The Dangers of Being a Kid

Kids fall down a lot. This is a known fact. Everyone knows this. It's not only that kids are clumsy, it's that they don't think. It's been very apparent while I've been here that kids just get hurt when playing - especially when playing outside in the street. Last week, we had one particualarly injury-filled day. Kids kept getting hit in the head by the soccer ball (no thanks to Carlos who was purposefully aiming for heads) - bringing them to tears more than once. One boy fell while playing with the ball and scraped up his knees pretty good. Then after grabbing on to a passing car and riding it down the road, three came back with scraped knees, elbows, and sides. Like I said, they don't think.

Today we had more accidents. After lunch, the kids introduced us to a game they like to play. It starts out with everyone facing each other & holding hands in a circle. Then one side of the circle goes under the other side which flips everyone backwards. Then you proceed to run around in a circle until someone lets go and kids go flying. It was all good fun until the older kids started plotting who they were going to make go flying. Dulce got flown into the side of a house (made out of tin), another little boy got thrown and ended up with road rash on his bum, and Juan also got thrown down and ended up with a few scrapes. This wasn't the worst part though. After the kids started crying from being hurt, the older kids taunted the hurt kids which enraged them and they cried harder. Needless to say, we stopped that game.

 

 

Sadly, the injuries didn't stop with the game though. The older kids began swinging the smaller kids around. The kids were loving it. Until...two boys were swinging Juan, got distracted, and swung him too low. He hit his head on the ground and started bleeding. It wasn't a deep head wound, but as all head wounds do, it bled a lot. As much as I wanted to confort him, he can't understand me, which makes it hard. Darn my language deficiencies.

(I had another video for you, but I can't upload it at the moment...maybe later)

Needless to say, it's been a bad couple of days for injuries for these kids. I hope that the rest of my time here is injury free, but I highly doubt that. Well...I'm off to the beach now. I'll tell you all about that when I return on Sunday night.

Week One

Wow! I can't believe it's already been a week in Costa Rica!! I meant to post before now, but I've been pretty busy with the teaching English, learning Spanish, going dancing, and visiting the beach. So now I get to write all about the happenings of the past week. Too much has happened to go into too much detail, so I'll summarize the main events/details:

My Host Family
My host family is great. The mom's name is Doris and her husband is Antonio. They have two sons, Diego (22) & Hugo (21). Doris and her husband speak little to no English, and although her sons speak more English, they are rarely around. So it's forcing me to learn Spanish which is good. My roommates are DeAnna and Adam. They are both volunteering in the childcare program with me. They are both great and we get along really well. A guy named Greg was staying with us this week, but he's gone now. He was here studying Spanish.

Greg, Doris, and Adam

Doris and me

My Project

I'm working at a soup kitchen teaching kids English. It's not really what I wanted to be doing, but I'm really enjoying it. The kids are adorable and I'm already falling in love with them. It's hard because different kids come each day, but I'm starting to learn most of their names. The soup kitchen is located in a remote part of town - not sure what the area is actually called. It's on a dirt road and the whole area is very poor. For a couple days this week, they were repainting the building, so we couldn't teach them inside. Luckily we had a ball, so we played ball in the street with the kids. They don't have any play area besides the street and it's not a very wide street at that. It was very hot those days and I got a little burned. One day, a couple of boys bought us all popsicles at this little bodega next to the soup kitchen. It was SO sweet of them since they really don't have much money at all. Each time I took out my camera to take pictures, they LOVED it! They kept wanting me to take pictures of video of them and they also wanted to take pictures. I'm thinking of buying a disposable camera for them to take pictures with and then we can hang up the pictures on the wall of the soup kitchen. We have a lot of fun with the kids and I already know that it's going to be SO hard to leave them in another 5 weeks.

Beth with some kids eating our popsicles

*Beth, Dulce, Roman, and Jacob*

Adam with the kids sitting on the wall across from the soup kitchen

*Lucia, Adam, ?, Brian, and Carlos*

Lucia, Dulce and me

Jordin - he bought us the popsicles

 

Me, Suzie and ?

Carlos and Jeffrey

There is one boy here who reminds me a lot of my nephew Tyler. His mannerisms are so similar it makes me laugh. His name is Ronald. He's really sweet, but wasn't there the day we took pictures. Another kid, Brian, looks like Mush from Newsies. I told him that his name was Mush, but he wasn't so sure about that. He's adorable. I could go on and on about all the kids that we teach, but I'll save more for another post.

The Beach

This weekend, a group of us (14 to be exact) went to the Manuel Antonio beach. We left Friday at 6 pm and got to our hostel around 10 pm (yep - a 4 hour bus ride). The hostel was actually pretty nice. It was clean and we all got to sleep in one room. Friday night we hung out by the pool and  stayed up WAY too late.

 

Craig and me

DeAnna, me, and Casey

(I look a lot more burnt than I really am)

Our recreation for the night

(don't worry - I played, but didn't drink)

We finally went back to our room around 4 am, but 6 of us decided to go sleep out on the hammocks. I only made it an hour before I decided I needed SOME sleep and headed back inside. Only three people made it through the night (Craig, Dave & Tatiana).

 

Dave all cocooned in his sheet

No joke - this is how I found Craig in the morning

Because we didn't go to bed until super late, it took everyone a while to get up and going in the morning (even though I woke up at 7 am and couldn't go back to sleep for some reason). After getting everything together, we set off for the beach. It was BEAUTIFUL!!! The weather was very hot and the water felt great! Since it was so hot, we spent most of our time in the water - which was totally fine with me. We had a great time!

 

Playa de Manuel Antonio

Enjoying the sun

Isn't it beautiful?

A group of us decided to stay one more night and so we were at the beach until after the sun went down.

 

The beach at sunset

We didn't want to leave

After our long day (and night), we all just went back to the hostel after dinner and crashed. Besides, we had to get up early Sunday morning to catch a 6 am bus so people could attend a festival in Palmaris. DeAnna and I were too tired to go, and it turns out to have been a good thing. There was just a lot of drinking in the hot hot sun, so I'm glad I had my day to rest and read.

So far, I've really enjoyed my time in Costa Rica. I can't believe it's already been over a week!!! Time is sure flying by. I'll post more pictures after this weekend - I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but I'm sure it'll be fun!

The Journey Begins

Tomorrow, Saturday January 16, at 8:00 pm, my journey to Costa Rica officially begins. That's when I'll be hopping on the plane for an all-night flight (which I'm definitely NOT looking forward to). I'm not sure at all what to expect once I arrive in Costa Rica. All I've been told is that someone will be waiting for me (with a sign - like you see in the movies) and they will take me to my home-stay. After that...I have orientation on Monday and then the real work begins Tuesday. I'm excited to see where I'll be, who I'll be living with, and what work I'll be doing. So many things are question marks right now it'll be good to get some answers. I can't wait to serve the people of Costa Rica (wow - I sound just like a missionary don't I. Hahaha!) I promise to post tons of pictures and write about everything I do over the next 6 weeks. I'm not promising WHEN I'll post all that stuff - just that it'll get done...sometime. For now all I have to say is adios!