Costa Rica: Fish bowl

The day started off like any other. My alarm went off I pushed the snooze button. My alarm went off again and pushed snooze again. My alarm went off a third time and I finally had the strength to wake up. As I woke I felt the cool Costa Rican breeze against my cheek and my ears vibrated from the sound of birds, dogs and a rooster. Not too pleasant but I was still happy to be awake. When I got myself together and walked down stairs, breakfast was waiting for us as well as a pot of coffee. I am not a coffee drinker so I can not contest to it's flavor but everyone who tried it said that it was really good. Our day started off with a school visit. I remember first walking up to the school and having that fish bowl experience. Children looking at us with wonder and excitement and we stared back with just as much amazement. When we got started with things it was kind of like organized chaos, but that's how the start of things are. You can't work out all the kinks until you try everything out. Shoes were flying from getting passed around and sorted through, and children were lining up to get sized and receive a brand new pair of shoes. We were able to pass out about 300 shoes to children in need. It was exciting and busy sorting through the hundreds of shoes, trying to find the right pair to fit each child and of course the language barrier was another fun challenge. I can finally say my three years of high school Spanish benefited me some what. Luckily I remembered the words for big and small to help figure out the right shoe size. But my Spanish was limited so when I didn't know the translation I had to rely on body language such as facial expression and hand signals. Most physical expressions are pretty universal. At the end of the experience I was quite proud of myself but more proud of my team. There was 9 of us all together , and all 9 of us had never worked all together before and were able to pull off a project and manage to do a darn good job. Reflection: One of the many things I took away from this experience was connection. Language is one of the strongest and most used ways to communicate but what is not to be forgot is that there are always ways to communicate to. Non verbal communication can sometimes say more then words ever could. Also that you never know what is hidden behind someone's smile. The children we met were happy , well dressed in their uniforms and didn't seem to have a care in the world. It was easy to forget that they were all children in need. It's easy to look at the surface and think things are fine, but don't forget dig a little deeper to see how things really are.