Saturday, March 14, 2015

Students' Journal: Costa Rica Day 3

NOTE:
The Blogger phone App has been down for most of the trip; therefore, we have not been able to upload as near as many photos as we have taken. We hope the app will be up and running shortly. Until then, we will be posting at least once a day from the computer. -Geoff, Kimberly, and Liz

Costa Rica Blog: Day 3

            Today we moved out of the wonderful Chilamate Ecolodge. We head to our homestay families tonight. Everyone enjoyed our wonderful stay there, and we all thank Meghan and Davis for their hospitality. All the homestays will be within walking distance to the lodge, where we will go for lunch, meeting, and curriculum every day. Some of us have already met our homestay brothers and sisters, and they are all very nice. In some families, there are going to be as many as seven kids, both American and Costa Rican! In the worksite today, we were a lot friendlier with the Costa Ricans, mainly because once you've hauled enough 100-pound rocks together, it's way easier to bond. The food today was great (as usual). We had an Italian special for lunch, which was a nice hiatus from our usual diet of rice and beans. We also played foosball with the Costa Rican kids before going to the worksite.

            From canopy to canopy hanging on a wire suspended four stories above the ground, the beautiful green of the trees can be seen for miles. Yep, you guessed it. Today was fun filled with a zip lining experience! Most of us had never gone zip lining until today but let us tell you: it’s a beautiful experience that cannot be missed! Besides the occasional fear or hiccup with trippy equipment, we were all able to let it go because three miles of ‘flying’ through the skies, well, you get the picture. Overall, it was a wonderful experience that we wish we could do 1,000,000 more times.

            With the experience from zip lining most of us can say we have at least bonded with one person. With the many breaks between towers, a few of us successfully struck up a friendship with two Costa Ricans, Michael and Jimena. Although we are from different countries and have different backgrounds we were able to have normal conversations in Spanish. We talked about music, school gossip, and social media. After the zip lining, we came back to the Ecolodge. Then we had a break and got ready for the worksite. We cleaned up after ourselves, took our clothes off the line, grabbed anything left behind, and then we took our luggage and headed for the Chilamate Elementary School. Unlike yesterday, however, there was no rain at all, and while constant rain seems terrible, it was baking hot this afternoon. Today, some of us worked by lugging large metal beams from the church next door to the school, and others painted those beams. Mr. Agnor had a method for dividing us into these groups. He stopped at each person and told them they were a Costa or a Rica. The Costa group went to get the beams from the church while the Rica group painted the beams. It was fun, because we were getting more confident with our Spanish and we communicated with the local people- students and workers- much easier. The only problems that we encountered were, of course, the heat, the sun, and the paint. If you got it on you clothes, it wouldn’t come out. And if you got it on your skin, there was a cloth with special cleaner to remove it. After we return to the Ecolodge later to clean up, we will go straight to our homestays, which we are both nervous and excited about. Either way, we know we will have a good time.
     - Owen Potter, Sol Rey Vashez, Lindsay Guerrero, and Maelle Sannon







                 


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