Hi friends and family! Today was our fourth day in Costa Rica. Today’s main focus was COMMUNITY. On Friday night, August 4th, Kyle and Kaylee passed the torch to us (Mercedes & Tammy) to be the next day’s Líderes del Día (LDDs).

We began our morning with a desayuno delicioso by the wonderful cooks, Diego and Emilia. We had pancakes, fruit, and scrambled eggs. After breakfast, we did our daily mental warmup, and introduced our quote of the day, which was, “The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.” – Richard Bach.

Despues, we prepared for our visit to the Costa Rican families in Santa Rosa. We were divided into four different groups to interact with the local families in Costa Rica. We then spent approximately seven hours doing various activities such as cooking food (empanadas, plantain ceviche, tortillas, arroz con pollo, and garbanzo beans), playing games (Stop!, Pictionary, Uno, etc.), learning about the locals’ life stories, and indulged in lots of yummy comida! We also engaged with the families by cooking, cleaning, gardening, dancing, and simply laughing.

Everyone learned a lot about the locals’ everyday lives and got to witness what a Costa Rican’s life is like. Each group had an opportunity to be informed about a variety of not only the educational lifestyle but the livelihood of the families they spent their day with. Where the group recognized the different privileges they have as children raised in the United States, which strived everybody to be extremely grateful for things in their lives– that they had previously taken for granted. The families made us Glimpsers feel a sense of home as the Santa Rosa locals welcomed everyone with open arms into their casas bonitas.

After the very busy day we all had, we ended the day with a nightly meeting, where we shared a recap of our day as well as our question of the day. Since today’s theme was COMMUNITY, we did a self-reflection with the el repollo pregunton (Questioning Cabbage activity). Where we went over our experiences and deeply resonated with each other.

We (Mercedes and Tammy) had a delightful time being today’s Líderes del Día! Then we passed the torch on to Audrey and Mari.

Pura Vida,

Mercedes and Tammy 😀