Costa Rica Day 3 - The Big Day!

Thursday was the big day! We left the hotel at eight o'clock and headed for the orphanage in La Fortuna. The outside is really colorful, with murals painted all along the sides.

It's a cool place; they have rooms that looked like classrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a pretty good playground. The kids were a little shy at first, but they adjusted quickly and were so excited to have us there. I believe the youngest child was a little over a year old, and the oldest was thirteen. I gave out my items at the end of the day, after we had cleaned and painted several of their blacktop areas and played with the kids. Before I handed them out, I took a picture with some of the tias (aunts), who are the women that live with and care for the kids.

For privacy reasons, I couldn't take pictures with the kids' faces in them, but they did let us get one with the backs of their heads. (The little girl facing the camera below is our leader's daughter.)

The kids were so excited; they immediately raced off to go make their beds.

Seeing their sweet faces when they got their gifts made all of the hard work and stress so worth it. Even though at times I got quite frustrated working on this project, I'm so glad I did it.

Costa Rica Day 2

On Wednesday we had breakfast at our hotel and left at eight o'clock for the Church of Christ in La Fortuna, which was about thirty minutes away from the hotel. While we were there, we did a lot of painting around the building. I was a part of one of two groups that painted murals in their Sunday school rooms.

And the (sort of) final product:

The boys still had a couple of things to do on it, including adding a verse, when they came back the next day, but this is what it looked like when we finished.

For lunch, we went to what Costa Ricans call a 'soda.' It's sort of like a fast food restaurant, with cheap, easy foods. I had arroz con pollo, or chicken with rice.

Around four in the afternoon, Costa Ricans have a 'coffee break' where everyone stops working and has a snack. The workers at the church gave us some fresh fruit, which was delicious, of course. 

When all the work was done, we stayed at the church for Wednesday night service. They had a translator for us gringos (another name for white people in Costa Rica), since the service was in Spanish. It was such a cool experience; all of the people got so into the worship, even the men! I feel like a lot of the time here in America the men just stay quiet in the back. In Costa Rica they sing loud and proud! Even though we had to hear the sermon secondhand, the whole service was just so amazing.

Costa Rica Day 1

Honey, I'm home! The trip was absolutely amazing. Costa Rica is a beautiful country, and we had so much fun. I didn't have my computer and I only had internet access on a very old phone I had taken so that I could email my mom, so over the next few days I'll be reliving the trip and the things we did.

Monday, June 22 10:30 p.m.
I'm including this on day one because there's no use in making an entire blog post for an hour and a half. Our mission team, with the exception of one of our leaders who met us in Atlanta, got together at our high school.

We weighed our bags (the airline we were flying had a forty pound weight limit) and loaded them all on the bus. After checking that everyone had their passport and saying a prayer, we were off!

The drive to Atlanta took somewhere between three and four hours. We got to the airport, checked in, and headed to our gate. While we waited we ate breakfast from various places in the terminal. Then we took a flight to Fort Lauderdale, which took about an hour and a half. We had about an hour layover in Fort Lauderdale before boarding the nearly three hour flight to San Jose, Costa Rica. Once we arrived in San Jose, we had to go through customs and baggage claim before finally meeting our group leader and heading off into the country.

We stopped and ate lunch at a buffet in WalMart (yeah, we were surprised, too!) before going on the two hour drive to Santa Clara, our leader's hometown and the location of our first hotel. 

The pictures I took don't do the country justice. The scenery is so green and lush; it's amazing. Once we got to our hotel, we unloaded and had some time to ourselves before meeting for dinner. We skipped the devotional for the night, seeing as everyone was so tired from the travelling, and headed for bed.

Today's the Day!

It's hard to believe it's finally here! The group is meeting at my high school at ten thirty tonight, where we'll weigh our luggage and load up the bus. One of the teachers who goes to church with our leader is driving us down to Atlanta, where we'll take a flight (with a stop) to San Jose, Costa Rica! I think the travel is what I'm looking forward to least; in the end we'll be traveling for somewhere around twelve hours, including time changes, layovers, and drive time. And that's just to get to San Jose! From there we will travel to other cities in Costa Rica over our stay, including one of our leaders' hometown.

