Day cuatro.
Leggo. *Beat drops* The
day started with another amazing view.
It’s different to be in a place where the view never gets old. Every morning we still take a second before
going to breakfast (which was killer today- I swear ill never get sick of the
rice (Tess)) to look at the rainforest and see the natural beauty that this
country works so hard to preserve. The
past four days have flown by and still it is hard to believe that this is all
real! Every experience is a new adventure, and each adventure is something that
we will never forget. We have all been taking pictures and writing in our
journals as much as we can but there is just no way to capture just what it is
actually like here. It is so hard to process how incredible everything is, and
even harder to process that only one full day at the Soltis Center remains.
We visited
dos escuelas hoy. One in San Isidro and
the other in La Altura. We were
definitely a little overwhelmed at first because there were 96 kids at the San
Isidro school! However, it actually
ended up being a great opportunity! The number of kids forced us to branch out
and challenge ourselves to connect with these children without as much help
from Spanish-speakers of the group.
Coming from someone who does know some Spanish (Tess speaking here), it
was great to see everyone interacting with students and carrying on
conversations, even if there was minimal speaking taking place. Coming from a person who doesn’t speak
Spanish (Ashley speaking here) as intimidating as it was, it was so rewarding
and empowering to connect with these children on my own… (and it also made me
appreciate people like Tess!) Ashley is da best (Tess here). ANYWAY. All in all the first school was awesome,
especially with so many kids to play with ( “pato, pato, zancudo” or duck duck
mosquito was a huge hit!). The second
school had a lot fewer children, and we had just as much fun. We got to do the four usual activities (a
matching game, a scavenger hunt, making mosquitos, and coloring) but we also
had more time to interact with the adults.
We had the opportunity to meet and converse with a couple who moved to
Costa Rica after visiting from Arizona and decided to stay for much
longer. They work at the school in La
Altura and help with renovations along with teaching English to the
students. We were able to make a connection with people from the states
doing service abroad.
After
school we returned to the always lovely Soltis Center for a superb lunch that
included mashed potatoes and por supuesto (of course) rice and beans. We also get awesome treats (the ice cream
here is SO good, no offense to Blue Bell) but, today we had these chocolate
candies. I (Tess) had mint and I saved
the wrapper so I could buy it in bulk at the soonest possibility. But enough about food, onto the even better
stuff…
ZIPLINING!!!
If only words could describe this experience… Well we will try anyway! Imagine
soaring across the rainforest with a volcano on one side, a gorgeous lake on
the other, and the canopy of the forest below you, all without a care in the
world and some of the coolest people you have ever met. (My (Tess) heart is
currently melted). Yeah I had never
been ziplining before this so needless to say I was totally nervous
before. The employees briefly showed
you what to do with your body, gave you a push and off you went! We went SO fast. Probably illegal actually. I wanted the line to be 10 miles longer; honestly
I’d give anything to be in the middle of the rainforest (I guess a few hundred
feet above) all alone on that line looking around at natural beauty again. But if it were ten miles long I’d definitely
come down with a nasty case of laryngitis because I screamed the entire time
(some of it stemming from fear, the other from pure fun). Pure joy seems to be a common occurrence here
and we always have smiles on our faces. At one point after we got off one of
the sections of zip line (oh yeah, there were multiple!) a kind Costa Rican man
who worked there handed us each a glass of the best juice I have ever had in my
life (Ashley)! At this point I really wasn’t sure if I was awake anymore
because the amount of perfection was actually overwhelming. If each of us could
even carry a tiny piece of the joy we felt in this moment with us in our daily
lives, I know that it would change the way that we live. The positive energy of
the people here is contagious and I hope that we can bring some of that back to
the states. The phrase “Pura Vida” which is the motto here in Costa Rica and
means “live pure” makes so much sense now and its easy to see how valuable this
mind set would be to apply to our busy lifestyles that can sometimes take over
everything.
As it is the fourth day of limited sleep (we
want to be awake every minute the sun is up here, and then some) we are ready
to head to beddy bye night night and get some rest. We hope you enjoyed our post (we’ve been
laughing quite a bit (were SUPER funny we know)), even with all the parenthesis
(I know they get excessive at times (Tess here again by the way)). Buenas noches y Pura Vida!
Ashley and Tess
“Pato, pato, zancudo” with Todd the mosquito
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