¡Hola Todos!
This weekend I had the
pleasure of spending time with the Macartneys for 2 whole days! I was most
nervous about traveling there, since it involved finding taxis and taking a
ferry. As it turns out, it was super easy to get there, and it was less than
$12 on the way there. Something that I learned, was that when I go visit for
Thanksgiving, I should take the 11AM ferry home instead of the 2PM ferry,
because it was dark and I had to take a taxi all the way home from the bus stop
in San Jose (which bumped up the cost to around $17).
On
the ferry to Paquera, I saw 2 (double) rainbows, it was super cool. Sadly, my
camera does not capture all the colors that God allows my eyes to see, so the
better pictures have the saturation and contrast turned all the way up. The
colors were amazing and I could see each individual color!
Also on the ferry ride I saw something that disgusted me, trash in the ocean. It did not necesarilly come from people in Costa Rica, it could have come from the other side of the world for all I know, but it is disgusting, and I wish we lived in a world that could take care of its trash better.
When I got to the Macartneys, Yoda was super excited to see me and spent a lot of time sitting in my lap. |
We saw another super vibrant rainbow right outside the house, and of course had to take pictures. |
On
Friday, I went to school at Escuela Futuro Verde with everybody and got to hang
out in the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade Spanish classrooms.
With Megan’s 4th grade class there wasn’t much to be done in the
early morning, so I helped the 6th graders with writing stories in
Spanish. I went back to the 4th graders when the 6th
graders had PE, and copied text from the computer on to the white board for the
kids to copy since the copy machine was broken. During snack and lunch, the
kids had fun showing me off to their friends, Molly especially. Molly would
grab her classmates and drag them over to me for introductions before allowing
them to go back to whatever they had been doing. After lunch, I sat in on Jonah’s
Spanish classes and listened to the 5th graders tell the class what
they think ‘revolution’ means (lots of war), and Jonah talked about the Revolutionary
War.
Escuela
Futuro Verde is completely different from any other school I’ve ever seen. All
of the classrooms are “long term temporary” tents or rough buildings, the
entire library fits on a wall, and the computer lab has like 10 computers. I
wasn’t able to take pictures because I was busy, but you can find the school on
Face Book (Escuela Futuro Verde) to see pictures. One thing that is super cool
about this school is that all of the kids are either bilingual, multilingual,
or on their way to becoming so. One of the girls in Megan’s class is Chinese,
and is learning Spanish and English (the main languages spoken in school) at
Futuro Verde. Something else that is different culturally, is that the students
call their teachers by their first names, something that could get a student in
major trouble in the United States.
On
Saturday, we spent the whole day at the beach, and I learned how to surf!! BJ
showed me the basics on land, and then helped me figure it out in the water. I
spent most of my time wiping out, but I stood up 3 or 4 times. The only bad
thing was that I rubbed all the sunscreen off of my thighs and now have a really
bad sunburn, thankfully, BJ gave me his rash guard, so my stomach is not burnt.
Getting started! |
Standing! |
Wipe out! |
I also built a sand volcano with Jonah, and it was lots of fun dribbling wet
sand to create rocks. On the way home from the beach we saw 3 largish caimans
in the river, and they were the small ones according to one of the guys who
keeps track of them. I also saw the blue macaws that the neighborhood is
currently breeding, and the red macaws that were recently released. There were
3 macaws right outside the house Saturday evening, and I got some good pictures
of them.
Sunday
morning, we went back to the beach before I had to leave, and I tried surfing
on a smaller board (did not go well) as well as stand up paddle boarding (did
not end very well either). I spent a lot of time just playing in the waves with
Jonah and Molly, which was great.
I
can’t wait to go back in a month to celebrate Thanksgiving! If you are interested in seeing more pictures, here is the link to the google photos album: https://goo.gl/photos/dQcpEMquCHzeG88t9
Hasta luego!
Caylyn