WATSONTOWN -- A 10-day midwinter trip to Montego Bay, Jamaica, was anything but a vacation for eight juniors and seniors at Watsontown Christian Academy. In fact, they managed only one trip to the beach, instead spending their time visiting schools and orphanages in the poverty-stricken Caribbean nation.

They delivered pencils, notebooks and other school supplies to several elementary schools, where they were greeted by children singing songs such as "Jesus Love" and "Have a Nice Day."

Cameron Yarger, of White Deer, was moved by how excited the Jamaican students were to meet them.

"Their school was a very rickety building," he said. "It was surrounded by barbed wire, and when it was time for school, the gate was locked. If they were late, they couldn't get in."

At one school, the WCA students saw a new corrugated metal roof on one classroom, which WCA had paid for, he said.

The Watsontown students and their chaperones stayed in a villa and traveled around in a van. The poor condition of roads, which they described as "potholes here, potholes there, no pavement" surprised them. The homes they saw were often two-room shacks, covered with corrugated sheet metal, with walls topped by barbed wire.

On several days, they visited orphanages, where they played with children. They played for hours, they said, holding the younger ones and reading to them and pushing the swings for the older children.

"They were very excited to see us," recalled Mark Summers, of Turbotville.

The orphanages typically had hundreds of children, some of whom had been abandoned.

"They lacked the human touch, compassion, prayer and love," said Tabitha Beaver, of Milton. "It was heartbreaking."

Beaver, who is the school's "School Counts" adviser, is the Central Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce's business and education coordinator. She said she was honored that the WCA students invited her on the trip.

"It wasn't unusual for the van to be surrounded by kids before it even stopped, and they would run along side us, crying as we left," she said.

"The younger children stay in cribs except to be fed and changed until they're 18 months old," said Jalyssa Russel, of Turbotville. "They didn't get any other attention."

The group also helped improve the Zion Evangelical Friends Church. They moved wheelbarrow-loads of stone and sand to a patio area, where they mixed it and then added bags of cement and water to make concrete. They then formed a bucket brigade to transport buckets of concrete into the building to cover the dirt floors in two rooms, the pastor's office and a restroom.

James Brown, a student from Muncy, still had blisters from that job, he said.