Day 4

By Amelia Stotland and Annemarie Graham
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     Today was our fourth day in Costa Rica and our last at the local school. To start it off, we went to eat breakfast at the nearby café we had eaten at for the past couple of days. We had eggs, toast, sausage, watermelon, and fresh squeezed strawberry juice. After the amazing meal, we headed to the school. Once we arrived, we played soccer with the kids. Then the bell rang and the kids had to resume classes. We continued playing amongst ourselves until Javier came with more varnish to finish the benches. Half of us continued sanding and painting the benches, while the other half painted recycled tires to become planters. First, we tried to simply brush off the dirt, but most of it was engrained into the tire. Instead of that method, we had to scrub them with soap and water. Once the tires were clean, we had to wait for them to dry before painting. In order to finish quickly, we went to help the others finish varnishing the benches.
     After they were finished, the bell rang and all the kids came running and shouting out of their classes for recess. We had our snack of watermelon and organic bananas grown in Jackceline’s garden. Once it was all gone, we played with the kids some more. When the bell rang again, signaling that classes will start up again, the kindergarten class gathered outside to hit the piñata that was bought to say farewell. Each student who wanted had a turn at hitting it with a bat. After a while, the damage was minimal, so Javier opened it with his hands, and released all the candy. After their pockets and backpacks were filled with candy, the students came back to join us with some ice cream. After that we returned to the planters and varnishing the benches. The planters were now dry so we could start painting them with white latex. We finished a few layers of latex on the planters, and all of the benches. Next, the older kids in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, grade and up came outside for their turn at a different piñata. Only a few of the kids in the younger grades got a turn to hit because there were so many of them. Sadly, our time at the school had come to an end. We had finished all of our work, and we headed to lunch with our homestay families. There, we all enjoyed our final meal with them, and we played with both the kids and the adults. We gave them our gifts right before we needed to leave as a way to say thank you for welcoming us and feeding us delicious food.
     At one o’clock, we had to head back to school to meet up with the rest of our group for our cooking class of how to make tortillas. We all had a small role in the preparation, whether it be shredding the cheese, mixing the masa, forming the tortillas, cooking them, and of course eating them. We made some tortillas with plain masa and others with cheese in the masa. Since we had just eaten, we were not very hungry, so we gave most of the tortillas to Cecelia to serve at dinner. We had just over an hour of free time at the cabins before we needed to go on our next adventure. When it came time to leave, it started raining again. We walked to the house of the former principal of Escuela San Rafael to create some traditional Costa Rican art. It was somewhat of a 3D painting on a slab of tree trunk. We used recycled materials and special paints to create different textures. Since we were working so hard on our paintings and being incredibly detailed, we didn’t have a chance to finish them. Tomorrow we will go back and put on the finishing touches. The rest of the evening was quite uneventful except for a few hectic beetle attacks during dinner and some delicious chocolate cake. We finished our A.N.C.H.O.R. conversation, played a few card games, and we were all exhausted from our long day. We will need lots of rest for our exciting day tomorrow!