Saturday, February 20, 2010

Bruin Pride International Wide



This past week we operated a student travel trip from a school in Colorado who has the mascot of the Bruins. It was an educational trip that had months in the planning. They asked for a full week of adventure and said they were up for anything. They went with about as much adventure as we could give them in one week. They also wanted to spent time with the locals. After being with the members of the group for one day I was happy to hear that when I asked what their favorite part of the trip was, almost all responded with the homestays.

During the week here in the office we do our best to keep up with the guides on how things are going. There guide for the week was Erik and it was very good to hear that everytime we called Erik his response was "this group is GREAT". The group visited a village where we do homestays called Sitio de Mata and different members of the group stayed in homes of different members of the village. When the Bruins left the village I got calls from different members of the family saying how special the Bruins were. They mentioned that they felt they knew them their whole lives and they could not believe the relationship they developed in just two days.

I had the chance to meet the group on their final day when they were painting a rural school in a rural area of northern Costa Rica. I was curious to see this group because of all the positive things Ive heard about them. When I went to meet them it was raining buckets and it looked as if it would rain all day. My first thought was that they might be a little bummed that it is raining on their last day. But when I met the group it was the same laughing and smiles that Erik described. Nobody gave a hoot about the rain and they were just happy to be going to a school to spend time with the locals. When we arrived to the school we had half the group paint and the other half play duck duck goose with the kids. The kids put on an excellent show for us of dancing and then the Bruins gave some gifts and we made a complete morning out of it. Another interesting thing was that a member from the Bruin group brought letters from the 3rd grade class in Colorado to share with the 3rd graders here. The local kids loved it and they immediately wanted to respond to the letters and send them back to the Colorado 3rd graders.

With all the memories that were made on the adventures I can assure you that with the Bruin group the memories that will last the longest are the ones they left with others during their stay. The gifts they shared, the time they spent, and the smiles they gave will last a lifetime. With this said I just want to say you better be PROUD TO BE A BRUIN!!! Also a short note I know there was an English teacher on the trip and I usually dont proof-read my blog so sorry for the grammar errors, hehehe! PURA VIDA MAE!!!

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