Rio Loro & Cartago

On Wednesday, we went on a field trip with the 4th grade.  They were exploring the outdoors by visiting Rio Loro and then mapping what they saw in Cartago from a mountaintop.  Here are a few pictures from the day.

This is the path we took, past log cabins, to see the Rio Loro.

These bubble-like things are where scientists view the underground Rio Loro.  They check to be sure there is water.

You can barely see the trickle of water coming from the pipes.

We thought this butterfly was fake!  It's not.  The top side is bright blue and the underside has the numbers 68, 89, 98, or something like that.  It was amazing to see.  Unfortunately, this one was dead.

We saw hillsides filled with coffee plants on our drive into Cartago.

Here we are on a hillside overlooking a river and the town of Orosi.  The views from up here were beautiful!

You can't really tell from this picture, but this beetle was the largest I had ever seen!

What you are seeing here is a view of a rain forest from the hillside.  The town you see is Orosi.  This rain forest receives over 12 meters of rain every year.

While the Costa Rican students did map-making and made topological  maps of the area, the SHS students took those same maps and found all the places we had visited.  Each student also had to find where their host family lived.

Sugar Refinery

On Tuesday, we went with the 3rd graders to a sugar refinery.  We got to taste the sugar during all four stages of refining-directly from the cane, liquid, powdered and solid.  The kids liked sucking the sugar from the cane.  That was fine.  They didn't like the liquid at all (squeezed directly into a cup). The powdered sugar looked like brown sugar, but it sure didn't taste like it.  The crystalized candy sugar was a little better.  Enjoy the pictures below.

These oxen pulled the beam that made the press work.

Here are the students sucking on the sugar cane that was cut for them.

Our students found out how hard it is to move the beam.

This is what remained after the liquid is removed.  This is the brown sugar cane.  The liquid left over is what is hardened into candy.

Cultural Show

The students performed the cultural show to the school on Monday morning, May 17th.  It was a HUGE success!  Here are some pictures from the show.

 The second part of the show involved typical party dances.  The St. Anthony's students loved this part.  At one point there were over 30 kids on stage.  This is Zack, J.P. and Jack performing an Elvis Presley song.

Then each SHS student was to pick one St. Anthony's student to come up on stage and dance with them.  It started with only 9 extra kids on stage and ended with 30!

At the end of the cultural show, the principal had all the students sing Happy Birthday to Lillie as she stood on the stage alone.  After school, we went to Lillie's host family's house for her surprise birthday party.  Below you will see some of those pictures.

Punta Leona

We had a wonderful weekend at Punta Leona with the 6th grade. The bus ride was 2 hours long.  The entire 6th grade went with 17 parents and 5 teachers (and the 11 of us).  It must have taken a lot of planning.  On Friday, we spent the afternoon at the hotel pool.  We had a nice buffet dinner and then went to the 'disco' to dance.  The theme was a carnival, and toward the end of the dance the parents gave the students masks, mardi gras beads and whistles.  They also blew up balloons for the kids to stomp on and pop.   Below you will see some pictures from Friday's events.

This last picture above  was taken from the 'not so pretty' beach on Friday.  We thought this beach was great!  The sand was very, very dark.

The kids had a really fun time at the disco.

On Saturday, we went to La Playa Blanca (the white beach).  It was beautiful, even though the sand wasn't really white.  The students loved the surf.  We could actually see people surfing further up the beach.  We did have a few sunburned kids, but nothing too bad: just a few sore shoulders.  The sunscreen was definitely needed.

Poas Volcano

We had a wonderful day yesterday, visiting the Poas Volcano.  It's the second largest (diameter of crater) in the world.  Enjoy our pictures.

The Moms then treated us to a traditional Costa Rican meal. Here are the students at the restaurant.

Presentations

Today was the first day for us to show our classroom presentations.  We did the show 8 times!  Below you will see the students speaking about their topics.  They did a wonderful job!  I was so proud of them, even when two classes showed up instead of only one at a time. 

We are going to see a volcano tomorrow, so we will not be able to post on this blog.  We will try to catch up on Thursday, but it is another full day of presentations to preschoolers.