Trip to the San Jose YMCA! (Tuesday, April 7th)

As we are heading to our last dance party with our Costa Rican friends, this post will be short and sweet!

Our day took us to the San Jose YMCA. This Y, known as the ACJ YMCA, is the only one in the country of Costa Rica. To give you a little history-they have an awesome partnership with Campamente Oikuomene (where we are staying). The camp is kind of like a Co-Op, and they host different groups throughout the year. The YMCA serves the inner city children of San Jose, and takes numerous trips to the camp in an effort to be intentional with impacting thier lives.

Our trip into the big city of San Jose was once again a time to sit back and reflect on all the amazing things we have experienced thus far. We even had a chance to see some kids sledding down a hill. Of course, there was no snow and/or sleds, but the torn card board boxes they were using looked like fun!

For those of us who had made this trip before, it was neat to see the changes & updgrades done to the YMCA by our very own college trip. It was once again great to see familiar faces, as we not only reconnected with the Y counselors from the weekend camp but also some of the Y staff from last year. The only downside was that all the children are on Easter break, so there was no chance to play with the pre-school children as we had done in the past. But, with the building relatively empty, we got TONS of work done! We wont bore you with too many details, but we painted, applied wood treatment, and painted some more.

While there was no official childcare today, many people in the community were out and about after lunch. The YMCA here is truly community driven, and thier front white top area was filled w/ parents, children, teens and young adults. This gave us a tremendous opportunity to interact with the locals. We did this through many avenues, including soccer, baskteball, and even skateboarding! While this was somewhat of "unstructured" time, we enjoyed the fact that we were able to connect with the community on many different levels.

After some tough goodbyes, we headed back to camp for our familiar meal of rice and beans :) Now...off to the Dance Party!