Day 9: Cultural Exchange + Cheese Farm 

Hola families! Today is day 9 of our trip to Costa Rica. Today was a packed and productive day filled with exhilarating adventures from going to a school and visiting a cheese farm to having pizza night and a bonfire. Today’s leaders were Christopher P, Sofia and Makaelah.

It was a good morning for our Glimpsers as we started off the day with a wake up call at 6:30am. An hour later, we all sat at our tables and began with eating pinto, fried eggs, accompanied by bread and fruits such as watermelon, pineapple and papaya! All served by our magnificent chef Diego. Soon after, we started getting ready for the day by preparing our book bags with the BIG 5 and meeting downstairs to head to the school. 

When walking to the school, our Glimpsers faced a great deal of heat. Once we arrived, everything changed when we saw the excitement on the student’s faces! <3 We were bombarded with positive energy. After settling in, we introduced ourselves to the children (en español) and vice versa (FUN FACT: There were a total of 5 Chris’s today lol wow). In order to have enough space for everybody, we moved to the recess playground to mentally warm up. Today, we chose the game of coke/pepsi which included the school kids. This game had the school kids picking against two different topics that would be in a similar category. An example of this would be having them pick between hotdogs or hamburgers and between fortnite or roblox. We had three different sections to focus on when it came to the kids and after warming them up, we all returned to the classroom to practice their language skills, arts & crafts, as well as their mobility. Our objective was to teach them a little English… 

We started with the language portion of the day. To do this we as a group had decided to play a game of heads up! A player was selected to have a card in front of their forehead and guess what was written on the card based on the actions of other participating players. After the child would get the word correct, they would be encouraged to say the English translation of the word. Doing this allowed the kids not only to connect certain actions with words but build confidence in their spoken English skills! The game was so fun for everybody that even some of our fellow Glimpses decided to play the game and guess the word they were given.

Next, was the Arts and Crafts portion of the day. This was a part which all the kids were looking forward to. The activity we wanted to do was make dreamcatchers with the class. Although, to us Glimpsers it may be called paper future teller, in Costa Rica they call it “Ahhh”. When the school kids shared this with us, we all had a good laugh since it was something we were not expecting at all. We then split into 3 different groups and taught the kids how to make paper fortune tellers. Afterwards, everyone was going around and asking people how many times they should open and close the paper in order to the most accurate fortune. Many people started to laugh because of how silly the fortunes were and everybody was having loads of fun!

Lastly, we focused on mobility. Mobility had everyone running to get out of the classroom and go directly to the front yard. This is when we started off with a game of red light,green light. This game involves one single person being in control of when the other can and can’t move. When the person says green light you can move but if they say red light, you must stay still. If you move when the person in charge yells “red light”, then you must move to the back of the line and start all over again.

After multiple arounds, we had various winners like different school kids who had managed to out run the Glimpsers. After these activities, the school kids had to have their lunch which gave the Glimpers some free time to be able to relax and unwind.

The kids ended up beating rice and beans followed by a side of salad and shredded beef. Later on in the day, we were invited by the school to have lunch at the school. Our Glimpsers especially enjoyed it after their dessert of an ice cream cone with neapolitan ice cream. YUM! The meal was so delicious; it’s true what they say about school lunch in the states vs. abroad. Hint: It was so good, some of us even wanted a siesta afterwards but our schedule was jam packed today and we saved it for the bus ride….

Once done with our time at the school, we walked back to the base home arriving there at 1:30. We enjoyed an hour of free time before leaving for the bus to take us to the cheese farm. By 2:20, we all gathered in the front of the house and started getting on the bus. By 2:30, all glimpsers were ready to leave and Giovani, our bus driver, started driving us to our destination to the cheese farm. We soon arrived at 3:00 and greeted Karla, the owner of the cheese farm. She gave us a tour of her whole farm and explained to us what she does, and the history behind her farm. 4 special people were selected to milk cows and make cheese, shoutout to Christopher G. Angie, Valerie and Amelia! After those activities, we said goodbye to Karla and started to be on our way to the Pizzaria. 

At the pizzeria, we entered a dimmed light Italian restaurant which looked gorgeous. With strawberry juice already prepared for us, we waited about 10 minutes for our pies to come. They ranged from plain slices, to pepperoni, margarita, and pesto chicken, and were all so delicious. After the amazing dinner, we hopped back on the bus to come home for our nightly meeting and bonfire night. 

We started off by sharing a recap of the day, and stating what our roses and thorns were for this beautiful day. As this meeting happened, Nino, one of our GGL’s lit the bonfire up for us. After our meeting, we had an amazing bonfire party with smores and some music! We can definitely say, we couldn’t have asked for a better day. Thank you for reading our blog, hope you’re having a blessed day!

– Christopher P.,Sophia y Makaelah!

More Pictures of the Day