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.

First Day of School

Today was our first day at St. Anthony School.  There was a lot of running around and screaming by the younger students.  Also, we were surprised that all students get 3 recesses a day!  The last one is 1/2 hour before the end of the school day.  Here are some pictures.

This picture above is of St. Anthony primary school looking down from the high school.

This picture shows the SHS delegation processing in to the gym for the welcome ceremony.

The dance club was dressed up as cowgirls and they performed a dance for us.  Then the kids who came to SHS performed their dance for the entire school.  It was great to see them again.

The founder then gave us all a tour of the school.  It took us over an hour.  We went in to each preschool room, and the students performed for us.

Outside of every classroom was a sign welcoming us to the school.  We really did feel so welcomed.

 

The school has a butterfly garden.  The classrooms are in charge of taking care of this.

The picture above is of the high school gym.  The primary school has one as well.  It is open to the outside, but can be closed in bad weather.

Here we all are sitting on the steps that lead from the primary school to the high school.

Today we will practice our cultural show while the students are taking an exam.  After recess, we will be presenting our powerpoint show to students in grades 4-6 (we will do it about 9 times today, we think).

We are here!

After a really long and tiring trip, we are finally here.  These pictures were taken on our first plane ride, from Cincinnati to Miami, FL.

Here is the view from the plane as we were landing in San Jose.

Once we left the airport everyone went over to Nicole Bart's house for the welcome dinner. We had chicken or beef with mushroom sauce for dinner. We also had salad, chick peas, vegetables, beets and rice with garlic and other spices in it. For dessert we had flan (custard with caramel sauce). After dinner, all of the kids went outside. We talked and played with the little kids. They especially liked playing with the balloons.