I haven't really packed yet, besides the stuff for the orphanage. I've laid a few things out and made my list, but nothing's in a duffel yet. We have to pack light, because in order to keep costs down, two people have to share a suitcase, and that suitcase can't exceed forty pounds.

We've all done so much work to prepare for this trip, and it's been a long time coming. It seems like just yesterday we were making our deposit! I'm excited to see our work pay off and be the hands and feet of Jesus for the people of Costa Rica!

Goodies!

Today I packed everything into the duffel! Everything isn't actually in the picture above; I ended up adding another blanket and made two more teddy bears to even the numbers out. I ended up with 18 blankets, 18 pillowcases, and 18 teddy bears. I am officially done making things! And it all fit in one duffel!

T-minus 3 days until we leave!

Teddy Bears are Done!

Finally, the bears are done!!

These were the hardest for me to make, because as I quickly discovered, sewing is not my forte. But, several hours and quite a bit of frustration later, they're all finished. 

I still have to make a smaller sample pillowcase to send to the Girl Scouts with my final paperwork, but other than that I am all done making things!! It feels so good not to have to make anything else. Now I can concentrate on getting ready for the trip!

Less than a week now!

Brochures

One more week until we are on our way to San Jose, Costa Rica! I'm going to attach pictures of the brochure I made on my project so that it is available for anyone interested in doing similar projects. All of the items are relatively simple to make and don't take that long!

Pillowcases are Done!

Today I knocked the rest of the pillowcases out of the way! Once my mom and I figured out the best way to paint them, it went pretty quickly. We did them all in a total of about three hours. Here's an example of the finished pillowcases!

All that's left to do is make a brochure to hand to people and sew the last four teddy bears. The group leaves a week from tomorrow! (Technically today, since we're leaving at about eleven at night on Monday, but whatever.)

Blankets Are Done!

Today I was free until later this evening, so I sat down and worked on blankets for most of the day. I had a lot of them cut already, and four that still had to be cut. I cut those and tied all of them, so as of today all of my blankets are finished! They're currently waiting in a giant trash bag to be packed into a duffel.

There's about seventeen total, I believe, and they're all child size, which is about forty inches by sixty inches. It feels so good to finally be done with a portion of this project! Here's what one of the final products looks like.

Our group leaves two weeks from today!

1/4 of the Way There!

Today I tied a few blankets for my project and reached a milestone! Upon writing down my time, I counted up my hours and saw that I have finished twenty of my (suggested) eighty hours! Only sixty more to go!

Getting Closer!

Less than a month to go until we leave for Costa Rica! Our team leaves on June 23 destined for San Jose. I've been working more on making my items since school got out. I've got about six bears made, and I'm going to sew a bunch while on a trip to Atlanta this weekend. Three blankets are completely done, ten others are cut, and four haven't been cut yet. We still haven't got the pillow cases yet, but those won't take long to make so I'm not really worried.

Today my mom helped me roll up the blankets to see how much room it was going to take and how much they were going to weigh. The airline we are taking is very 'low budget,' so to speak. They have really strict luggage restrictions (i.e., the bag can only weigh forty pounds as opposed to fifty as on most airlines, and it can only be sixty two linear inches). I can fit a few blankets in my luggage, and the teddy bears and pillowcases will fit in my backpack. Luckily, one of the leaders of our group has some room in a supply duffel that he is letting me put some blankets in. Hopefully it will all work out!

I'm getting pretty excited! My summer's been pretty boring so far, so it'll be nice to put some excitement into it! It's going to be a good trip. :)

Donations and Getting Started

I started going around to stores and asking for donations at the beginning of May. It didn't go well.

