Saturday, May 25

After packing up all our things last night, we all headed onto a bus and were each dropped off with our roommates at our homestay families. We spent the night playing games with the children, including soccer, Jenga, and Uno, and chatting with our new homestay parents, getting to know them. We then enjoyed delicious dinners prepared by our homestay parents and went to bed early after a long day.

We woke up in our new homes, met by another tasty breakfast before getting picked up by the bus again and heading to the soccer clinic. On the bus, everyone excitedly talked about their different homestay families and all the animals that were at each of our houses, including dogs, cats, cows, rabbits, and some very loud roosters. Once there, Chino, a community organizer who runs the soccer clinic and used to play on the Costa Rica Premier Soccer League, talked to the group about the importance of shared values and coming together as a community. Before starting to play, we were introduced to all of the kids at the clinic, then split into two scrimmage games where kids between the ages of 9-13 kicked our butts. Check out the only goal scored by Jorge with a great assist from Lily HERE. Once we were all sweaty and hot, we said goodbye to the kids and went to the hotel to shower and freshen up.

Back on the bus, we drove to the local women's co-op, where we learned about the projects each of the members were working on and how we could help them with their social media presence and publicize their work more. We ended the day by going to a nearby waterfall and swimming to cool off after a long day. 

We are excited to go to our homestays and chat with them about all of the activities we did today.

--Ava and Gabriel











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