Interviewing and finishing up work in La Carpio

Matyas, 16


Today was a rather long day. We got up early to get ready for our interview with a person from the PLN (one of the major political parties here in Costa Rica) his name was Francisco, but he went by the nickname "Chico". He was a very talkative man, but still an entertaining one. He would answer each of our questions with a story that usually lead to a different topic, but then he would go back and finish what he was saying before. The down fall of the interview experience was that we had to get into dress clothes (button shirt, tie, suit jacket, slacks, dresshoes) and the building wasnt using it's airconditioning! I thought for sure that I was going to get heat exhaustion, which I think I was actually pretty close to getting because my head was killing me by the end of the interview. I'm doing fine now and am quite content because of the work we finished in La Carpio.

Today in La Carpio we mixed up cement by hand and shovel, not by and machine or mixer or anything. It was a pretty back-breaking job, with all the bending down to mix up the gravel, dirt, cement mix and water together with the shovels. Then when we finally got it to its ideal conditions we layed it down to the area where the metal grid was layed down and the people who lived there were gliding a long piece of wood over the cement to level it out. Alyssa and I were asked to level part of the road by this method and I found it to be pretty fun.

The part that moved me the most though was after we had finished the road and given the donation to the people, Rosario (a lady who was a co-owner of the daycare in La Carpio) got us a cake and Coca-Cola to eat and drink as a sign of her, and the rest of the community's gratitude. I just found it moving because these people barely have anything in the first place, yet they had gotten out of their way to get us a treat for a sign of gratitude. I wasn't expecting any kind of material "thank you" and I was fine with that because I just wanted to help them, so when we DID recieve a cake and cola, I just felt really appreciated.