Day 10: La semillita del futuro

Pura vida everyone! Today the lads and I started the day early with pancakes and guayaba marmalade for breakfast. Then, we walked to the University in order to visit Parque La Libertad for our second day of giving back! During the bus ride, we listened to the student made playlist, waiting for the songs we selected to play. When we got to the park, we greeted Juan Carlos, a member of park staff who gave us instructions during our previous visit. We all split off into teams and got to working! I worked with Daisha’s team on marking a new line, and digging the holes where we would plant rabo de gato, a beautiful species with purple flowers. With the help of everyone, our masterpiece of a garden was completed incredibly fast.

The last rabo de gato planted in the garden!

Afterwards, we took a tour of the park’s different facilities. These include a cement and bamboo building which is slated to become a part of an ecological corridor, a center for turning trash into art, and an old factory building which is now used to store items for community plays. They also have a theater, dance, and circus institute in which I got to swing on the trapeze, and a big educational center that serves to teach children and teenagers different skills within the STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) disciplines.

The reading room!

My favorite part of this center was the reading room because it houses books that intentionally stray away from the ‘saving the princess’ or ‘happily ever after’ tropes in favor of books from Costa Rican authors and children’s versions of important texts from Spanish literature (like Don Quijote). After the tour, we had lunch at the center and then began to head back home. However, our bus driver Cho had a small surprise for us: he agreed to drop us off in Oxígeno mall since it was on his way home. I could not pass up the opportunity, my classmates and I got dropped off. Oxígeno is an incredible place that looks a bit like the house from “Meet the Robinsons”. After having some fun at the jungle gym (shaped like an atom), we all got ice cream from La Estación, checked out a pop-up display of “Spider-man: Across the Spiderverse”, and explored the rest of the mall. When it was time to head back, a group of us decided to take the bus. We were dropped off a little further from our station, but we managed to find our way back to our homestays.

Near the end of the day, Riley taught us how to play the card game “Egyptian Rat Slap”, in which quick reaction time is rewarded more than good luck, and whoever ends up with the deck in his hand wins. I managed to win the first game we played! To wrap up this exciting day, we made a quick snack run to a nearby supermarket and relaxed by listening to music in our homestay.

Thanks for reading this far, you’re cool >:)

Best regards,

Jeshua M.