We just spoke with the Costa Rica group and they report the following:
When we arrived into the host community, they had planned a nice welcome for us! We ate arroz con pollo (chicken with rice) and chatted with our host families before heading off with them to get settled. We have now been with them 3 nights, and overall things are going really well. It doesn’t hurt that all of them have kids to keep us entertained!
Sunday, we didn’t work because it’s a day of descanso (rest). In the afternoon, the group gathered with a whole bunch of local youth and played soccer…in the rain! It was great. The group has also become very familiar with Costa Rican food and is eating a lot of Gallo Pinto (black beans and rice), yucca, and platanos (plantains).
Yesterday, we started work on the building the classroom, and the group worked really hard! The space for the classroom wasn’t cleared so we started by leveling the ground. We also dug deep holes for the posts that we’ll put in today. So, there’s been a lot of shoveling and mixing cement! Some of us have blisters and most of our backs hurt a little. This means we’re working hard! All of the students seem really committed to the service/work component of this program, so there haven’t even been many complaints.
There is a lot of work on the classroom to keep us busy for now but we’re also considering a few different secondary projects, like painting a world map mural on the school wall or even making some hula hoops with irrigation tubing! I (Kim) love hula hooping and take a few whenever I travel. A lot of the community members seem to be fascinated by the hoops – there were even about 10 kids fighting over them at one point!
We hope to post another blog this weekend when we go to San Isidro for a break from the host community, so stay tuned!
