... Pacific Coast the Next!

¡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 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grade Spanish classrooms. With Megan’s 4^th grade class there wasn’t much to be done in the early morning, so I helped the 6^th graders with writing stories in Spanish. I went back to the 4^th graders when the 6^th 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 5^th 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