Greetings from Costa Rica!
It’s been a while since my last post…sorry about that. I guess I’ve been keeping myself busy, which is always good! It’s July already! Can you believe I’ve already been in Costa Rica for a full year! July 7th marked one year! Twelve months in and between 12-15 more months to go! About half way there!
Since my last post I have been working on the same projects I described in the post below, plus some addition coordination and events through the schools. A few notable events include visiting a volcano with 11th graders, the Festival of Arts (with a theme of anti-bullying) at the high school, making recyclable arts and crafts at the elementary school, a rodeo-themed fundraiser at the high school to fix the leaking roof, and continuing with life skill lessons at both the high school and elementary. One project that I recently finished was in coordination with my brother-in-law. We combined our groups of students and participated in a Pen Pal project between rural Costa Rica and Cleveland, Ohio. Both groups exchanged letters and emails, and we finished our project with a Skype call. The students enjoyed learning about each other and sharing their own culture with other students around the world. When we Skyped we spoke in English and Spanish, and various students shared a special talent over the camera. We finished the project right before the U.S. summer break, but I hope to continue with Pen Pals in the future.
Recently, I also helped out with the high school’s English festival and spelling bee. I was very impressed by the bravery and talent of these students, to speak in front of the whole school in English. Some students sang in English, some gave a speech or participated in an impromptu conversation with me, and others spelled words, just like a Spelling Bee in the U.S. For those students to work hard and use a foreign language in front of all their peers, I was very impressed and proud to see how hard they worked.
In June, I went home to the U.S. for two weeks. It was wonderful to be able to spend two weeks at home with friends and family. My time was full of eating bagels and pretzels (which I can’t find here), visiting with family, hosting sister’s baby shower, attending wedding, playing games, going hiking, and just plain hanging out and enjoying the time together at home. Every moment was well spent.
Once I returned back to my community, I helped my elementary school with their English festival. What a pleasure it is to see the little ones learning another language too. Learning a new language is easiest when one is young, and I was very impressed by the abilities of the children and their excitement to learn. Kindergarten through sixth grade presented songs, poems, and creative writing. Like in the high school, it’s exciting to see youth learning and engaged in something, which I imagine, is very outside of their comfort zone. Learning a language, whether it’s English, Spanish, Mandarin, ASL, Russian, Greek, or whatever language it is it all builds cultural awareness and an overall global connectedness. To me, language learning is one of several ways we can work together to build peace.
Only a few days after the English Festival at the elementary school, the whole country started a two-week mid-year break. During the school break, one of my best friends from high school came to visit me! We went to La Fortuna to see the volcano and do some hiking. We also visited my community, and she helped me teach some English classes. Then, to finish our trip, we visited a popular beach called Montezuma. We spent literally all day on buses, but it was worth it! To get there, we also had to cross the ocean on a ferry, and the views were incredible! Once at the beach, we had a perfect view of the ocean right from our hotel. We enjoyed adventuring with some more hiking, swimming and jumping from waterfalls, and exploring a new area! What a great trip!
This week, classes started up again after the two week break. I’ve been working in the schools again, organizing programs, and working with youth. It’s a slow process building consistency and buy-in for various projects, and, it’s actually really tough designing a project to fit the very specific needs and desires of a community and/or youth. Every youth is so different, with various interests, abilities, strengths, desires, etc. So, I’ve been working towards continuous strength within my projects, and trying to find the right way to work with youth in a fun, dynamic, yet academic way.
That’s all for right now. Short and sweet. Stay tuned for my next post…I’m in the process of writing some reflections as I just hit the one year mark this month.
See below some recent pictures!
Pura Vida,
Emily
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