I thought you guys might want to hear what a day in the life is like here in Costa Rica! Of course, it changes day to day but this is a nice overview of a typical day…
6:30 roll out of bed to get some cereal for bfast
7:00 devotion time!!
8:00 Sneak into another teams room to take a shower after they leave (because they have the only hot water in the house)
8:30 make Lillian teach me how to play the guitar
9:00-10:0 leave for ministry (depending on when the bus remembers to pick us up)
10:00-11:00 look crazy while attempting to teach 30 little Costa Rican children a lesson while knowing zero Spanish
11:00-12:00 feed the kids rice and beans for lunch (rice and beans everyday…without fail)
12:00 hop back on our bus to drive to our second daycare. On this bus ride we get to eat our delicious lunch of an apple, chips, and ham & cheese melt (melted because it’s been sitting in the van)
12:30 Arrive at 2nd daycare and awkwardly stand there for 30 minutes
1:00-3:00 Pat kids to sleep for nap (and sometimes accidentally fall asleep with them)
3:00-4:50 either play with the kids or do very very random projects including painting hopscotch, moving classrooms to other rooms, chipping paint off walls, or my personal favorite & what I’ve spent the most time doing- paper macheing wooden boxes to make them “resistant.” I assume resistant from water but I’m not really sure. I don’t think google translate works that well.
4:50 The kitchen staff gives us coffee and a really yummy snack. This is one of my favorite parts of the day because my team gets to just sit around and talk and laugh while sipping our coffee!
5:00 get picked up from ministry (although they’ve forgotten to pick us up a time or two lol)
5:45 get home and do team time
6:30 dinner (rice and beans)
7:00-9:00 Many things can happen between this time: dance parties, chatting with other people on my squad, sometimes my squad has a session, sometimes I walk up the street to get wifi and send emails to my family, play guitar, and I always drink tea.
9:00 Go to my bed, brush all the ants off of it (I’m trying to pretend like they don’t gross me out and we are all just really good friends), then I journal/read/listen to music/stay up too late laughing with the other girls in my room.
10:30 put in my ear plugs and eye mask (pro tip for living in a house with 53 people) and sleep!!!
That’s pretty much it! I feel like the days here are becoming more and more normal- which is crazy. It is starting to feel like… life! This is my last week at the ministries I’ve been at. Next week we have what is called a debrief. We get to have three of these throughout the year. They are a time where we get to relax and process what all has been happening on the race. After debrief my team’s ministry is going to change. I feel kinda sad because I love my ministry, but I’m also excited to get to experience more things here!
I’ve been learning a lot from my ministries the past few weeks. When I first found out I’d be in daycares my automatic thought was being with the kids. But, I feel like we were actually there more for the teachers. A lot of the teachers at schools have been on strike for the past couple weeks because of the government raising taxes. Because of this the daycare has been taking in all the kids that can’t go to school. I don’t think it was a coincidence that God put us with this ministry right when it would be overflowing with kids. I’m so happy we could be there to help the teachers when they had way more kids than they knew what to do with. I just thought it was interesting how sometimes ministry is set as one thing but can be another.
On Friday, all of the classes put together a dance and gave us presents to thank us for being there. At the end my team and I was standing around with the oldest class (ages 8-10) and their teachers. All of the kids started hugging us and crying… so of course I started crying too! I was so amazed that we could form such strong connections in only 3 weeks. I’m going to miss that place a lot.
Well that’s my life! Thanks for reading!
