3
Location: Central Valley
Day 3 of our Costa Rica volunteer vacation! Today started again at 7:45 am with breakfast. Breakfast was pineapple, watermelon, coffee, rice and beans, eggs, and lemon cakes. Around 8:30 we hopped on the bus and headed to La Finca, There we met a nice man named Antonio and his two dogs Riley and Ricky Martin. Our job was to take the fallen leaves, broken branches, bad mangoes, and trash into/ by the river. We stayed there from 9-11am. From there we went back to La Carpio and made lunch for the grandmothers and their grandchildren. The lunch consisted of chicken soup, rice, and fruit. After lunch we watched a play put on by the grandma’s about one of their lives. The story portrayed a young woman from Nicaragua, Felicita, who worked on her parent’s farm from a very young age scaring away the birds. When she was 13 1/2, she met a boy named Pedro who wanted to be her boyfriend. She told him her parents wouldn’t let her because she was too young. Finally, she convinced them under one condition, they may date for six months, and then marry. They dated for six months, married, and then she had her first child. After she started having children, Pedro stopped working and began to drink and abuse Felicita. She divorced him and moved to Costa Rica in La Carpio to start a new life with her 15 children. This story proved to be very powerful to us and helped us to realize just how fortunate we are, and gave new meaning to our charity work abroad. After the play, we went back to the hotel, had free time for an hour and a half, and then went to a restaurant called Taco Bar. When we got back from the restaurant, we had group time in which we played a game where we had to hold hands from someone across from us while in a circle and then try to untie ourselves without letting go.
We’re looking forward to watching the world cup tomorrow! Keep reading our Costa Rica blog to learn more about our charity work abroad.