Welcome to the Web Page of Jodie P. Boyer!
In the Winter of 2004, I was blessed with the oppertunity to visit Costa Rica and build a sidewalk at a Methodist Retreat Center.
You can find some great pictures from the trip here
The trip began with a hitch, when before I had even left Champaign-Urbana, I received an e-mail telling me that our location had changed. The original site in Limon Province was not prepared for us so we ended up working at Centro-Methodista in Alajuela, which is just outside of San Jose. It turns out we were and answer to their prayers as they needed to have a sidewalk built on short notice. We considered it and upgrade, more on that later.
The trip started on January 4th when, after running around frantically to finish packing, I picked up 3 of my team mates, Laura, Jason and Drew. The 3 of us drove to Chicago in fog and snow. We arrived at a hotel where I could park my car for the duration of the trip and meet up with Pastor Rob. We stayed up late talking and playing arcade games. The quote of the night: "So Jason, on a scale of one to 10, how dating are you?" We finally went to bed all together to late for our 3:00 wake up call.
Our 3:00am wake up call came all together too early and found us rushing to take showers and repack. Most of us had packed bedding that we would no longer need because of the change in location. We arrived that the airport via hotel shuttle at 4 am where we meet Amber and Kathy, the remaining members of our team and checked into our flight. Our flight took off a little late but not too bad (we found out later that many flight out of O' Hare were cancelled that day, so we were lucky). we hit a lot of turbulence, but I was able to get a few more hours of sleep before we landed just in time for our flight out of Houston. Our flight landed in Costa Rica without consequence. There we were meet by Don Craig, our host, who got us on a bus to Centro-Methodista, the retreat center where we were building a sidewalk. We got there to find wonderful accommodations. Since we didn't eat lunch, we walked to downtown where we got a snack and looked around the park. Don told us we might see sloth, but he lied. Then we headed back to the campus for supper. Jackie, Don's wife, spoiled us with her cooking! Then it was downstairs for TV and cards and early bedtime.
on Thursday, it was time to start working. We woke up no too early and headed down to breakfast. There we meet Amna, a Costa Rican who joined our team. Amna served not only as an extra pair of hands, but also as a translator, as the 2 workers, Eladio and Jiro, knew very little English. After an excellent breakfast, which included Costa Rican rice and beans dish, it was time to work. We spent most of the day leveling out the stone where we were putting the side walk. We got to use some seriously cool tools, like pick axes to help us level it out. At the very end of the day we started on our forms for the concrete. During the work day we had several breaks for coffee and lunch. At each break we had some kind of juice and food to make sure we stayed good and hydrated. Drew went a little crazy with all the breaks, but most of us appreciated it since we hadn't worked so hard in a very long time. The highlight of the day was using a very large machete to make stakes. It was tough at first, but I eventually got the hang of it. After we finished working, it was time to clean up before a tasty dinner. After supper, we headed into town to hang out in the park and get some ice cream. Then, it was back to the center for a few games of ping pong and then it was off to bed to prepare for another day of hard work.
Friday we continued to build forms for the sidewalk in the morning. This required driving stakes into the ground and getting separator boards level and in place. After lunch and some more ping pong, the cement truck arrived. We poured concrete all after noon and got our feet good and dirty. THis work was good, though the girls had a hard time with it. Much of the day we had to yell at the guys to let us do something, which was a bit frustrating, but given my field, I'm used to it ;-) That night we had another fantastic dinner and then we played more ping pong and also a super game called Psychiatrist. We had many good laughs during the game and then we were off to bed to refresh for one last day of work.
