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Tuesday July 24, 2018
Hola!!!!
After a long day of flying we have all made it to Costa Rica! When we got here most of us took a nap right away in the hotel after meeting our mentors. Then we all did a walking tour through the capital city, saw the most import Monuments and even saw some street performers!
We came back to the hotel for dinner and then got some sleep for our three hour drive to home base!! We won’t have WiFi there so please don’t worry if we don’t get back to you. We’ll be having too much fun to look at our phones.
Adios!
Friday July 27, 2018
Hola amigos! Today was an awesome day. We woke up at around 6:35 to eat breakfast at 6:45.
It was delicious! Then we got on the bus and headed over to San Pedro where we meet up with
the group. Then we broke a sweat working hard on the long-term project of a sidewalk for the
kids and public to walk on. We then hopped on over to lunch, where we had an authentic Costa
Rican meal cooked by wonderful and generous ladies. We then played a quick match of soccer
and headed back to home base. After our daily Spanish classes, we had a scrumdiddlyumptious
meal and then bounced back to our cabins for a peaceful night sleep. We had an incredible day
today and we can’t wait for tomorrow!
P u r a vi d a m a e !
Saturday July 28, 2018
Hola amigos! Today we had another amazing day in Costa Rica. We got to sleep in until 6:50 to
have another delicious breakfast at 7. Then we went down to the bus and made our way to San
Pedro to begin our third day of service. Today we primarily worked with cement with some of
us transporting compost to participating eco farms. Due to an event in the main hall we ate our
lunch in a different place today, but the food was just as good! After that we headed back to
home base to begin another Spanish lesson that lasted 2 and a half hours. Then we ate a
delectable dinner and had free time for the rest of the night. Tune in tomorrow for another
picante post from your blog baristas. Goodnight folks!
P u r a vi d a m a e !
Tuesday July 31, 2018
Hola!!!
For the first half of the trip, we’ve been working on a sidewalk in the small town of San Pedro.
After fully cementing the drainage ditch on a large portion of concrete, we started the second
half of our community service, which involves working on local coffee farms and using compost
to fertilize coffee plants. We formed assembly lines with buckets, and through group effort, we
fertilized hundreds of coffee plants.
After four days of hard work, we decided to take a break and head to the beach! For our first
day in Playa Dominical, we all took a surf lesson for two hours. The conditions were great, and
everyone was able to surf multiple waves. After a delicious lunch, we drove to our hotel for
some much needed wifi and rest. It was a chill afternoon by the pool leading up to another
group meal in the hotel dining room.
For our second day in Dominical, we got up early and shuttled to the Manuel Antonio National
Park. We made our way through the park and were lucky enough to spot a three-toed friendly
sloth, and several other amazing animals including a rainbow grasshopper, and squirrel
monkeys. We arrived at a beautiful beach with crystal clear waters and white sands where we
spent two hours swimming and meeting other American teenagers. We left the beach right
before a rainstorm hit, and headed to town where we ate lunch and shopped to our heart’s
content. We then went back to the beach to watch the sunset.
Today after driving an hour to the beginning of a dirt road, we boarded four by fours trucks and
ascended 10,000 feet of mountain road to make it back to the cloud forest and Cedrela. The
ride was bumpy and fun and everyone had a great time. This afternoon we continued our
Spanish class, as the rain once again kept us inside. We’ll continue community service at the
coffee farms for the rest of this week. Pura Vida!
-Blake and Olivia
Hola!!!
We had an amazing time fertilizing organic coffee farms the last few days! The compost
smells…absolutely amazing 😉
Unfortunately, today was our very last day of service. It was a little hard to say goodbye to
Arturo and Alvaro, our service leaders. They are amazing people and are super passionate
about what they do. The mothers that cook lunch for us every day celebrated all our hard work
by performing some traditional Costa Rican dances for us in their traditional dresses. It was so
fun to dance with them!
When we got back to Cedrela we also had our last Spanish class today! Each level of Spanish
had to present their final projects. Level 1 taught us about Costa Rican legends, level 2 hosted a
game show to teach us about different regions of Costa Rica and level 3 presented a summary
of everything we have done here the past two weeks. Nothing can beat the new GLA Costa Rica
theme song: “La playa” written and produced by Rex and Eli!
We had a delicious chicken dinner and then spent the night doing our last Leadership Activity.
We got the chance to think about our future selves and what/who we want to be twenty years
down the road. After that, we had some free time before bed and Tona and Esteban took us
animal hunting in the woods. Didn’t see much though, and the animals we thought we saw
turned out to be Esteban playing jokes on us!
Tomorrow is our last full day in CR and we are heading to the Extreme Forest Park. We cannot
wait!!!!
