Today our entire group taught in the morning for the first time. This was a different experience for the groups that had been teaching at the Center!  Despite the fact that our students were on vacation, they still showed up for class.  Several people mentioned that students lose a fair amount of vocabulary over the weekend.  This was very true in the youngest class at the center!  For the 6-12 class, today was a day of review and practicing sentences for the hike on Wednesday.  After teaching all morning, many of us were feeling the affects of the heat and went to La Pechuga (the swimming hole) for a swim. 

            Later in the afternoon, we went back to the trail where we would take our students hiking on Wednesday.  This was our chance to figure out what exactly we wanted to show our students and how to best structure the activities or worksheets that they would be doing during the hike.  We also learned some new things related to the hike such as what an agouti is, and that if you are ever unsure about whether something is infested with ants, chances are, it probably is. 

            After the hike, we headed back to the center for dinner and to plan our final full lesson.

~Louisa    

3/17
We left Marlboro at about 4:30 AM in a van, and made it to the Airport in Boston by about 7. Our two groups split up, mine was with 
Bev, Ben, Louisa, Mason, and Ariel. We got through bag check and security without many problems, and then we sat at the gate in the airport until our plane started boarding at 9:15. The flight wasn't too long, and when we touched down in Atlanta, everyone was glad for a chance to stretch their legs. We took a cool underground shuttle to our gate, and then we stayed there for the next five hours. Some of us spent this time studying Chinese, some played sudou or went on the computer, others read. We all ate at some point. It was an excruciatingly long wait. We finally boarded the plane at about 5:35. 

The flight was about four hours, and most of us sat separately. When we got on the ground in San Jose, we were all pretty exhausted, but our travel day wasn't over yet. We got through visitor's immigration and customs fairly quickly, meeting up with the other group after getting our bags. Outside of the airport, we met Roger and our drivers, who helped us all pack our bags into two vans. Then we were on the road. My car was ahead of the other and after about an hour and fifteen minutes of driving, we found ourselves at the top of a mountain in fog too thick to continue driving in. We pulled over and waited for the other van, who was following someone with fog lights. The fog was amazing, but it was nice to be on our way again. It took a little more than an hour to get to Centro Espiral Mana, but I think everyone was very happy to be out of the car when we got here. 

Everyone was exhausted, but the other van arrived shortly, and Roger opened up the kitchen for us (it was about 12 Costa Rican time, 2 AM Marlboro time.) We all had rice and beans, and then Emma showed us our rooms, and we all went to sleep very, very quickly; very much looking forward to our first day in Costa Rica.

Adeline Banker-Johnson