Last day

This is the last day in Costa Rica. Some of the group already left for the airport very early this morning, It's warm, and very humid, even this early. There are huge iguanas that live between the ceiling and the clay tiles of the roof, and they are constantly scrabbling around up there. It's rather unnerving, especially if you don't like lizards. The howler monkeys have begun their early morning chanting, too, so it must be time to wake up. I have to shake the scorpions, spiders, beetles and chameleons from my clothing, pack, and take a bumpy ride back to the airport in Liberia. I have more pictures to post when I get back home, catch up on sleep, and have reliable internet service.

What an amazing trip this has been. I love the whole volunteer vacation idea and I am excited about planning another trip sometime. Maybe someplace with fewer lizards.

San Luis

This is the view on the way down the mountain to San Luis. The roads here are very narrow and treacherous but local drivers do not seem at all concerned.  This is my work group. In just a short time, we managed to process enough of the backlog of books to nearly double the size of the tiny library.

Work day

This morning, my group went to the school in San Luis. We did a presentation to the school and made book marks and pictures related to the books. The school has 26 students, ranging from preschool through grade 5. One teacher manages all of the classes, so he has two connected rooms and divides his students into two or three groups for instruction. The only other person I saw there was cooking lunch and she also did the cleaning.
After we finished at the school, we continued to process donated books for the new community center library. Two women cleaned the books, which were rather dirty and often spider-infested. They added colored labels to the spines, glued in cards and pockets, and stamped them. The other two of the group made a simple shelf list on the computer, recording titles, authors, ISBNs, and genres. These books are now ready to be shelved at the library. There are three more big tubs of assorted books that have to be processed. Most of the books we are processing would have been weeded from any public library in the U.S. due to age or condition, or both. It's quite amazing to see how much is done here, with so much less than we have at home. Travel like this really makes me grateful for everything I have.

Work at the San Luis school and community library books

Zip line

Yesterday, our librarian group went to one of the rainforest reserves and tried out the zip line. I've seen zip lines advertised in the U.S., but they can't compare to the height and the length of the lines here. When you are flying along WAY above the trees in the Costa Rican rainforest, you are very high! It was pretty terrifying at first, and I will admit that I did not think that I would be able to step off the platform. But with plenty of encouragement, librarian peer pressure, and a good shove from the guy running the program, I did it. I'll try to upload a photo, but if you want to imagine what I looked like, just picture me with a look of abject terror on my face, screaming at the top of my lungs.

Zombie flowers!

This flower is called Queen of the Night. According to our guide, it can be used to make a zombie. An infusion made from this flower will slow the heart so much that the person appears dead. But it is a poison, so when the person "comes back to life" the brain is damaged, causing that shambling, slow-thinking zombie effect. Yikes!

This morning, a group of us went to several schools to deliver books, aka the book mobile. It isn't an actual vehicle, like in the United States, though. The woman who runs the program is called Wendy, and she was born here, though her extended family now lives in Alabama. Wendy's parents were part of the original Quaker settlement in Monteverde. She moved to the states for a number of years and attended college, but has lived here again since 1990. She takes crates of books to the schools in her car, and children who remembered to bring back the books they borrowed last week may borrow another one. She really wants the children to have books, though, so sometimes will bend the rules and let them take one even if they still have one at home. Today was soccer, however, so the children were rather distracted. Some little soccer fans let me take their pictures.