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!