our stories |
Dear readers,
Today we started off by going on a run in the rain which pushed me out of my comfort zone but in the end it was fun, it was a voluntary run and I decided to try it, running is not my sport but I decided to do it anyway since I was trying a bunch of new things already. After the run I hung out with my host family, we talked, ate breakfast and listened to music. At 9am all the group got together again and walked to the school. We have been working at la escuela (the school), today we painted and laid rocks down on the path and put cement on the walls. I am looking forward to how it turns out. We are living on a small farm with pigs, over 100 guinea pigs, chickens, ducks, a goat, cows and multiple dogs. One of my goals in the home stay was to milk a cow, which I think I will do in the coming days. It is different and a once in a lifetime experience. I have milked a goat before but a cow is bigger and cuter. Another one of my goals was to see baby pigs which I have seen multiple times and I love it since it is my favorite animal. It has been really cool seeing the differences between Costa Rica and where I live in California. Some of the differences include brushing my teeth outside while I smell the farm animals and taking cold showers. I will never not appreciate a warm shower again since I have been screaming in the shower every day. The way Costa Ricans live is not as fast paced as us and I like it because people aren’t as stressed out. I was talking to my host brother about how in Costa Rica everyone is so nice to one another. When they drive by one another they honk their horn but in California people aren’t as friendly and cheerful to one another. I have really enjoyed living the Costa Rican lifestyle, trying all the new food and even salsa dancing. Last night we went to the grandma’s house which is right next door and where Ms. Begley and Randall are staying and we all learned to salsa dance. We danced for two to two and a half hours which I would probably never do back at home. From this experience I have learned a lot including being thankful for the small things like hot water and a house with windows. I have also learned a lot more about the Costa Rican lifestyle and how they live. Lots of love, Lily
2 Comments
Dear Family,
Today was the first morning in our homestay house, I woke at 5am and relaxed in bed until 7am, daydreaming about our trip. We went and had breakfast in the living room at 8am and we talked with the family about how they do things in Costa Rica, they shared some traditions with us. Our homestay has a farm. There are over 100 guinea pigs, they have pigs, a goat, 5-6 dogs, cows, chickens. At 9am we were picked up by Ms. Begley, Randall and the rest of the students of the trip. We walked ten minutes to a botanical farm and we tried many fruits such as oranges, sugar cane, pepper that was sweet and sour, we drank coconut water and ate the coconut on the inside. The farmer also gave us some other plants such as lemon grass that we could smell and eat. At the end of the tour we had some banana, coconut, vanilla, milk and sugar ice cream that we could taste. After this, we took a 30 minute bus ride to a sustainable farm, it was an organic farm that worked to give people better options other than buying fruit and vegetables from big companies that use lots of pesticides and chemicals on their crops. He showed us how he powered his kitchen using biogas, we fed the pigs and made a compost heap. Afterwards we harvested pepper, the best pepper in the world, and saw his vanilla plants and drank coffee and ate arrepa (a type of Spanish bread) and heard his story behind how his company originated. We took a half hour bus ride back to our homestays and relaxed with the families. We are working in the school tomorrow and I want to be able to have a big impact on the children that will attend the school. I am still so excited about seeing all the amazing things Costa Rica has to offer. The environment is quite different to ours in America, it is really chilled over here, everybody is hanging out with neighbors and having a good time. We just helped our homestay mom make empanadas, we got to taste one and they are amazing. We also learned how to salsa dance in the evening. I am really excited for the rafting and the cooking classes we have planned. Lots of love, Jasmine Dear family and everybody reading our blog,
Every day we make sure to have breakfast together to get the Costa Rican feel in the group. This is our third day at Chilamate. We had breakfast in the morning and made our plans for the day. We then made our way to the elementary and high school, we had a tour of the school and learned that we were going to help build the walkway that goes in to the school. This is a very important project because when it rains the parents don’t have a place to stay dry. Soon, they will have a place that they can come and pick up their kids and not be out on a busy street. We split up in to groups and made / started the cement process. We then poured and smoothed the cement on to a dirt foundation. We got about ¼ of the walkway complete in only two and a half hours. It was fun working with my fellow classmates as well as bonding with fellow community members that worked with us. I believe that work builds character and an important part of truly living life is knowing how to build something physically and then seeing what you have done with your own hands. We took a quick cool off in the river followed by lunch in Chilamate. Then it was the moment of truth for my fellow classmates and I, we were packing our bags to go meet our host families. It was the three girls together in one house, Stephen and Hans in the salsa instructors house, Ryan and I in a lady named Dunia’s house. Ryan and I weren’t nervous at all, we had a plan to first give our gifts on a daily basis to add a bit of surprise and to have a topic to get closer to our host family daily by having a new topic we can discuss each day. We then sat down with her two sons and played Uno and the 19 year old son asked me “what is Uno called in English”? Without even thinking, I said one but it is an American game and still called Uno. This was their joke to break the ice with us. We then had dinner with was spaghetti with a marinara chicken sauce, rice and beans and palm of hearts. After the mom saw my food was gone, she offered us more. She didn’t understand and put double the amount that she put the first time. I felt bad, didn’t want to leave any and I forced all the food down. It was not hard to communicate with my host family because the son used google translate which was very relieving and they asked Ryan and I a variety of questions varying from what kind of sports we liked to what is America like? Then later that night we went to Stephen and Hans’s host families house and the host mom taught us salsa dancing and we listened to music and danced until we had to go to bed. All in all it was a very good day and I am looking forward to breakfast in the morning. Lots of love, Xavier We have arrived to our home stay families. All students safe and happy, blog will be updated in the morning.
