Cultural Exchange & Cheese Farm

Hey everyone,

We are the LDD’s of day 9 of our Costa Rica trip, Angela and Hailee. This morning, we woke everyone up 30 minutes early than usual at 6:30 with a long day ahead. We had a quesadilla with chicken, cheese, and beans for breakfast and started heading towards the nearby school by 8:40am after collecting some materials.

After our first long walk in a while, we made it to the school and students started coming in very slowly while we started with some ice breakers and cultural exchange. We played games that taught the kids some English words, and we learned some Spanish as well. But things really started kicking off when we started playing soccer with the kids and we ran into another group/delegation of Global Glimpsers from New York! We all played soccer together and even lost track of time. EAST VS. WEST!!! As well as our CALI cheer! We won the game by a landslide which really hyped up all the children and brought the energy up! Then, we started finishing up the day with some arts and crafts and some closings. We definitely had a bit of a hard time communicating to the students because we couldn’t speak Spanish, but we definitely tried our best. Shoutout to the Spanish speakers of the group for trying to help the rest of us out.

We came back to the hotel for lunch and had beef patties with mashed potatoes, salad, and plantain chips which was very delicious and filling. After a break, we started heading to the Cheese Farm on a bus. Some people got to milk cows, make cheese, and we got to learn plenty new things about farming and how much it can affect our planet. We also tried different ages of Turrialba cheese which was delicious!

We came back from the cheese farm and quickly fixed ourselves up for pizza in the city! We had so many pizzas and different variations and got to try many different types of toppings, with some that would be kind of hard to find in the states. Some people ate a lot more than others and someone even ordered and an extra pizza. After our big dinner out in Turrialba, some people made a quick trip to the convenience store across the street, and we drove back to the lodge in the dark.

Many people were tired after this long, long day but we decided to finish off the night with a bonfire!

Overall, being leaders today was definitely a little bit of a challenge since we had so much stuff to do as well as some parts of the schedule not being 100% finalized or specified because of weather conditions. Getting from one place to another all day while also trying to be on schedule was a challenge since a lot of us were getting lost in the fun of it being our final day in Turrialba! Keeping our energy up all day was also something that we focused on with all these activities. But everyone had a lot of fun today and we really finished off our time at Turrialba strong!

Love, Angela and Hailee! <3