Community Day & CAP Seminar

Bienvenidos familias, it’s Gyssel! Today is our third day in Costa Rica, Both me, Cali, and Kim were our LDD leaders today. Our jobs consisted of waking up our peers and guiding each one of our groups through out the day. Our main focus in the community today was learning to make some delicious traditional dishes which were tortillas de queso and empanadas de queso. My group specifically made 3 different dishes with Doña Rosario. Connecting with our fellow locals was a large highlight for many of our peers. She spoke with us about the importance of making food from scratch and gave us insight of her day to day life, including core memories she has of raising her children to be independent. For her food is always delicous if it is made with the most important ingredient, which is love and the amazing energy of those preparing the meals. The kitchen was filled with laughter, music, and dancing. Seeing everyone so involved and trying their best to communicate even if they didn’t speak Spanish was greatly impactful. Doña Rosario ended our expirence with some heart warming hugs, blessings, and some local key chains to remember our life changing trip.

I cannot wait to share how a bunch of young strangers were able to gather and share such an amazing experience.

Hola familias, me llamo Cali! As Gyssel, Kim, and I entered the Leader of the Day role, Gyssel and I kicked off our role by sharing our talent with the group! We lead the glimpsers into a dance lesson in bachata which was a fun activity for all of us to do. Our main focus of today was separating into groups and making traditional dishes with different locals, I had the opportunity of leading a group of glimpsers to join Doña Carmen! As we arrived to her house, she welcomed us with many fruits. While enjoying her welcoming fruits, us as a collective started asking Doña Carmen questions about her to get to know more about her. There was a language barrier for many glimpsers due to Doña Carmen only speaking Spanish and many glimpsers only speaking English. However, I was blessed to be able to translate to the glimpsers and support the glimpsers in trying to practice their Spanish. As we continued to get to know Doña Carmen, we played a game of bingo and she was kind enough to give us all prizes. She also taught us to make empandas and we all had a great time. She gifted all of us bracelets as souvenirs too, then we headed back to the base camp.