¡¡PURA VIDA!!
We are alive!!! We arrived at our homestays today. When we
first arrived on Tuesday, it was about 4pm Costa Rican time (6pm on the East
Coast). The drive was approximately 3.5 hours because it was raining and when
we got to the Eco Retreat we had an amazing dinner of arroz con pollo with
plantains and then quickly went to bed; it was a long day for all of us.
The following day Zach woke up at 4:30am because of the
howler monkeys- it was quite an experience; imagine the sound the T-rex from Jurassic
Park makes, it’s the exact same noise. Everyone else woke up at around 7am (9am
on the east coast). Breakfast was fantastic. The eggs here are so good and we
ate the tiniest pancakes most of us have ever seen. After breakfast we went on
a morning hike into the rainforest and saw a lot: blue jean frogs, red- eyed
tree frogs, sloths, spider monkeys, howler monkeys, bullet ants (so scary), and
a family of bats. We returned from the hike and had lunch then did multiple
bonding and leadership exercises. FUN!
In the afternoon we went to an ethnobotanist and he showed
us many different native plants and fruits. We were eating a bunch of random
leaves and one of them even made our tongues numb. Madison, Nia, and Mrs. Lang
used the stain of achiote or the “hot lips flower” as lipstick and Helen had
the bright idea to use it as tribal/war paint and Michael and Cris decided to
do it as well. A lot of us really enjoyed drinking coconut water from an actual
coconut towards the end of the day. When we returned to the Eco Retreat we went
on a night hike which was very frightening for a lot of the group but we
supported each other and made it through! After another long day we fell asleep
quickly to the sound of the forest and with plenty of bugs to keep us company.
Today was a very exciting day. We had breakfast at the Eco Retreat
and then met our homestay families. They are all very nice and accommodating.
The children are adorable and so are the puppies. We spent time with them and
had lunch. Afterwards, we visited the
school where our work project will take place. We were pleasantly surprised with
a Q&A session (in front of the students in the school) that the faculty
there had planned for us. Some of us were a bit rusty on our Spanish but Carlos
(one of the WLS instructors), Ms. Shaw, Cris and Helen were great translators.
We are currently writing from the school and will soon be preparing to head
back to our homestay families. We have an exciting week full of hard work ahead
of us and can’t wait to get started.
We will be very busy but will try our hardest to make time
to update the blog.
Sincerely,
Helen and Zach
