The South comes to Costa Rica

The past two weeks have been rather exciting (aka super busy) but wonderful. First we had 180 people from Georgia come to Costa Rica for this Leadership Georgia conference. They were staying at the nearby resort listening to speakers ranging from alumni of the program to the President of Costa Rica. They also wanted to volunteer in nearby schools and see how our Habitat projects were coming along. While they were here, Jane and Daniel were also coming to visit, but their original flight got canceled and the trip was pushed back a day. Unfortunately that means their flight arrived at the same time that we were supposed to be taking the Leadership Georgia people around to our worksite and the other Habitat neighborhood.As usual, it all worked out in the end though, the Leadership Georgia people were two hours late arriving for the tour so we had plenty of time to pick up our visitors and drag them around on our tour to the Habitat houses as well. They also got a taste of our weekly English class to the first graders in 27 de Abril. The cutest students ever, but with little understanding of order in a classroom which is typical for many students here. A few games of duck, duck goose managed to get some of their energy out though and at the same time, drain all of ours.

Jane and Daniel got the full Costa Rican experience, from monsoons to sunburns, but it was a great trip. We started with a Sabenero show, which is the typical dancing and horseback riding of the Guanacaste region. Afterward there was dinner and drinks on the beach, where we began a proper celebration. Over the weeekend we went hiking at a nearby volcano (Blair, does Rincon de laVieja ring a bell?), whose crater is no longer active, but there are tons of bubbling mud pits, hot water pools, fumaroles, and waterfalls around the mountain. It was a beautiful hike through an amazing forest with the largest leaf-cutter ant mounds that we've ever seen. Those ants were always focused on their task and left people alone, but as we found out the hard way some others do not. We were swimming (well the boys were swimming, and the girls were wading) in this crystal clear, freezing-cold river when we noticed a black army swarming all over our stuff on the rocks. We quickly hopped out to grab our stuff and move it away, but the ants just kept coming and coming and apparently could follow our scent wherever we took our stuff. Yikes! For the more relaxing vacation type of things, we also went sailing/snorkeling, ziplining through the jungle, golfing, laying on the beach, etc. Even better we ate tons of good food, probably topped by our homemade sushi that was swimming just hours before we ate it.

During all the fun we were also trying to get the construction crews everything they needed to start building. As always there are last minute fees and complications trying to hinder progress, but we managed to overcome all of them (that we know of). The foundations have been dug and you can see the outline of each room of the house. The construction crew is amazing - after 30 minutes of being on the worksite we're tired and drenched in sweat, and they are out there 10 hours a day in the ridiculous heat, digging the foundations, mixing concrete, etc. We can't describe how fantastic it is to finally be building though. Even better, the crew is also working to clear the second lot so we can begin the permit process on that land and hopefully build there as soon as this neighborhood is done.

Hope everyone had a great Father's Day weekend. Huge hugs to all you dads out there.

Love,
Team Wander