The temperature in sunny Cancun, Mexico, reached 90 degrees Monday. It was about 45 and muddy in East Lawrence.

But that didn’t bother Belinda Hernandez. While some of her classmates at Loyola University Chicago were hitting the beaches over their spring break, Hernandez was helping paint the inside of a Lawrence Habitat for Humanity house.

“I don’t like being in swimsuits anyway,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez is one of five Loyola students in Lawrence this week to help build three Habitat for Humanity houses. The project is part of the national Collegiate Challenge program, which places university volunteers across the country to build houses for low-income residents.

The Loyola students are part of On Call, a service organization that helps students choose careers. Each year the program also includes a spring break service project.

Until two weeks ago, the students thought they would be volunteering this week in a Russian orphanage. Loyola officials nixed the Russian trip at the last minute because they were worried about growing anti-American sentiment abroad.

“It just kind of all came together at the last minute,” said Bernie Zanck, a graduate student from San Francisco.

The group is helping to finish three houses in East Lawrence, at 1813, 1817 and 1821 Atherton Court.

Loyola University students, from left, Monica McGettrick, Belinda Hernandez and Sarah Burke paint interior walls of a Habitat for Humanity home in East Lawrence. The students work on Habitat houses during their spring break as part of the Habitat for Humanity Collegiate Challenge, an exchange program among universities. The volunteers worked Monday at one of three homes under construction on Atherton Court.

Andre Bollaert, executive director for Lawrence Habitat for Humanity, said the organization was trying to complete the three houses by the end of March. He said Loyola students would be doing a variety of tasks to help reach that goal, including caulking, hanging doors, painting and installing trim.

Hernandez, a junior from Chicago, said the inside work was better than a project she worked on last spring break in Kentucky, where she and her co-workers helped frame a house.

“This is so much easier, doing the painting,” she said. “We’re inside.”

Another group of students from Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania will come next week on their spring break to help.

¢ Habitat for Humanity International¢ Loyala University Chicago

Kansas University also is sending two groups of volunteers on its spring break, which begins March 17. KU students were assigned to work on Habitat for Humanity homes in warmer locations — Miami and Sacramento, Calif.

But Hernandez said she didn’t mind being somewhere less-than-balmy for spring break.

“It’s nice when you’re going crazy with classes in the middle of the semester to take some time for someone else,” she said.