Day 10 - Farmer's Market, a Soccer Game, Goodbyes, and a Movie!

March 18, 2019

Today we had the option of sleeping in or getting up early to go to the Farmer's market, so most slept in and a few of us trekked into the city! At the Farmer's Market we got to try a variety of fruits, some which we liked (Mananas de Agua) and some we didn't like (Booger Fruit Part II). Clearly our host Ronald, and his mom, Wendy, come here often because every booth they went to the people knew what they wanted and would actually hold onto their purchases until we walked back by! On our way home we stopped by the Church of Coronado and walked inside, some of our kids have never been inside of a catholic church before, so seeing the stations of the cross was different! The next stop was the bakery, where the family picks up fresh pastries for us daily! We also got to try some new breads and desserts that were delicious! Our small group arrived back at the farm and prepared breakfast for the rest of our kids, but we were lucky enough to have a special breakfast down at the Rodriguez house!

During breakfast we got the text we had been hoping for...that many of our students would be able to get on an earlier flight!! (Thank you Lisa Summers and Ally LaGatta!!) 16 members of our group will now be flying out tomorrow morning, the remaining five will stay with me until Monday morning. Luckily, almost all of the kids who are sticking with me until Monday actually volunteered and had great attitudes about it!

After this exciting announcement we finished up the Great Ping Pong Tournament with a final matchup between Ronny and Shane. Shane came out victorious as the 2019 champion, but JD Boer, who was the 2018 champion, has already challenged him to a duel!

When the ping pong tournament was done we headed down to the soccer field for a game, Savannah and Ally were the captains and must have picked pretty even teams because the final score was 6-5! Some of the best parts of the game were Ronny showing us all up, the football boys accidentally tackling the girls, and the goal celebrations for sure!

Next we had some downtime and had to move all of our stuff upstairs and clean the hotel since another basketball team is coming to stay at the hotel this weekend. This was a huge answer to prayer that the basketball team let us stay today since they had already rented out the whole hotel for a team bonding weekend before they play in the Panamanian Games! We also had a group go with Ronald into the city to pick up food for lunch and dinner and we spent some time playing card games.

Around 5:30 we walked down to the Rodriguez house for another great dinner provided by Dora, a time of prayer, and of course a photoshoot in our new shirts with our hosts! By the time all of this was done we left the house at 7:15 and our movie was supposed to start at 7:30--all the way across town! We got to the movie theater at 7:45 and SPRINTED through the mall to catch the movie. While it was a funny memory, I'm not too sure the mall cops were happy with us....

After the movie we headed home for our last night together and with the other basketball team. We enjoyed some ice cream and most of the kids pulled an all nighter since they had to leave the house at 2:30 AM to get to the airport on time! We still have a group of six here in CR and are planning to have a fun day and will keep you updated, but it was kind of sad to say goodbye to the 16 this morning! I am so thankful we had such a great group of students this year, who, although loud and crazy, maintained very positive attitudes this whole week--even with some bumps in the road. I can clearly see some of our students growing in their leadership and maturing in their faith and I just pray that this wouldn't be just an experience they had one time in high school, but that these changes would stick with them and impact their day to day lives for many years to come.