La Fortuna mission trip and other things

Where has the time gone? It feels like just last week I was thinking how much stuff we had going on in April and now April is over. Today was a relaxing Sunday of churching, baking banana bread with good friends, playing a girls soccer game (I scored a goal!!) and just hanging out. Three weeks today until almost everyone will have left Port and started the long journey back to their home countries.

Yesterday we got back from our mission trip in La Fortuna de Bagaces (building the church in San Bernardo). It was a great trip and the end result was a nice little blue church that still needs windows, a door, and electricity but that will get finished over the next few weeks by people we will hire with the money left over from the trip fund raising. Though we only needed $8,000 we raised over $10,000.

All the extra activities we planned went really well too. There was a talent show in the church one night, in which Alyssa, Sarah and I were going to sing Lord of the Dance. Well we tried to sing and it was going well until Alyssa started laughing and then we all couldn’t help but join in so it turned into a rather embarrassing episode of trying to finish singing while stifling laughter in front of over a hundred people. But the audience got a good laugh if nothing else good came of it. We also had a couple of events planned in the town of San Bernardo, which is a ten-minute drive from La Fortuna. We invited all the people in the town to come to the main field to play games and sing some songs. Well a few people showed up and we had a really good time with them playing Ninja. Erin and I went up to a crowd of local people and talked with them for ten minutes in only Spanish! We were scared to go but once we got there it went well and we found things to say. One of the things I have been learning lately is that when there is a need that needs to be filled, I can’t wait around for other people to fill it because otherwise it won’t get done. I need to be the one to fill it. I need to bold in my faith and constantly be doing things that take me out of my comfort zone (like talking to people in Spanish). I can’t use things like my lack of Spanish or physical weakness or sickness as an excuse to not do things that need to be done. We had similar activities planned for the high school and those went really well too.

The church building was pretty straightforward- just a bunch of premade walls that we had to slide down in between some cement posts that we dug holes for at the beginning. The most dangerous part was climbing up onto the scaffolding with the cement blocks and sliding them down without crushing anyone underneath. We had to mix our own cement by combining rocks and sand and cement and then just adding water and shoveling it all together. It was hard work but so much fun to work together and see things get done. It’s definitely true that many hands make light work. Then we also had to level the ground and lay cement on the floor. Finally we painted. After 5 days of working the church was done (apart from the other things that I mentioned earlier). Luckily the property where we were working was right in front of a papaya farm so every day we could take as many yellow papayas off the trees as we wanted and eat them during our break or take them back to the main church to eat later. I didn’t like papayas when I came to Costa Rica but I have definitely changed my mind about them now.

I stayed with a host family with another girl from our group while we were there and that was a really fun time too. We just slept there and ate our dinners there, the rest of that time we were out and about doing community things. The family was wonderful- they were a really generous family and gave us lots of food and love.

A scary thing happened on Thursday night. We went to some hot springs to hang out for the night and I was taking a break from being in the water when all of a sudden a beetle flew into my ear. It started burrowing down my ear canal and when it got to the end and couldn’t go any further it started using its pincers to get further down into my eardrum. When it realised that it wasn’t going anywhere, after about a minute, it came out again. By that time, I had been screaming at the top of my lungs, flailing around wildly and the whole rest of the group had gathered around me trying to find out what they could do to help. On the way home I recovered and we all laughed about it later J Anyway now it’s getting late and I am going to finish reading the Hunger Games (because it is amazing). Goodnight!

Easter week (a bit late)

Happy Easter! This weekend a few of us went to La Fortuna, a beautiful touristy town next to Volcano Arenal, for Semana Santa (Holy Week). It was such an amazing trip. It was Erin, Evans, Dani, Christoph, Alyssa, Jayda and I. We woke up early Wednesday morning and set off at 7 walking to the bus stop to take us to San Jose. When we arrived at the terminal there were so many people already lined up for the bus even though we were 45 minutes early. We ended up getting seats for us girls but the boys had to sit on the ground in the aisle for the four hour trip. No matter though because we got to La Fortuna safely. We found our way to Sleepers Sleep Cheaper Hostel and put our stuff away. The owner of the hostel told us about a place 15 minutes walk away where we could go swimming and swing off a rope swing so we decided that since we only had half the day left to spare we would just go there right away and see what else we felt like later. The river was amazing and there weren’t many people there so we swung off lots of times and went rock hopping down the river afterwards. The rest of the day we spent making dinner together in the kitchen (it only cost us $1 each, eating at home is definitely the way to go). We finished the night off with Evans teaching us how to play the card game Up and Down the River.

On Thursday we woke up early and had breakfast (which the hostel provided), then we set off walking to the Arenal National Park, a bit over an hour’s walk from La Fortuna. It was a hard walk to even get there but we made it eventually. We payed the entrance fee and went down a bunch of steps to get to a beautiful waterfall where there were lots of tourists. It was really cold water and we could get right up close to the fall when we swam in the pool. We walked back and expected to be able to walk up Volcano Cerro Chato which is right next to Arenal but found that it is actually in a different park which is another $8 to get into. But we really wanted to do it so we payed the money and set off hiking. It was a very hard hike. Three kilometers to the top but it was all uphill and we took lots of rest breaks to make sure everyone stayed together. But arriving at the top made it so worth the walk. The clouds opened up for about ten minutes and we had a spectacular view of the top of Arenal. When we got to the top of Cerro Chato we ate our packed lunch and decided to go down and explore a path that leads to the inside of the crater of the volcano. We got down to the bottom and found a huge lake in the middle so we all went for a swim and Christoph and Evans caught a couple of fish and ate them. There were frogs everywhere that we could catch and look at. We ended up getting home at about six, so we went out and got things for dinner and made another delicious meal even though we ate it a bit late. More cards to follow and Evans read some of The Horse and His Boy before we all fell asleep.

Friday we decided to get bikes for the day and ride out to some free hot springs. Half way there, after climbing some huge hills and becoming dripping wet with sweat we decided that it was really too hot for hot springs so we turned around and came back home. The boys rode for a bit longer and us girls went to the rope swing again for a swim to cool off. We came home for lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing with our bibles and cards and beds. We decied that Friday night would be our splurge night so we made an amazing vegetable soup and ate it with half an avocado each and (stale) corn chips. For dessert we needed to use up the left over rice that we had so Evans made rice pudding with cinnamon and raisins. There were three other girls staying in the hostel and they are living in San Jose studying at the moment too. We invited them to eat pudding with us and it was nice to be able to chat with them for a while. For second dessert we had Tim Tam slams because I had saved seven of the Tim Tams I got from mum and dad earlier. They were so good. 

Saturday morning we got up really early and a few of us went on a walk to the rope swing again (we didn’t swim because it was cold and we didn’t want to be wet for he bus ride home). So we just went and jumped on the rocks down there for a while then walked back and got our stuff packed up ready to go. We went on one last walk around the town then got on the bus to come home. Although not all of us made it on to one bus at first because there were so many people trying to get back to San Jose all at once for the end of Semana Santa. Anyway we persuaded the guy to let us o and there weren’t enough seats so we all had to sit on the floor in the handicapped spot. It was tight but we managed to play a game of Up and Down the River while we were moving so the time went by real quick. We got back to San Jose and Evans, Erin, Cristof and I walked the hour and a half walk back to Port from San Jose and the others caught the bus. This trip was definitely the highlight of my whole time so far in Costa Rica.