Day 2- Emily Seymour

After only a day and a half in Costa Rica, I love this place. This morning started off with us breaking into two group: rainforest and school. Today I visited the elementary school. I thought we were just going to be hanging out with the kids, but we were able to help build stairs and an irrigation trench. This was such a great experience! Despite the language barrier (I speak no Spanish), it was so fun to interact with the kids. We were able to make bead bracelets and color pictures with them. Some of the group played soccer and made Lego structures, too. The service part, however, was so great. My group's project was to build stairs on a hillside because the kids often fall walking down it. We had to carve the stairs out then shift through all the dirt for use in the greenhouse. After that a few of us helped chop down three trees, or in some of our cases, just act like we were cutting down the tree. Regardless, this was a blast!
After being at the school, we met back up with the other group at the Center to eat before driving to the volcano. During the ride, my bus played mafia to pass the time. I think I have become a pro at that game. About halfway through the drive, the bus pulled over. I was really confused until they told us there was a sloth in the tree! There goes Albert and his sixth sense of spotting animals again. I freaked out though. I have been waiting months to see a sloth, so this was such a cool thing to see. A little further along the drive, we came across a large group of coatimundi just chilling alongside the road. Once we got to the volcano, we began hiking through the forest. Volcan Arenal was very active until 2009, so we hiked through both forests that were affected and unaffected by the lava. This was really neat because we were able to climb over lava rocks to get to an open area. Once we got to this location, you could look around and see how beautiful the surrounding area was. The volcano in the distance was breathtaking. Looking in the other direction we could see the most stunning sky I have ever seen.
After the hike, we were all pretty tired as we drove back to the Center. Today was filled with such great experiences. Tomorrow the groups are switching so I get to go do service projects in the rainforest! We are also ziplining tomorrow so it is surely going to be a great day!