some lovely pictures

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Costa Rica Pt 2







Ok im back...
So since i had uploading the pics and then dragging them to the appropriate location im just gonna post them at the top.
So, the journey continues on with Sunday. On Sunday I had the privilege of spending all morning hovered over a toilet with some type of stomach virus which thank goodness only lasted a few hours. I later joined up with the rest of the group that was doing a carnival for the neighborhood. It was pretty fun to see it all come to play. I had been planning on this carnival for a while and buying a bunch of stuff like bean bags for the bean bag toss and face painting kits. It turned out great and both kids and parents seemed to enjoy themselves. We had about 6 different "booths" of different carnival activities and it was super fun. I dont think many people had ever been a part of anything like that before cause most carnivals in costa rica only take place in bigger cities. We also gave away a bunch of soccer balls and uniforms to the community to have.
That night we just rested with my family and prepared for Mondays adventure of going into the schools.
So, monday morning rolls around and we get to the school around 10:00. We weren't suppose to start the whole event until 11:00 but we got there early to set up and start filling up water balloons that we bought for the kids to play with. Well, that plan didn't turn out so well cause as soon as all the kids saw us they ran out of their classrooms and started stealing water balloons. Now I must say I have beena part of plenty of water balloon fights but to see about 100 kids running around with water ballons throwing them at each other... that was a whole other story. So, after everyone was soaking wet. We decided to officially start the event. We had different craft tables for them to make jewlery and bookmarks and such. We also had the bean bag toss and a mini soccer game going. It was pure orginized chaos. after about an hour of that we sat everyone down and gave away all the school supplies and manipulatives for the teachers. That was truly one of the best parts. Everyones faces were lit up so much you just couldn't help but smile. Afterwards, most kids went home but we escorted about 50 of the students into the cafeteria and gave them each a pair of shoes. They were, according to the teacher, one of the needier students and couldn't afford to buy new shoes. So, once they all left we were officially done with that school, or so we thought. As we were leaving, one of the teachers approached us and asked us if we could fix their basketball court that didn't even look like a court, it looked like nothing. We agreed and picked a time and day to do that. When we got back home we talked and decided on how much extra money we had to buy paint and even a new hoop and such and we happened to have just enough, it was a huge blessing. So, we sent one of my uncles to go and buy everything for us.
The next day we went to another school in the neighboring town and did basically the exact same thing, minus the giant balloon fight. Those students behaved better. haha. Instead we did what we were planning on doing in the first place, a water balloon toss. All the kids had fun and when we were done, the teachers cooked us an amazing meal that consisted of some amazing chicken, beans rice, and homemade tortillas.
Later that night we were asked to go visit this rehab facility and just kind of hang out with the people there and such... so we hesitantly accepted not really knowing what was going to happen. It turned out to be an amazing expereince. We got there and just listened to a lot of these guys stories and talked to them and encouraged them, it was really amazing. The area that they were at was once a bunch of cabins for tourists but they turned it into that center but it was in this really nice area and had a bunch of monkeys, tucans, and parrots all over the place.
We came home really late that night very much looking forward to our free day we were going to have the next day. We had no idea what kind of adventure we were in for though.

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