And So It Goes...: Summer update!

Wow! Once again I am back here after very long break - in fact after the whole summer! And so many things happened in last few months...Where does the time go????

So here we go! Here are some of my highlights of this summer :)

At the beginning of July all the kids in Costa Rica had two weeks of holidays (something like holidays in winter, just without Christmas :) They don't have the long holidays here in summertime but in wintertime, around Christmas. Well...wait...they don't actually have summer or winter here! They have a dry and wet season! Have I confused you enough?! :))

So going back to 2 week holidays...during this time Students International organised some special events for children of the communities where we work. We (microfinance ministry) decided to do something for our women and their children - we called it a 'Family Day'. Together with our colleagues from Sports Ministry we organised a fun event in one of the parks in San Jose - it was a day full of fun, games and good food! It was almost 160 of us! Here are some pictures from this day...

Summer for Students International is a busy season! In the months of June and July (and partly May too) we had outreach teams from the States helping us at our ministry sites. They came for 2 weeks and besides helping us in the communities every day, they had a full program of other activities. When they arrived, they went through one day orientation. Then they had a night of testimonies with SI staff, Solidarity night (learning about the poverty here in Costa Rica and worldwide), Cultural night (where they got to taste some interesting types of fruit), the tour of San Jose (mostly accompanied by heavy rain), one day trip to the beach and early morning devotionals. Besides the teams, we had our lovely interns who came to help us for three months. There were the connection between us as a staff and the outreach teams. Our intern was Kylee. She quickly became part of our microfinance team and we missed (still do!) her a lot after she left! Here are some pictures with our teams and different activities that we had with them.

Cultural night (3 pictures below)

Women from our microfinance ministry selling their products to the team members

Microfinance ministry with some of our outreach team members

With summer outreach teams

...and our lovely interns

Lastly, I would like to tell you a little bit about how we celebrated Mother's Day with our women. Mother's Day in Costa Rica is celebrated on 15th August and it's quite important. The reason for that is the important role of women as mothers in the society. To mark this special day, we took our women from all the communities where we work for a day out. It was a surprise for them until the last minute. We took them to a hotel outside San Jose, situated in beautiful surroundings. First, we went for a walk to see nearby waterfall. The plan was to go and see it and return back to the hotel. However, the ladies enjoyed it so much and even ended up swimming there! Finally we made them leave to be on time for lunch!:) In the afternoon we enjoyed the hotel pool and took an advantage of the meeting room that we had available throughout the day. Because we had all the women together (and it doesn't happen very often), I decided to use this time to tell them about Slovakia and its culture. We also officially said bye to our intern Kylee who was leaving the following day. Besides that, we played some games and gave away some prizes. It was a fun day!