Community Service Day with Tamarindo Surf

A little late on the update, but we wanted to share all the same since we just received the pictures.

On July 5th Abriendo Mentes teamed with Tamarindo Surf school - http://www.tamarindosurfschool.com/ - in Tamarindo to bring a group of teenagers from across the US to Potrero for a service day. They came, they ate, they taught and they played.

This was a neat group of teenagers; unlike some of their peers who would have signed up for the CR surf tour summer camp, they signed up for the package that included community service and Spanish lessons (with a little bit of surfing too). But honestly, I bet the time they spent with the AM students was equally as rewarding as surfing was.

This 4-hour long activity was kicked off with a picnic prepared by AM student moms, followed by English classes, songs, games, arts and soccer. It was a wonderful way to close out the first half of the 2010 year before vacation.

The following day, the same group reconvened in the Salon Comunal to give a face-lift to the trashcans in Potrero with an environmental theme.

Classes are back in action now, we will have an update soon of current happenings. But with 6 volunteers currently in Potrero and 5 planning to come over the next 3 months, we should be in store for some great activities and progress.

Pen pals in Potrero

Do you remember having pen pals as a child? You wrote back and forth through old fashioned snail mail; sometimes you sent each other pencils or little treats. I had a pen pal in Latvia (of all places!). I waited with bated breath for my friend to send me letters in her perfect handwriting and perfect English (I was not at the time studying Latvian).

So now imagine that you are an 11 year old girl, born and raised in a little village on the Guanacaste coast of Costa Rica, having barely ever left your small 300 person town. And you have a pen pal from the US who emails letters to you which you receive in Abriendo Mentes class AND you find out that your pen pal is coming to visit you in Potrero. Imagine what a cool feeling that must be for a young child that rarely ventures out of town

After 2 – 3 months of exchanging letters, on July 1^st 4 pen pals from across the US came to visit 4 Abriendo Mentes students in Potrero. This is a wonderful cross-cultural program organized by Thompson Family Adventures and Unique Adventure Costa Rica. Abriendo Mentes is fortunate enough to be in collaboration with Unique Adventures who (with Thompson Family) matches up students in the US with AM students. Unique Adventures CR is a company that specializes in travels through Costa Rica that emphasize the natural beauty and resources of Costa Rica and personal interaction with the culture and people.

We worked with these organizations to plan an afternoon activity for the visiting families and the AM students. The pen pals came to the [newly painted] community center to meet their Costa Rican friends. They interacted through a “get to know you” worksheet which was in both English and Spanish, and then bonded over ice cream and a game of what could only be called indoor soccer, sans rules.

It was a great day for the families, and both sets of pen pals. We truly hope that we can continue and expand this program and match each of our students with a pen pal in the future. Who knows, maybe little Jenifer will go to North Carolina one day to visit her pen pal Rylan! Vamos a ver.