June 22, 2018

By Anika Sinha and Emily Gao

After an exciting week Santa Maria de Dota making new friends, doing manual labor, and learning a variety of new things, our week with the school has come to an end. The week was amazing, and we definitely can’t forget it. Today was a unique and special day for many reasons. First of all we started out the day by painting a variety of things for the community, we bid farewell to our homestay families, we went to learn how to create traditional Costa Rican art, and visited the Coopedota for the 4th, and last time.

In more depth, we started out by painting tires and a sink structure. Many innocent children got paint in their hair (Ashley, Emily, Anika, etc…). Painting is a lot harder than we thought, and it taught us that we should stay in college, but we all knew that didn’t we? Going out of the classical chronological order, did we mention that we had pancakes for breakfast? Apparently Costa Ricans make better American food than Americans. *cough* *cough* Hamburgers, Chicken Nuggets and Fries *cough* *cough* We also had the opportunity to try some plantain tortillas and empanadas! Yum!

Today was a day of goodbyes, and of course we had to say goodbye to both schoolchildren and our homestay families. When we got back to the school, we stayed there for a while, then took the van into town to have a traditional Costa Rican art lesson with Ms. Leva. Ms.Leva was extremely talented and taught us all how to make art by reusing what many regard as trash. We painted pieces of wood with coffee grounds, eggshells, and clay to create texture. It was fascinating and creative as well as fun. There, we also met an extremely fuzzy baby (the gigantic rabbit who tried to eat ears) It was probably one of the only parts of the day that was not mushy.

Soon after we visited the Coope Dota for the last time and majority of the group bought yet another fiesta. The sweet chunk of legit junk was heartbreaking as we savored the last amounts of it. Later when we had returned back to the Cabinas, we had a wonderful surprise during dinner. The San Rafael school and Cecelia had both prepared treats for Mrs. Lear’s birthday! Did we mention it was her birthday?

Sydney maneuvering a piñata for the students.

In conclusion this week was jam packed with amazing experiences with children from the school and community. I hope that we continue to grow, and increase our web of friends as we leave Santa Maria de Dota to the next stage of our journey.

Saniya, Mae, and Sydney painting tires for flower pots.

¡ADIOS AMIGOS!

P.S. Hey Mom and Dad, I wonder if Bubbles is doing okay? I’m enjoying this and I am excited for Dominical too! Tell Ashley and Kevin hello! I miss you guys!

Love, Emily

P.P.S..? Hey! I miss you guys so much! I hope Ishaan and Nalin are doing okay, as well as Dennis  and Dr. Fins. I hope that we’ve settled on one nanny that probably won’t leave in a matter of 2 days. Anyway, I hope to see you soon!

~Anika Sinha

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