Cultural Exchange & Cheese Farm

Today was our Cultural Exchange day at the school nearby as well as the tour of the Cheese Farm! We started our day at 8:00 AM and had eggs, gallo pinto, plantains, pineapple, papaya, watemelon, and prensadas. We left the base house at 8:45 to head to the local school where we split up into 3 groups: Sports, Language, Arts & Crafts. For the next three hours, we spent time engaging with the children, who were ages 5 to 12. We rotated three groups of kids at the stations.

For the sports group, we played duck duck goose, twister, and cheer up. The group consisted of Kayla, Olivia, Thomas, Jonas, and Kamille. At the end, we made a big circle to talk about what we liked and majority of the kids favored the duck duck goose! In the language group, we have Devin, Arlen, Cindell, Krystalyn, Sade, Ava, and Mariah. In this group we played telephone, matching animal flashcard games, and charades — teaching kids animal names in english. For the arts group: Ivana, Jason, Lily, Gio and Grace, they painted hand trees with the kids. After, they drew Jason and had a time limit. After, the kids were able to keep their paintings as well.

We left the school at 11:00 to head back to the base house for lunch. Then, at around 1:30 we went on the bus to head to the local cheese farm, looking into the process of how Turrialba cheese is made. We got to learn about what plants were eaten by cows, the overall process of how cheese is made. Overall, we learned what was needed to balance an ecosystem. We played hot potato with a cow and answered questions from Carla, the owner of the cheese farm, allowing us to experience an engagement in learning about environmental science. She even gave us bookmarks!

We got back to the base house at around 4:40 and left again at 5:30 to head downtown to eat pizza. On the way, our amazing bus driver showed us a sloth. We had a quick pit stop and and every one came out to take a picture! We had pepperoni, Hawaiian, 4 cheese, and chicken pesto pizza! Alongside, we had all had a cup of pinaepple juice. After eating, we went to the corner store across the street and bought our favorite drinks and snacks.

Finally, on our way back to the base house, we gathered and took an amazing group photo on the bus showing how close our group got in the past 8 days!

Sincerely, the leaders of the day, Krystal and Kayla!!!

To see more pictures, check out the link here!