Contributing To The Community

Day 7 – June 15, 2012 (Friday)

Friday morning I awoke to the chorus of the roosters and ventured into the dining room, where the usual plate of rice and beans awaited me. That morning I finally got the chance to teach the children English. Before we started, we brainstormed and finally agreed that we would teach them greetings, emotions, colors, animals, and idiomatic phrases. We began the lesson and soon realized just how small the attention span of six year olds truly is. The kids did not really pay attention until Emily whipped out her bag of prizes which included hair accessories, pens, bouncy balls, and magnets. With these toys, we grabbed their attentions and successfully taught them the topics. Teaching the children English was one of the highlights of my trip. It made me appreciate how good my Holton education is and how many opportunities I’ve received from it. Seeing the kids excited to learn and participate made me extremely happy because I had the chance to give back to a community that has given so much to me.

-Gabriella Chen

                   On Friday, we went back to the school to continue painting the playground and teaching the children.  The entire morning, I mostly helped to paint primer on the pillars. During the kids’ break/recess, they ran outside to see what we were doing on the playground. It made me happy to see how excited and interested in how we were designing their playground. Although I never thought much about how such a tedious task like painting pillars would interest the kids, their excitement made me realize how even the little things that we do make such a big difference to them. Later that day after lunch, we went with an biologist from the La Selva Research Center named Jenny and took water samples in a nearby river and a stream. Jenny talked to us about how pesticide run-offs affect the wildlife in the river and how families have to balance between providing enough food for their families and farming in such a way in order to protect the wildlife. The results demonstrated that the water closest to the pineapple farms were less healthy for wildlife and other insects.  Some of the local families wanted us to distribute the results to other families in the community in order to discourage the use of pesticides. Although I never thought much about how environmental problems affect families, our afternoon with Jenny taught me how much environmental problems are intertwined in the lives of Costa Rican families.

-Cheyenne Coote