¡Bienvenidos a Costa Rica!

All 16 of us have arrived safely to beautiful San Jose, Costa Rica. Although we are in the rainy season, we were still able to utilize the entirety of our Saturday in San Jose to the fullest.

During the first full day of our program, we woke up in our hotel, where the women who work at the hotel prepared us a delicious breakfast of cereal, fruit, eggs, toast, jam, fresh fruit juices, and coffee. After breakfast, we stopped by a grocery store a couple of blocks from our hotel to pick up some supplies that we may need but also to see what a grocery store is like in San Jose. Believe it or not, you can tell a huge amount about the culture of a country and the customs of its people by walking around a simple supermarket! From there, we had planned on doing our orientation in Parque Nacional but due to the rain, we decided to move our morning orientation to the comforts of the inside of “El museo de arte y diseno contemporaneo” (MADC). Inside the museum, we talked about our goals for the program, what we were most excited about, what we were most worried about, how we wanted to work together as a group for the next month, etc. We had a great conversation about the aspects of our work and our new environment that we foresee having the biggest impacts on ourselves. After we talked for quite some time, we were able to walk around the museum and enjoy some of the awesome art that the museum had to offer. A crowd favorite was the indoor skate park that was on display, complete with Costa Rican skaters practicing their aerial tricks.

After the first half of orientation, we broke to eat some lunch. We settled at a typical Costa Rican (Tico, they say) restaurant where we indulged in many variations of rice and beans, fried platanos, and limonadas. It was delicious and a well deserved break! On our way back to finish orientation, we happened upon an outdoor rock music festival, where we were able to stop and listen to some music.

Because the rain had stopped, we were able to finish up our second half of orientation in an outdoor venue attached to the museum. We finished our orientation with the decision to take a “three-day tech fast”. Our group collectively decided that because we want to be able to really immerse ourselves in our experience of Costa Rica, we are going to take a break from our phones and a break from our virtual reality to help us stay present. The way that we decided that this would be most effective is by ¨fasting¨ from technology for three days — the amount of time that it takes to break a habit — meaning that we are pledging to set aside our phones and wifi connection for the next three days. We all know what a challenge this is going to be, but we are super excited by the challenge and think that it is going to be an overall great addition to our experience! We will still updating the blog to keep you all in the loop — you, our fans, are siempre #1 — and we will of course still be in touch with Putney as needed. We ask that you support us in this personal challenge so that we can truly engage with the place and the people around us.

We ended our day with a delicious dinner in the middle of downtown San Jose, our first (of many) nightly meetings, and then off to bed! It was a super busy day and we were all exhausted by the end of it, but we can see our group growing closer already and everyone is all smiles and having a blast! Tomorrow morning we are off to Biolley, the pueblo in the south where we will be doing most of our community service work, and we can’t wait to get there! If today is any indication of how the month is going to go, then we are going to have an amazing month!

Sending abrazos!

– Alia & Cody & the crew