3
Location: Central Valley Costa Rica
After waking up with a typical breakfast, we boarded the bus and headed to San Miguel School to work on a new classroom. We had to create 19 holes for the support posts of the building. We were digging and digging all day (with multiple water breaks) through the sticky tropical soil. With small groups of us trading out to play soccer and ninja with the local students as a recess from our hard manual labor. Even though most everyone has tired our spirits were high, and we got a lot of productive work done. We even put 11 massive cement support posts into the ground. No one can say that we didn’t put all of ourselves into the work today and our guides were very proud of us. We won’t see the children of San Miguel again but hopefully, the work and playtime will leave a lasting impression, and the experience is something we all will remember for the rest of our lives. We all bonded with the children at the school, and I don’t think they will forget us either. They wrote us super sweet thank you notes for all of our hard work and smiles. One of the kids approached me before we were leaving and said, “Are you sure you cant stay?”, “Can you sleep here?”, “I don’t want you to leave!”… It was hard to say goodbye, but the memories will stay with us forever.