Friends Meeting School Costa Rica 2025
May 17, 2025
Elijah, Ben, and I (Gabriel) woke up at 1:30 am to leave to Dulles International Airport. We arrived at approximately 3:00 am. As it turns out, the United Airlines ticket counter didn’t open until 4:15 am, so we spent the time sitting around, while others were playing volleyball using suitcases as a net. Once we checked our bags, we went to security.
On the plane we had screens to watch movies, and most of us watched something. We landed in Houston, Texas, for our layover, where we were on a time crunch. Despite that, some of us decided to get food, as we were starving. We had to go a long way to find a restaurant that had pre-prepared food. While Wyatt and I made our way back to the gate more or less on time, Jacob had to fetch a few members of the group who lost track of time.
We got onto our plane and watched more movies. When we arrived in San José, Costa Rica, the line for immigration customs must’ve been a mile long. Outside the airport, we were greeted by our Global Works leaders, Randall, who was on last year’s Puerto Rico trip, and Rebecca. We went to a traditional Costa Rican restaurant for lunch, where between a few friends and I, we ate 12 plates of food, 7 pieces of cake, and drank 8 juices. We celebrated Jacob’s birthday and ate too much cake.
When we got to our first house, we put down our luggage and started to explore. The place was awesome. It had a pool, plenty of places to relax, several nice houses, and an incredible view of the city and the mountains. We all played Marco Polo in the pool together, which was a very fun bonding experience.Soon after, we ate a delicious dinner provided by the house caretakers. We did a group activity after dinner, in which we inroduced ourselves, made trip guidelines, and stated our excitements and concerns for the rest of our Costa Rica experience. We then showered, brushed our teeth, and went to bed.
By: Elijah, Ben, and Gabriel
May 18, 2025
After breakfast, we went into the van to head to our second location, and had a pitstop at a small restaurant/connivence store and some of use grabbed snacks.
After arriving, we had a very good lunch and then made some delicious mozzarella cheese, and learned the whole process. We also learned about different fruits, plants, and trees and tried some star fruit (which most of us had never tried before) and kinds of grapes/blueberries. We also saw pigs, cows, chicks, and poison dart frogs, which were really exciting to see, since most of us had never seen them before. The people who owned the farm were really nice, and their kids were really nice as well. In the rest periods, we would play volleyball and the kids would hang out and play with us. Even though we had a language barrier, we still found a way to communicate and had a really enjoyable time.
After our nutritious dinner we did more activities and played games (the younger kids joined in as well). At the end of the night while others were playing volleyball, some of us hung out, filmed a short film, and got ready for bed.
There were many cute animals other than the pigs and frogs. There was a four month old puppy that was really tiny and fluffy, and another three year old dog that was really sweet and kind.
By: Naomi and Ivy
May 19, 2025
We started off our day bright and early with a breakfast of eggs, rice, beans, cereal, homemade yogurt and juice, to top it off, we were able to enjoy it outside in the warm sunny weather. After breakfast we went on a walk and ended up seeing two sloths, a mom and her baby. When we got back everyone packed their day bags into the cars and we started our drive to the nature reserve, The Children’s Eternal Forest. During the drive we got to see insanely beautiful mountains that were covered in greenery and there were so many bugs and butterflies, we saw the blue morpho. As soon as we arrived, we were greeted with so much wildlife. We could here birds calling, see hundreds of hummingbirds drinking from flowers and we even heard some howler monkeys. And we didn’t even have to leave the building. After lunch we learned about all the ways this place is protecting the rainforest. It turns out this place owns a lot of land and every moth or so park rangers even go on backpacking trips to set up cameras to keep records of the wildlife, we watched a couple and they were really cool!
In the afternoon we walked down to a nearby lake and enjoyed the views and then after that, we learned three types of dances: Merengue, Bachata, and Salsa. We had tons of fun today.
At the end of the day we gathered around on a porch, shared as a group and played some fun games, also with a light we looked at a whole bunch of cool moths and beetles including one which is apparently quite rare according to one of my friends, Gabriel, who is super knowledgeable about insects. We think the beetle was the Golden Scarab Beetle. We were not able to go on the night tonight hike because it was raining and lightning very hard (probably can do it tomorrow)
When we were sharing our thorns and roses, many people said they were bummed that two whole days had already gone by and we don’t wanna go back home! I agree because tomorrow, even if the night hike doesn’t work out, I am sure that we will be able to see even more cool wildlife and have a heck of a good time.
By: Clem and Arno
