Costa Rica Part I

My brain is slightly fried right now, but I am going to attempt a few coherent thoughts anyway. I arrived home from Costa Rica at 2:00 am and still have not recuperated from our busy trip.

One of the advantages of my job is the opportunity to take students to other countries. The school runs about four trips abroad every year, and I have been fortunate to participate in several of them. In the past six years that I have been teaching there, I have chaperoned trips to Spain, Bahamas (twice), Senegal (with a day-trip to Spain) and Costa Rica. These expeditions are a great deal of work, but they tend to be beautiful experiences. This latest one was no exception.

We had several goals for the trip. The first was to provide students with high levels of comprehension in Spanish an opportunity to use the language in an immersion experience. We wanted them to be forced to use Spanish as much as possible in a real and meaningful way. Secondly, we wanted to expose our students to a world beyond their own. Here in the United States we often are ignorant of or forget how blessed we are. Costa Rica was a good place to show these teens that there are people who live with less but are happy. Our third objective was to help the community. Lastly, we wanted to have fun and enjoy all that Costa Rica has to offer.

We chose to travel with Live the Osa, a small family-run business that I cannot praise enough. The trip was an enormous success. The students did not speak Spanish exclusively, but they spoke more than they ever would here in the United States. They all came back with a higher capacity to comprehend and express themselves in the language.

We spent the first four nights in hotels and lodges, but after that we went to live with host families. There was a period of adjustment for some of the kids, but everyone loved their host families. I believe that many of them will keep in touch and possibly visit in the future. I also stayed with a family, and I loved the experience. This was my house.

There were monkeys in the back yard!

Our community service project was to clean a local park. The most important part of this project was not to do the actual work but to involve members of the community in the project so that they will continue to maintain the upkeep after we left. The sun was strong on the day that we worked in the park, and it was hard labor. However, the sense of accomplishment at the end was indescribable.

Finally, it is hard to describe all of the activities that we fit into ten days. When I think of all the things we did, I understand why I am so exhausted. On Tuesday, I will give you a detailed description of our trip.

Happy Homemaking!