Costa Rican Discovery

During my 8 day trip to Costa Rica with Global Leadership Adventures, I learned so much about their culture and so much more about myself. During our days of service, we would wake up at about 7 a.m. to get ready, eat breakfast, and arrive at the local school by 8:30. We broke up the kids into three smaller groups, and each of my friends would be assigned to a group (normally about three of us with 10 of the kids). We spent a couple hours with them playing sports, teaching them basic English, and doing arts and crafts activities. Then, they would return home and we would continue to paint two of their classrooms. We really impacted the lives of those amazing children, and the service was so rewarding once we saw the finished rooms and how much the kids learned. We were always safe and taken care of thanks to Daniel, the absolutely amazing local director who shared so much of his knowledge with us. He planned our unbelievable excursions and the fun events for us to take part in, such as tubing down a flowing river and zip-lining through the rainforest. Jenna, our mentor, definitely taught us how to reflect on our feelings and learn how to communicate well with one another too. The food was made up of beans and rice at every meal, along with some other local dishes and snacks. We shared rooms with 1-2 other people that were very small, but we didn’t spend much time in them unless we were asleep anyways. The bathrooms were downstairs and we couldn’t flush our toilet paper due to the system, so we threw it out. The showers had inconsistent hot water, meaning it would change temperature in the blink of an eye depending on how many other people were showing at once. It didn’t really matter the water temperature though, as it was always around 90 degrees fahrenheit during the day so anything felt nice. I really took away lasting friendships and bonds with my friends, along with the amazing memories of working with the school children and our adventures in the city.