Day 2 — Naps & Our First Games

After spending the morning catching up on some rest we left the house to go to the Lincoln School for our first volleyball and basketball games. The Lincoln School is one of the nicest schools in Costa Rica, where students earn both and American and a Costa Rican Hugh school degree. Tuition at the Lincoln School is almost double what it costs to go to Valley!

Our boys played their Varsity team and won 74-60! We didn’t get a ton of pictures, but I promise we’ll get some from the tournament tomorrow!


Our volleyball girls played two different schools, one set against the Country Day School, and a best 2/3 game against the Lincoln School. The girls went undefeated!
The Lincoln School Trojans

Giving out VC Stickers

Came all the way to Costa Rica to find another Clausen! 

Country Day School


After the game one of the parents, who happens to work for the US Embassy, invited our volleyball girls to come to his daughter’s club team’s practice to get some better competition, which was a huge honor and an exciting offer, but practice started at 7:45 and ended at 10:30, so we passed as we all needed some sleep before a big day of tournaments tomorrow!

During debrief today these were some of the differences our kids noticed between Costa Rica and home:

  • Spanish spoken
  • Very small roads with no sidewalks
  • Houses are very close together
  • Bars on all house windows
  • Lots of stray dogs
  • Lots of trash on the side of the road
  • Amount of cliffs (how do cars not roll off the side of the cliff?)
  • The air is fresh and clean
  • It is so much greener here
  • Lots of colorful paint on houses 
  • Very few traffic lights
  • We only saw 1 McDonalds and 1 KFC
We’re excited to learn more as the trip continues! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2023 - Day 8: Widow’s Ministry, Souvenir Shopping, and our Last (?) Team Meal

Image
Today was our last day (or is it?!?). We started the day by heading to the Widow’s Ministry, the Bethesda House, in Los Guido. While we’ve been surrounded by poverty all week, this neighborhood is an even lower economic status and has lots of issues with drugs, alcohol, and prostitution. The Bethesda House exists to be an oasis for women who have been abandoned or mistreated and offers them assistance with food, prayer, and Bible study. They believe that when you restore a women you also restore the whole family. If she is changed, her kids and her husband (or boyfriend) will be changed too. We started off this trip to the widow’s ministry by going to the grocery store to purchase a month’s worth of groceries for 16 families. We give the kids a budget (12,400 colones) which is about $20 per family. It is kind of sad to think that we spent more on snacks the day before and that same amount will feed a family for a month. The kids all were sent around the grocery store to pick out beans,
Read more

2023 - Final Trip Thoughts and Reflections

Image
  Abigail High – My main high was getting to spend time with people and get to know them. I absolutely love people and so I loved feeling like their sister. I also loved communicating with and pouring into people and kids who didn’t even speak the same language. It seemed like a glimpse of heaven, especially with the Costa Rican worship. Growth – One thing I struggle with a lot of the time is just being myself. God placed people on this trip who helped me feel comfortable and to be able to be myself. God grew me in being able to get to know people and talk to random people which I don’t usually do, even though I want to. Takeaway – I realized I don’t treat my actual brothers and sisters as well as I do my brothers and sisters in Christ. I also saw how much joy everyone has and how hard everyone works for every little thing. It has inspired me to not take things for granted and to not be lazy. Alena High – I think this trip was such an incredible opportunity for me to grow and learn mor
Read more

2023 - Day 4, Part 2: Team Reflections

 Here are our team reflections from yesterday: Jacob - the coconut guy was really generous. We found a bad coconut and he went in his house and picked out 6 fresh coconuts to open for us. He didn't have much, so him sharing this felt like a big deal! Jake - It's just a good reminder of how big the world is. While I'm at school every day all of this is going on - it's just weird to think about.  Emily - She was just impressed by the girls and Scottie working hard at painting. They just put on worship music on and sat in it for a couple hours while working. Jose - He just thought it was interesting how the kids would just swarm around these little tiny toys - it meant a lot to them. Isaac - Thought it was so cool/interesting that we ran into Ignacio three times - once when we were painting, once at the school, and once when he was walking back from school Talon - the kids know all the celebrations of all the soccer players. Also, today reminded him to be grateful for what
Read more