Day 3: Finally at the CEC

Today we woke up early, walked to our bus stops (which are quite close to our homestays), and made the quick drive to the CEC. Once we arrived, we applied our sunscreen and bug spray - always an important step. The weather here can be quite misleading. Since there's often a cool, strong wind (as there has been both days thus far), it doesn't feel incredibly hot. But the sun is quite strong. We then started our day with the peace circle, where the youngest students start every Monday by singing together. What you see below is a stirring rendition of "head, shoulders, knees and toes," which was done in both English and Spanish.

Next came a tour of the lower part of the campus. We didn't see the upper part until later in the day. Carolina explained some of the elements of the CEC that make it special, and our boys started learning what it means for a school to truly be dedicated to being one with the environment. We saw many things, but below you'll see a little garden where the students grow vegetables right outside their classroom, a place for bees to produce honey, and an area where herbs are harvested that allow the school to brew special teas to treat upset stomachs and similar ailments. 

That's when the exploring stopped and the work began. Our current project is painting the fence near the entrance to the school, although we are under the impression that we'll be painting a lot of handrails once we finish this project. We got a good amount of work done today, but there's plenty left for tomorrow.

After we finished, we toured the upper part of the campus and the boys played soccer with some of the students, even though they didn't get much time to do so today. Hopefully there will be more time for it the rest of the week. Playing soccer after lunch is sort of a tradition. 

We saw some more beautiful parts of campus after that.

Then we were off to the Don Juan coffee, chocolate and sugar cane tour. There are lots of photos from this excursion, many of which will probably not be uploaded until the morning. But we had an awesome time learning about cacao, sugar cane and coffee. We also had the opportunity to taste everything at various stages of their production processes. And then, of course, we tasted lots of coffee and hot chocolate at the end - and of course had the chance to shop.

That's it for today! We'll start tomorrow even earlier - on the zip lines. Then it's back to work. Pura vida!