Costa Rica by McKenzie

Thursday: May 5th

Thursday morning, everyone in the house arose thanks to Nathan and Kylie, who were are leaders for today. Everyone scurried around to make it on time to breakfast at 6:45. Today for breakfast we were surprised with pancakes...YES..PANCAKES....this may not seem as exciting to you as it is to me and the rest of the house but to us, after rice and beans, eggs, bread and fruit for the last 3 days, those pancakes tasted like heaven.

After this amazing breakfast we all piled onto the bus to take our 3rd trip to the school. Just three days and we were so ready to see all of the happy faces at the school that we could not stand it, but we had to wait an hour seeing as it takes about an hour to get anywhere here. But, the hour seemed like nothing today, and soon saw about 15 smiling and jumping faces.

Painting the school and keeping the kids entertained with many arts and crafts projects and sports were on today's agenda. I started out with playing futbol with many of the Ohana students and La Libertad students..just saying that this makes my day. Seeing their faces kick that ball around and laugh at each other and throw around jokes in spanish to their friends, just makes us feel even closer and feel as if we can really relate. After about two hours of futbol, I felt as if I needed to help paint the school. I was put on inside walls touch up duty. So, I took my small paintbrush and light mint green paint and got to it. Kids all around were painting, even teh La Libertad school kids wanted to help. Some kids were inside touching up the inside walls, some were outside painting the murals that were requested by the kids of the school and some were inside painting the windows.

The painting was finished and we were all back on the bus and headed back to the home base to eat lunch and get ready to head to the beach for the afternoon.

Lunch was over ad bathing suits were on so, onto the beach we go. After an hour and a half, we were touching sand. The sand here is black, hot and to be honest...not really sand, just a bunch of smashed up shells. Not two minutes go by and most of us were in the ocean. The rest were setting up the volleyball net on the beach.

The whistles blew, game faces were on and the ball was moving.

Volleyball doesn't seem that dangerous, but when involving Ohana Institute and a ball, somebody always gets hurt. People were hit in the head multiple times, people were falling down everywhere and one very interesting fall involved myself and Nathan colliding, (both trying to get the ball) and tumbling to the ground at a very fast rate. To everyone, this was hysterical, but I can say that it kind of hurt (:

A total of about 4 games were played and it was time to head back. Everyone was sad to leave the beach but excited to get home and get ready for the local festival.

Dinner was over and most of us had showered. As a giant group of "gringos" (the local name for white people) we walked down the street following the sounds of loud music, yelling and also the smells of local cuisine.

Upon arriving, we bought tickets to see the bull riding contest. The amount of people came as a shock to most of us seeing as how in America crowds are contained, but security. But not here, here people are standing and sitting anywhere they could get a seat, even on the wood that separates the crowd from the angry and very giant bull. In about 30 minutes we saw, three people bravely sit upon a bull and get bucked off, ate churros, and watched a half time show that included a local marching band. The bull riding was over and we headed to the rides. About 8 of us (including me) got up the guts to ride the flying swings. Screams for the fear of death, shortly led to laughter as we rode the ride.

The festival was over and we all headed back for bed.

Friday: May 6th

With a 7a.m. breakfast time, all of us got to sleep a little more, which was well needed after yesterdays adventures and what was ahead for us in our day.

By 7:58 everyone was on the bus and ready to go, which came as a small surprise to us, seeing as how that was 2 minutes earlier than our planned departure time and everyday previous we had been running late.

An hour and a half later we arrived at the Adventurefgh camp site where we would be enjoying horse riding to a waterfall, zip-lining through canyons and tubing down water rapids.

First off we were going to ride horses. We all signed a waiver, put our helmets on and saddled up. The views from the trail that we were riding on were absolutely beautiful. But that was just a set up for how amazing the waterfall looked and felt. The waterfall and spring were so cold but was really relieving seeing as how we had gotten so hot from riding horses.

We only got about 15 minutes in the water before having to leave and get ready for our next adventure....dun dun dun...zip-lining!

Everyone walked back to the bus to change out of our wet clothes before having to get suited up in our harnesses. Our guide, Santos then proceeded to give us a demonstration about how to stay safe in the caverns. After 8 zip-lines, an up-side down repel, rock wall and hanging bridge we were finished with our zip-lining extravaganza and headed to lunch.

Lunch was very different today. We got the chance to eat at a local buffet, which satisfied all of our very hungry bellies.

Tubing was last and what everyone was looking forward to the most. So, each one of us piled into a gigantor, camouflage tube and rapidly moved down the river. There were a few incidents involving pileups and strained body parts from trying to hold on to each other for about an hour. But in the end was what most of us named as our favorite part of the day (:

Soaking wet and extremely tired we lugged ourselves back into the bus and headed back to home base, as we call it, for a shower dinner and another couple of rounds of Mafia. -22 Mc Kenzie