Foundations: Costa Rica 2011

…And we’re back! We apologize for the technical issues we’ve had during the second portion of our time here in Costa Rica. The last week really was a blast. While we can’t possibly convey all that we’ve done, there are some great highlights.

The second community service group finished the job in the village, tearing up the old floor and mixing and laying the cement for the brand new foundation. They also taught some great English lessons to their new friends and painted colorful benches to be assembled in the plaza. We finished our week with a big goodbye party with all the Putney kids and leaders in attendance. It was great to get our whole gang back together and to celebrate the amazing friendships we made both within our group and with the community. We exchanged gifts with the town along with hugs and tears and email addresses. We rolled out of there feeling we’d made connections for a lifetime.

We spent our last couple days back at the villa. We relaxed on the beach, reflected on all our experiences, and did some souvenir shopping. On our final day, we all competed in the age old tradition of Putney Olympics.

We write to you now from a quiet Villa, as each and every student has taken off on their flight back home. We’d like to thank each of you for allowing us to share this wonderful experience with you and for providing the opportunity to get to know such a great group of kids. While we will head out tomorrow with heavy hearts, we’re thrilled to have been a part of Putney’s Costa Rica Foundations program.

Due to the website outage and our own connectivity issues here in Costa Rica, we’ve been unable to update the blog as much as we might have liked.  But we’ve got a great backlog of photos and dispatches that we hope to update you with shortly.

In the meantime: the students are all asleep, resting for their early flight tomorrow morning.  We’ve had a wonderful three weeks here in Costa Rica, and are only sad to have it end so soon!

Here’s Saturdays dispatch from the community service village. Looks like the group was off to a fantastic start!

The new group has gotten off to a great start here. We arrived last night to a pasta dinner and a welcome party with the local community. Work began the next day with a solid morning of construction and an afternoon making friends in the plaza. We even invited a group of kids to play “Ninja” after dinner. Our gang has made an immediate connection with the community, and everyone is really excited for the week to come.

Saludos,
Troy and Danielle

Our group returned to the Villa after a week of meaningful community service to be met with one final project here in Costa Rica—reforesting the protected wildlife area. It was a little different than their work in the village, but the group took to it immediately. We joined scientists and some of the park rangers to plant 105 trees—all native species and all beloved by the White Face Capuchin monkeys who live there.

We made a deal with the group that if they planted over 100 trees, we would write on the blog that they “took the other group to (reforestation) school.” Nothing like fostering a little friendly competition!

We also heard a talk from researcher, Susan Perry, who has been involved in a long-term research project on the Capuchins in this area for over 20 years. She regaled us with the intriguing and drama filled lives of these monkeys, and also told us a bit more about steps we can take to help protect them.

Our group didn’t imagine that we would be lucky enough to see monkeys two weeks in a row, but sure enough, the monkeys were on our side. We found a social group of just a few minutes from where we working and followed Susan into the woods to see some baby, juvenile, and adult monkeys. Amazing!

We returned from a day of work to spend the afternoon back on the beach.

Here are some of the photos we got during the day!

Abrazos,
Tara, Scott, and Brenna

An earthquake occurred in Costa Rica this afternoon about 100 km from where our Community Service Village is located.  Our students, who at the time were teaching an English lesson, felt minor trembling that lasted between 5-10 seconds.  We are happy to report that everyone is safe and sound and no damage has yet been reported in the area.

After our sojourn at Arenal, our two teams have switched locations. The Village comes to the Villa and the Villa heads inland to the community service village. We’ll stay split up for a total of 6 days before getting back together at the beach. Remember: there are very few opportunities for internet in the village, so our leaders will be calling periodically with updates that are transcribed over the phone.

Here’s the scoop on who’s where:

At the Villa

Spencer
Zoey
Léa
Ben
Olivia
Michael
Joanne
Melissa
Jaime
Stephen

At the Village

Jackie
Reid
Valentina
Sam
Havana
Zach
Juliette
Payton
Vivi
Jared

On our way back from Arenal, we stopped at the crystal clear waters of Rio Celeste. After a short hike into the waterfall, we ate a picnic lunch and spent part of our afternoon swimming in these amazingly blue waters.

The entire group got back together this week for an amazing two day stay at a self sustaining eco-ranch at the base of the Arenal Volcano. It would have been great to be back together anywhere, but this place was tops. There are hiking trails throughout the premises, hot and cold pools perfect for soaking in and soaking up the spectacular views, a working farm, beautiful bunkhouses, and excellent all organic buffets. The pizza was a favorite!

We spent our days scrambling through river rocks, horseback riding up to a mirador high in the mountains, kayaking at the base of the volcano, trying out canopy and a Tarzan swing, soaking in the hot pool, taking in the sites of the working dairy farm, attending yoga classes in an outdoor studio to kick off our morning, and generally enjoying each other’s company.

We’ve included some of our best shots of the weekend!

Abrazos,
Danielle, Scott, Tara, Troy, and Brenna

The Villa crew hit up a fruit stand on their way to the Arenal Volcano—a prototypically Costan Rican pit stop. We feasted on watermelon and and many of us tried fresh coconuts for the first time!