Last night, the Pedasí group spent their first night with their homestay families!
This morning the patio of Buena Vida Language School filled with lively voices of students excitedly sharing about their first moments with the families, delicious meals, basketball near the park, and a good night’s sleep. Yesterday, after spending a night in the dorms of Los Quetzales we piled back into the “Comanche” bus with our driver Elvis and his co-captain.
Elvis drove us down from the cool hills of the quiet agricultural valley of Guadalupe, through Cerro Punta, and then Volcán, past fields and farmstands of onions, potatoes, strawberries, lettuce, cabbage and carrots, and down to the warmer terrain where we turned onto the Pan-American Highway and began to see stands now filled with papaya, pineapple, watermelons and other hotter climate crops.
We stopped for lunch in Santiago and munched on candied tamarind. We continued our journey past sugarcane and rice fields, and then corn and cattle pastures as we turned south into the Azuero peninsula. The bus weaved through the vibrant markets and small tiendas in Las Tablas, and at last we arrived in Pedasí. We happily unloaded from the bus, said our thanks to our trusty bus driver, and filled the patio of the school with our luggage. Ingrid, who runs Buena Vida Language School, gave us a brief orientation, and helped everyone locate their homestay and other key landmarks on their copy of a Pedasí town map.
Soon the families began to arrive to pick up their new “hijos” or “hijas” for the next seven nights!