say thank you for all the work we'd done and for the help we'd given them. I think that was possibly the best moment of the whole trip - knowing that we'd done something good for someone else and that we'd helped people who had nothing. The family felt bad that they couldn't afford to give us anything to say thank you but the letter itself was more than enough!

Although we spent the majority of our time in Guatemala working, we did get a chance to do some travelling around the country. One day, we went from Antigua to a place called Quirigua where we saw some old Mayan ruins, one of the tribes that used to be in Guatemala over two thousand years ago. We went to Rio Dulce where we got a chance to go on a boat ride. Michelle even got a chance to drive the boat! We went to see 'El Castillo de San Felipe', an old castle where soldiers used to look out for pirates in the 17th Century.

We also went to Tikal National Park which is about three hours away from Antigua. This Park is full of old temples and we even climbed one. I didn't think I'd be able to get back down it was that high! One day, we went to to see the biggest market in Guatemala. A place called Chichicastenango which was selling everything you could think of - clothes, food, animals. Anything you could want! What a mix of colours and smells. We also went to a coffee plantation. Coffee is one of the main industries in Guatemala and although I don’t like coffee at all, it was very interesting to see how it is produced.

Possibly the best and also the hardest thing we did was climb a volcano. The volcano Pacaya is still live and as we were climbing, we could see smoke coming out of the top. It was quite scary to know that it could explode at any time! Our guide Juan and his dog Ella took us as far up as we were allowed. We were walking on hard lava but it was still very hot - I actually though my trainers were going to melt! We also got to see hot lava! It was still flowing down the side of the volcano and we were very, very close to it! That was quite nerve wracking!

At the end of our time in Guatemala, it was difficult to believe that we’d had the opportunity to do everything we had. I never thought I’d have climbed a volcano or built a house but I’m very thankful that I got the chance to do all this in Guatemala. I think it would be nice to go back and visit the family and the house we built sometime. I’d love to go back in a year or so, we’ll see!!