Dear everybody,
My name is Hans, and I’m in Costa Rica right now. This is the second night in Costa Rica and all I want to say is the environment here is amazing. People here are friendly and very helpful. I love the food here, it tastes like Asian food but it has its own style and I really like it. Our class mates are really friendly especially Xavier, Stephen & Ryan, we are living together, and we talk a lot. I have made a lot of new friends here that I haven’t spoken to in school before. I have actually learned a lot, there are so many different wild animals here, I didn’t even know the name of them before or what they looked like. It is amazing how there are lots of bugs which I hate but that is also part of the experience. I feel really relaxed here because it is just a week after the finals and I feel really good without technology or social media. We played a game this morning which was about global issues. There were two teams and each team was on a different side, we had to remember the way we got to the other side so here was the problem…. every team wants to win so it was going really slowly but after both teams started to work together it worked faster than before. The global issue we were thinking about is countries competing with each other which is bad for some of the global development which we should be all working on together. There is a guy who is the leader of the team named Randall, he is so nice and he teaches us some Spanish which is pretty cool and teaches us a lot of skills that we cannot learn in school. I have never tasted 100% chocolate before, it was awesome. I feel like the chocolate I ate today is more chocolate that I have ever eaten in my entire life. It was a lot and I can still feel the energy in my body right now. The chocolate was really good and it is amazing that the chocolate fruit doesn’t taste like chocolate at the beginning, it actually tasted like mango for me. The process of making chocolate fruit in to chocolate is so complicated. I bought a tub of chocolate butter which the guy told us it will help us fix some facial problems such as spots. I am going to try it tonight with my homies Xavier, Stephen, Ryan and everybody else, even Ms. B and Randall are doing facials tonight. This is the first school trip I have done and I hope I can have a wonderful trip. This is only the second day so I will have more news and experiences in the coming days. Lots and lots of love, Hans Dear Family,
We have all survived our first day in Costa Rica. Lily, Jasmine, Xavier, Ryan, Stephen, Hanz, Ms. Begley, Randall and I experienced various sights, a magnificent waterfall, parts of the rain forest and heard all the the wondrous sounds within. Due to the long flight our guide and faculty at the Chilamate Eco retreat didn’t force us to do too much hard work. Randall, our guide and our driver Jeffery drove us through the central valley and to the Atlantic side of Costa Rica. Randall’s quote of the morning was “if you get motion sickness, then tell me, we’re going on a very twisty road”. On route from the airport we stopped for food and ate a classic Costa Rican breakfast of scrambled eggs, rice, beans and a yum strawberry smoothie. As we drove through the rainforest we saw huge leaves, so large they are known as the poor mans umbrella. We stopped at a beautiful waterfall that was connected to two other ones and hiked behind the waterfall, so close that we were getting wet. We arrived at Chilamate Eco retreat, met with Megan and all the staff here. There were moments where I’ve laid back in a hammock and I got lost in the sound of the surrounding insects and birds. After some rest, we ventured to the river, most of us didn’t hesitate to go in the water. One or two people took pictures and wrote in their journals. Lily and Xavier dragged us all out of our comfort zone and we floated down the river with the current. In a few days we are expected to go to our home stay families, I’m really excited to meet them. Lots of love, Mahalia |