Dear parents and followers,
I hope you will accept a blog post from me since the kids
are enjoying some much needed fun free time after a long and busy day. I will do my best to fill you in on all
their goings on.
Today was a really busy and interesting day, but first lets
back up to last night and our night hike through the creepy crawly jungle. Jaime our guide was great fun and only scared
us a little (haha). On our night hike we
had to be quiet (a challenge for us) and patient (also a challenge). However we were rewarded well. We saw red eyed
tree frogs, campanita frogs, tarantulas, giant stick bugs, and some other large
scale arachnids. I think everyone had a
lot of fun.
Today we were woken by our normal morning howler monkey
call - today they were particularly
excited. After another delicious
breakfast at Chilamate, we headed over to Linda Vista school. Today our activities were varied as the
photos should show. Bruce worked with
William (one of our new local friends) to do some repair work on the
playground. They re-seated the see-saws,
re-strung the bridge on the jungle gym, and repaired the monkey bars. Chase and Tommy worked to paint the school
name (Escuela de Linda Vista) on the front of the school fence. After some paint color debates they have settled
on blue edged in yellow. Currently the
sign reads ESC . . . I am trying not to read too much into that
abbreviation. Hannah and Aidan worked on
painting the bases for the new rainwater system for the bathrooms. The bathrooms for the school are currently
run on well water which is the potable water.
Rather than waste the potable water on the bathrooms (if the well runs
dry school is canceled) we are installing rain water collection basins that the
toilets can be run off of. Seems like a
simple thing, but it is so important for the school. Finally Brooke and I were relegated to the
least glamorous job of painting the main fence.
We have made the job glamorous by speckling ourselves in silver paint.
After a good productive day of work we were picked up and
taken about 20 minutes to the community of Paraiso where we met Daniel and
toured his organic farm. First Daniel
fed us a delicious lunch of yucca, picadillo, cerdo, arroz, y pintos. Afterwards we got to tour his totally organic
and sustainable farm. Yep even the waste
doesn’t go to waste as he uses pig manure to produce gas to power his stove. The kids got to feed pigs, milk goats, taste
fresh peppercorns, and better understand how sustainable agriculture
works. After a few adventures on the farm
we went back to his house where he had fresh coffee and arepas for us. All in all Daniel is another example of a
wonderful, friendly, and generous Costa Rican.
Back at Chilamate retreat the kids cooled off by swimming in
the river (a favorite activity around here).
After a nice swim they sat down to do a really interesting WLS exercise
called “Building Utopia”. They were put
in groups and asked to prioritize the 8 UN Millenium World Development
Goals. While there are 8 main goals
there are a total of 19 goals once you subdivide some of them. This was an interesting exercise to watch as
each group approached and prioritized the world issues differently. Hopefully it got them thinking.
Finally we had a delicious dinner of arroz con pollo,
pintos, tortillas fritas, y chayote.
Brooke and I are organizing a game of Win, Lose, or Draw before
bed.
Adios
Ms. Kelleher/Margaret
