Day 10: Reflection and travel to san jose

Hola familia!

Welcome to Day 10 of Turrialba, Costa Rica! This is Jane, Allianna, and Hafsa, your leader del dias. Today was a bittersweet day filled with lots of happy moments and love. 

We started our day with Final Reflection activities that made us consider what events and places made an impact on us the most. The first activity was drawing a map of the five most significant events that we encountered on this trip, one thing we learned about ourselves, one thing we learned leadership, and one person who inspired us. After we took time individually, we got into small groups to discuss our maps and learn more about each other. One big takeaway of this activity was that leadership is different for everyone, and there isn’t one set way of becoming a leader. The next activity was called Start, Continue, and Stop, which entailed all of us writing habits and practices that we would start after being inspired by this trip, continue after talking to locals, or stop after seeing the negative impacts on businesses and environment. A couple common responses were buying more from local businesses and using compost bins to reduce unnecessary food waste. 

The last two Final Reflection activities we did were filled with lots of laughter, smiles, and tears of joy. With the help of our PCs Nino and Cami, we started an activity where there were five to six volunteers in the middle and the rest of the students formed a circle with their backs to the center and their eyes closed. Cami would read off a list of questions that would make us reflect on which people in our group have positively impacted us on this trip, and the volunteers would tap the shoulder of the people they believed the statement applied to. For example, a couple of questions included “Who is special to you?” and “Who makes you feel safe?”. The purpose of this activity was to express our love for one another, and at the end all of us expressed our gratitude to being touched on the shoulder, which was then followed by our last Big Love. We all wrote our names on sheets of paper and passed our papers around a circle, writing what we appreciated about each other on the paper in twenty second intervals. Once the activity was completed, some people read their sheets in front of others, some read them privately, while the remaining were waiting to read them at home. Nevertheless, all of our hearts were touched with the kind words of our peers.

Once we finished the Reflection, we began our final pack for the descent to San Jose. Although we all enjoyed each other’s company, we felt reminded about home and excited to see our families once again. We said some goodbyes, including: Diego, our chef, Zimba, the owner’s dog, Birdie, the lovely cat, and Bogie, the stray that became family. Then we boarded the bus and headed for the Souvenir shop to pick up beautiful gifts for our family at home. There we saw gorgeous bowls, crosses, rosaries, dresses, keychains, shirts, crewnecks, caps, snowglobes, and more. At the thought of presenting our families with presents, we splurged at the opportunity and some of us spent more than anticipated. Afterwards, we spent the next three hours on the bus singing songs, laughing, enjoying the view, and sharing our hauls. At 4:50 pm we arrived at San Jose and began to get ready for our final treat of the trip, our fancy dinner.

We dressed up a little and made our way to a nice dining restaurant near the hotel. A lot of people picked different dishes, some of them including: grilled chicken breast, beef with onion, steak with potatoes, and fish with salad. However, our fan favorites were the deserts: brownies with vanilla ice cream and rice pudding with cinnamon. At the dinner, we enjoyed ourselves and bonded some more over our food, conversation, and photos. As our last hurrah we made sure to make it count and keep up the good energy by hanging out by the pool.

Finally, we want to give many thanks to our Program Coordinators Nino and Cami for everything they did on this trip. Additionally, we want to give Big Love to every person that inspired us in this trip, which includes: Carla, Fofo, Diego, Maribel, Jessica, and our local CAP partners. Turriabla has truly changed many aspects of our lives and we hope to carry out the most important lessons learned into our futures.

Back to city lit (Chicago),

Jane, Alianna, Hafsa

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