When Amber Hoffman graduates on May 6 from the University of Colorado at Boulder, she will have a little more than a week to finish preparing for a trip to Thailand to help victims of December's tsunami.
Hoffman, 21, will leave May 14 to fly to Phuket, Thailand, where she will spend a week doing relief work. The trip has been in the works for a couple of months, but the time for action has nearly arrived.
"I have no idea what to expect, so I'm a little nervous," said Hoffman, who is from Pueblo and is graduating with a bachelor's degree in management from the Leeds School of Business.
Hoffman is raising $2,500 on her own for the trip, $750 of which will go directly to a tsunami relief fund. She is traveling with the Campus Crusade for Christ program. Her group will include about 100 students from other colleges and universities across the country.
The December 2004 tsunami annihilated numerous villages and left much of the region's coastal population without shelter, jobs or access to food and clean water.
"The area I'm traveling to is one of the hardest hit," Hoffman said. "Many survivors were left with nothing. It is very sad to hear that most of the people I will encounter have lost at least one family member. I just want to give hope and encouragement to some of the victims."
While in Thailand she will do whatever work is needed. Most likely, she will be distributing supplies, cleaning up debris and building houses. She also hopes it will be a learning experience for her.
"I hope to not only learn about another culture, but also about loss," she said. "It's so easy to take for granted what we have here."