Hey everyone,
My name is David Marine and today I woke up at 6:30AM as always to wake up all the boys in my room so we can shower and get ready. Then, at 7:45 I proceeded to make sure to wake up the girls, (8:00AM was wake up time). Then I had everyone at the table at breakfast table at 8:25AM and Diego made us rice, beans, and eggs but sausage for people with dietary restrictions so don´t worry parents. Then we started our group activities for the final day. The first thing we did was a final survey for the GGL´s and that took us about 30ish minutes.
Then, for the second activity, we broke up up into 3 groups and each group answered a different question which was what were you going to START, STOP, and CONTINUE once we go back to NYC. Then, we proceeded to read everyone´s responses and wrote what we thought was the best in our journals. When that activity was done, we closed our eyes so we could visualize our two weeks in Costa Rica and Memo described our trip. Then drew timelines or maps of our time on a blank sheet of paper in our journals to see how far we´ve come.
For the fourth activity, we all got a sheet of paper and wrote our names in the middle of it and passed it around the whole table and wrote one Big Love on every single paper and read all the messages once we got our own paper back. Everyone was so happy and started to get emotional. For the fith and final activity we all gathered around in a circle in the living room for a final bonding activity. Fabi instructed us to turn our backs and close our eyes. She then told us that she would ask for volunteers to raise their hands while everyone had their eyes closed and woud pick people to come to the middle of the circle to tap people on the outside on the shoulder if they correlated to the question that she asked. Some questions where who made you laugh, who you admire, who do you want to get to know more ect. By the end of it, most of us cried because people, including me, didn´t expect to get tapped on various questions. Since the activity was so heart warming and peope couldnt get enough, we pushed lunch back to 12:30PM instead of having it at 12:00PM like we were supposed to.
For lunch we had bacon cheeseburgers but the cheese and the bacon were optional so, again, dont worry parents, your kids are safe with me. We were just conversing for the most part and we took a little longer at lunch because we had a lot of downtime. Since we had all packed our luggage already and the coffee man came early, we were able to go to the Chino (corner store) one last time. Everyone was just chilling and doing fun activities like playing card games, talking, ect, for a couple of hours until it hit 5:50 when I told everyone to start getting ready for dinner. For dinner Diego made us rice, beans, and pork and salad. But for dietary restrictions there was rice, beans and beef. During dinner we did more bonding and conversating a bit more. After dinner we just chilled a little more and played some more card games. It was my first time playing spades and it was a great experience especially because me and Ms. Maryanne won. Finally at 6:50 I instructed everyone to go get their journals so we can have our nightly meeting, we all came on time for the whole day and I was filled with joy and felt accomplished. I personally felt like this final nightly meeting was our best because we all had a strong bond and everyone was filled with sad-happiness. Everyone talked a lot for the rose and thorn and the big loves and of course I was included in every Big Love (not tryna brag). It was a heart warming moment because everyone was crying and couldn´t believe that the trip was already over but I tried my best to try to comfort them. I said, ´´Why would we create strong bonds and just break them when the point of this trip was to create strong bonds for a lifetime´´ . I feel like everyone took what I said to the heart.
WE´LL BE BACK!!!
David Marine