Thursday, July 16, 2009

i survived the road to monte verde.


We have discovered on our travels in Costa Rica that many of our students have motion sickness--unbeknownst even to them. This problem became evident as we traversed the roads in Costa Rica, none of which goes straight in any direction for more than 50 feet. We had several vomiting issues. Today we drove for about 3 hours to a local school in Monte Verde. The roads were dirt and windy and hung over large precipices. There was an instance where our bus driver had to drive our motor coach over this 8 foot wide bridge, which is the exact width of the bus less a centimeter or two, held up by what looked like dental floss. We had to get off and walk over the bridge as he did a 100 point turn to line up the bus exactly so as to fit over the bridge. It took a good 10 minutes for him to succeed. Then when we finally go to the school, whose population of students totals 15, we got to see a typical Costa Rican folk dance done by several of the students. We joined them for some dance time afterwards, a little Macarena, Hokey Pokey, and ChaCha slide. The roof of the school had been blown off in a storm and the students were meeting in another decrepit building. Many of our students were moved to donate their personal funds to help this school. We're hoping to get more Murray and Ashley students to donate supplies to we can mail them when we get home. Our bus ended up getting some sort of transmission malfunction and we missed a rain forest walk this afternoon. Instead, we walked into town and relaxed for the afternoon. Tomorrow is our canopy walk and horseback riding. Sorry I can't upload pics right now, 11 mbps doesn't lend itself to uploading. I will try again since I have some good ones! Adios!!

3 comments:

Courtney said...

loving the updates. Sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun - despite the vomiting.

Anonymous said...

Espero que regresas hablando espaƱol.
Ciao.
Denise

Jade said...

Tell Juliana Rankin to quit being a slacker and update her blog!!!
Looks like you're having a fabulous time! Your favorite students are doing "out of control" things here in Wilmington, of course (: