day 4 Friday the 13th

Today we met our host families for the first time. Though we had a fun time, we also had some difficulties with communications. We were able to manage with our Spanish knowledge and hand signals. The families welcomed us to their house, but we were surprised when we saw several chickens and roosters in the garden! Our host families also shared activities with us such as playing video games, playing soccer, and playing card games. Overall, we were thrilled today to meet the children from Costa Rica. Each of the host families had at least 1 child in the school we are working at.

Since we were at our host families only for lunch, throughout the day we worked on building the fence around the school. Today we mixed a lot of the gravel with concrete and finished digging all of the holes for the fence. The school is  closed on Sat. and Sun. so we are going back to the forest tomorrow where we planted the trees to complete the large wooden sign we made and painted the other day to indicate that Pingry donated the funds to purchase and plant the trees.

 Each night after dinner at Cabinas Cecelia, one of us leads an activity called ANCHOR. The A stands for appreciation, the N for news, the C for concerns, the H for hopes, the O for obscurities, and the R is for a reading that the student selects from a book Javier has. We are all participating and sharing our stories. We are really bonding as a group, playing lots of games together, and even writing some in our journals. 

There is a full moon tonight and it is also Friday the 13th. Watch out!