Day 3...although by now we have done so much it feels like it could be day 30!
We made two school visits today. The first visit was to the Chilamate School. The owners of the Ecolodge, Meghan and Davis, send their children to this school. Meghan is on the board of the school (all of the public schools here have parent boards,) and Davis runs any construction or infrastructure projects with the school. They also have connected the school with the World Leadership School in order to utilize the volunteer power to help with construction projects. When Berkeley Carroll students came here with WLS in March, they worked on the beginning stages of a construction project to create a covered play area for the children. Today, we got to see the finished project. The completion of this project was a tremendous accomplishment for the school, as rain here can be frequent and intense. Now the school is moving on to an electrical rewiring project, because last year the Chinese government donated a large number of laptops to the Costa Rican Ministry of Education, but those that were passed on to Chilamate have been sitting unopened as the school did have the electrical capabilities to support their use. The school is able to do this project using the money it did not have to spend on the play yard project by using volunteers to build much of it, and using Davis' expertise to source affordable materials. Seeing this work gave us a sense both of how hard it is for these schools to afford and implement upgrades, and also how much can be accomplished through a pooling of human resources.
Next we visited the Linda Vista school, just a mile or two up the road. This school has one teacher for 18 students in 1st-6th grade. The teacher is the only employee of Linda Vista aside from the cook, so in addition to doing all the teaching, she also does most of the administrative work. One of the women we ate dinner with on Sunday night, Rocio, volunteers there to help out with the paperwork. Two highlights of this visit - the first was when four students performed a traditional dance for us, complete in traditional clothing. This dance was part of a celebration this time of year in honor of the unification of the region Guanacaste with the rest of Costa Rica. The other highlight is when the students invited us to play a game of soccer with them. All of the students enthusiastically joined this game, which ended in a friendly 0-0 tie.
The afternoon was spent at the home of Mayra and Sergio, who live in Linda Vista. Myra fed us a delicious lunch of patacones (fried smashed plaintains,) enyucados (fried yuca dough filled with ground beef,) vegetables, and of course beans and rice. Then she taught us to make empanadas. Yum! In the mean time, Sergio regaled us with stories (en español of course) and asked us to teach him English sayings. We got a tour of their small farm, and witnessed new piglets arriving in sacs - a new and unusual sight for us city dwellers!
Finally, we met the families with whom we are staying for the first time tonight. We are staying in three houses - one owned by Digna, the matriarch, and the other two on the same tract of land owned by two of her daughters. They are clearly a tight knit family, and are all very welcoming to this group of Neuva Yorqueñas. It is clear that we will learn much from them in our five nights in their homes. We look forward to getting to know them.
We made two school visits today. The first visit was to the Chilamate School. The owners of the Ecolodge, Meghan and Davis, send their children to this school. Meghan is on the board of the school (all of the public schools here have parent boards,) and Davis runs any construction or infrastructure projects with the school. They also have connected the school with the World Leadership School in order to utilize the volunteer power to help with construction projects. When Berkeley Carroll students came here with WLS in March, they worked on the beginning stages of a construction project to create a covered play area for the children. Today, we got to see the finished project. The completion of this project was a tremendous accomplishment for the school, as rain here can be frequent and intense. Now the school is moving on to an electrical rewiring project, because last year the Chinese government donated a large number of laptops to the Costa Rican Ministry of Education, but those that were passed on to Chilamate have been sitting unopened as the school did have the electrical capabilities to support their use. The school is able to do this project using the money it did not have to spend on the play yard project by using volunteers to build much of it, and using Davis' expertise to source affordable materials. Seeing this work gave us a sense both of how hard it is for these schools to afford and implement upgrades, and also how much can be accomplished through a pooling of human resources.
Next we visited the Linda Vista school, just a mile or two up the road. This school has one teacher for 18 students in 1st-6th grade. The teacher is the only employee of Linda Vista aside from the cook, so in addition to doing all the teaching, she also does most of the administrative work. One of the women we ate dinner with on Sunday night, Rocio, volunteers there to help out with the paperwork. Two highlights of this visit - the first was when four students performed a traditional dance for us, complete in traditional clothing. This dance was part of a celebration this time of year in honor of the unification of the region Guanacaste with the rest of Costa Rica. The other highlight is when the students invited us to play a game of soccer with them. All of the students enthusiastically joined this game, which ended in a friendly 0-0 tie.
The afternoon was spent at the home of Mayra and Sergio, who live in Linda Vista. Myra fed us a delicious lunch of patacones (fried smashed plaintains,) enyucados (fried yuca dough filled with ground beef,) vegetables, and of course beans and rice. Then she taught us to make empanadas. Yum! In the mean time, Sergio regaled us with stories (en español of course) and asked us to teach him English sayings. We got a tour of their small farm, and witnessed new piglets arriving in sacs - a new and unusual sight for us city dwellers!
Finally, we met the families with whom we are staying for the first time tonight. We are staying in three houses - one owned by Digna, the matriarch, and the other two on the same tract of land owned by two of her daughters. They are clearly a tight knit family, and are all very welcoming to this group of Neuva Yorqueñas. It is clear that we will learn much from them in our five nights in their homes. We look forward to getting to know them.
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