Hola! We woke up this morning again to the sound of rain on our tin roof. Chris and I (Hilary), are with one family and Meagan and Rachel are about 400 meters away at another Costa Rican home. The actual address of our home is 500 meters east of Linda Vista school.
To catch up on our home stay, we arrived home on wed night and were fed dinner and then we joined the family on the couch to watch television. We broke out our Uno cards and our 22 year old brother, Iver, his 16 year old girlfriend Carolina, and our 8 year old sister Katy were all interested in playing too. We took a break to watch tv, but got talking about music, and before we knew it we had a spontaneous dance party. Chris was invited to dance the Bachata with our mom, Yamileth, Katy taught me the same dance. Our adult sister, Bianca, came home and joined the dance party, and then we played some more uno games with Bianca's two kids- Keren age 8 and Manfred age, and Katy. We slept very well as we each have our own room with a double bed complete with a huge bug net. Thursday night was similar with the exception of us playing Scrabble in Spanish, which was a fun challenge.
Today our main activity first thing in the morning was to zip line through the rain forest canopy. It was the same company as our rafting, so after saying hello to our raft guide, we hopped in the van to head to our staring point. We met our two guides- Martinez and Yeudy, who got us in our harnesses, helmets and fancy brake gloves. After a brief safety demonstration and signing our lives away we climbed up to the first station. The first ride was 400 meters to the bottom of a tower, which we climbed after to the very top which was pretty high up. From there we had an amazing ride 600 meters across the valley and into the rainforest. Once in the rain forest we had a shorter rides and one went right over the whitewater river. Martinez made many of our rides even more thrilling by bouncing the wire and the jokes never stopped. We were lucky to see a couple of howler monkeys and a colorful bird right up close and unfortunately bullet ants and a giant spider as well. We rode 13 cables in all, and some highlights were riding it upside down and even getting air while Martinez was bouncing the wire. The final 700 meters was our favorite- out of the rainforest, over the river, and out of the lush green valley. When we were done, they treated us to Costa Rican cookies, candies and peanuts, and almost immediately, the rain started again!
We have felt very lucky with the weather, and have had an amazing time here.
Each day we have had time for the world leadership school curriculum whether it has been an activity tying things together or having meaningful discussions, this trip has been a very well-rounded experience for us all.
Hilary, Chris, Rachel, & Meagan
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