My first store was one of the many Walmarts in my town, where I was told that both the store manager and the personnel were busy. I left my list there and was told I would get a call from them (I didn't). I then went to another Walmart, where I was told they had already maxed out their donation budget for the month (It was May 8th). A few days later I went to Jo-Ann's, where I spoke to a store manager (finally!) and was told I would have to contact corporate because they are corporate owned. That same day I went to Old Time Pottery, where I was told all of their managers were at lunch (it was four o'clock in the afternoon) and that I could leave my list there and would get a call. I never heard from them.

So after all of that frustration, my mom and I came to the conclusion that we had no other option but to purchase the items ourselves. I did some research in order to find where to get the best fabric and other necessities for the cheapest prices. I already had a couple of yards of fabric at my house, and some scraps left over from previous projects I could use for teddy bears. I also already had a little fiberfill and the thread I needed. We were shopping at yet another Walmart a couple of days ago when we stumbled upon make your own blanket kits with two pieces of fabric in them for four dollars a piece. We bought they had, along with four single blankets, and spent just under thirty dollars on fabric and a bag of fiber fill.

We still have to find pillow cases, which is where a lot of our cost will come from. Those things are not cheap! I also still need fabric spray paint, which won't cost that much, and stencils, which I will be making myself.

My final challenge will be getting everything down to Costa Rica. In order to keep costs for the trip down, we have to split a suitcase with another team member, and the airline we are flying requires your bags to be under forty pounds. I've already shipped my work clothes down there, so I don't have as much to take, but it's still going to be tough. It's going to be an adventure, that's for sure!

Yard Sale!

This morning I woke up at 5:20, threw on some clothes, put my hair in a ponytail, and drove through the thick fog to school for our yard sale. We met at 6 am and finished setting up, and the first customers started trickling in soon after. I knew some people were hard core yard salers, but that's so early!

The entire sale was by donation, so people could name their own prices for what they were buying. Some people even gave extra when they heard the money was going for a mission trip. When I left at 10 am, we were giving people bags and charging them $5 for whatever they could fit into it to try and get rid of the stuff! There was so much it looked like we'd barely dented it.

Since we used the school cafeteria and all of the items were donated, 100% of the proceeds will go towards supplies for the trip. I haven't heard a final total yet, but with the generosity of the people in our community my hopes are high for a good total!

Yard Sale Prep

This afternoon and evening we started set up for our yard sale tomorrow. This yard sale is the second of our two major fundraisers, the first being a dinner we hosted at our school last week. There we served authentic Costa Rican food such as chicken and rice, black beans, and tres leches cake. People were so generous, and we made quite a bit of money!

We had so much stuff tonight. We originally planned to only use the back half of our cafeteria, but ended up having to use the front half as well, and the place was still overflowing! People from school and the mission team all brought stuff, and we had housewares, books, movies, clothes, and all sorts of odds and ends.

I personally will only be able to work part of the sale tomorrow, but I'm hoping that we will be able to make a lot of money. The money from these fundraisers doesn't help those of us going, rather, it helps fund our projects while down there and helps the people of Costa Rica.

Here's to early morning shopping!

Getting Approved!

This afternoon I headed to my local Girl Scout headquarters and sat for my interview to get my project approved. I was super nervous, but it went really well! The ladies made me feel comfortable and we talked easily. Since this is my first post, I'll give you a brief run down of my project:

There is an orphanage in La Fortuna, Costa Rica that is unique from most orphanages in that they take kids from dangerous home situations - often abuse - and give them a loving, nurturing home. For my Gold Award project, I will be assisting the orphanage in their mission by making pillow cases, blankets, and teddy bears for the children in the orphanage. There is typically about 15-20 kids in the orphanage, but I plan to make extras for kids that arrive in the future.

I will be going to Costa Rica with a group of students and adults from my school and my Spanish teacher's church, and we will be doing work all throughout the community, from the church to the senior center to the orphanage. It's going to be a such a great experience, and I can't wait to get started with my project!