Saturday was by far the most productive day of the whole trip. We spent all day finishing forms until we ran out of materials. We split into 2 teams for the day to expedite the process. Jason, Laura and I were responsible for building the sides of the forms, and ensuring that we were the right distance from the wall. The government mandated that it had to be 1.5 meters wide. Then 2nd team, which consisted of Rob, Kathy, Drew, Amber and Amna, had to level and place the separators. Eladio and Jiro supervised our progress. Team JLJ worked really quickly and well together and got big thumbs up by the end of the day. We worked until we ran out of lumber. Then, it was time for a game of soccer, Costa Ricans V. Americans. The Americans lost handily. This really wasn't much of a surprise though since Costa Ricans are born playing soccer ;-) Even Jordan, Eladio's son, showed us up. After soccer was break time and then we went back to the dorm to wash up. That afternoon we took a taxi into town to visit the Cathedral before 5pm mass and got some ice cream to ruin our supper. Then we walked back to the center for dinner. After supper, we started a round robin ping pong "season" which determined ceding for a tournament. I only won 1 game in the whole thing and I was out in the 1st round of the tourney... Oh well, I've never been great at ping pong. After a few rounds of ping pong, we played more Psychiatrist and Euchre and then we called it a night.
Sunday we woke up for breakfast which was of course excellent and then headed downtown for church. The service was incredible, despite the fact that it was Spanish and I understood very little of it. There was another mission team at the service too. They were working on the roof of the church. This team was from northeast Ohio and they were very friendly. After church, we walked back to the center for lunch and then headed off to Sarchi. Sarchi is a tourist Mecca and is where the tradition of painting ox carts began. After some hard core shopping and a search for a mug, we went off to another small town where there were yew trees cut as topiaries. We enjoyed the park and even found one of Jesus carrying his cross. The ride down the mountain was a little tough from some people, but luckily no one was car sick. We arrived back in time for a tasty dinner and watched a beautiful sunset. That evening we played some more psychiatrist and finished the ping pong tourney. Drew won, Laura took second and Jason third. To end the night we had a nice devotion and prayed for Amna who would go home the next day. At this point, I'd like to ask you all to keep her in your prayers as she searches for a job and cares for her very sick father.
Our last day in Costa Rica was spent sight seeing. We were supposed to go to Limon and see the rainforest on a riverboat tour, but when we woke up, the river had flooded. We certainly felt lucky we hadn't gone there for our mission trip that day. So, after some quick re-planning we headed off to a volcano called Irazu. It was incredible. We were able to get right up to the crater. It was foggy most of the time, but it was clear long enough to get some good pictures. At the volcano we meet a coatimundi, which is related to the raccoon. This coatimundi lived outside of the visitors center. As we were walking to the car, Jason decided to be nice and throw it a piece of his banana bread. The coatimundi, however, out smarted Jason. As Jason was throwing the piece of bread for the coatimundi, it jumped up and stole the bread right off the plate in Jason's hand. We laughed for quite sometime about it, as I'm sure you can imagine. Jason claims he lost more pride then he did banana bread. After the volcano it was time to get some lunch. We stopped at a restaurant on the side of the volcano. The food was delicious as was the view. We even saw a few large birds as we ate lunch. After lunch we continued down the mountain and stopped at "the wood carvers house." This artist was well known for his carvings of things out coffee wood. They were beautiful. Then it was off to Cartoga to see the Basilica honoring the Virgin of Los Angeles. I won't go into details about the story there, but she is the patron saint of Costa Rica. Costa Rica is primarily catholic and the "Christians" (non-Catholics) are very intolerant of the Catholics. It was a little tough for me to hear about the intolerance as I am very accepting when it comes to religion. Anyways, the Basilica was beautiful! After the visit to the basilica, we headed to San Jose to buy more souvenirs. Then is was off to a beautiful restaurant that over looked the valley. It was incredible to see San Jose from afar at night. Then it was time to drop Amna off and head back to the center and pack up. We returned to see that Eladio and Jiro had poured the rest of the concrete! All told, we built 150 yards of sidewalk! Unfortunately, it wasn't totally finished, but it was a good start. After packing and a brief lost camera scare we went to bed.
Tuesday we woke up early to take a bus to the airport. We got to the plane in plenty of time for everyone to finish spending their Calones. I was feeling a little ill that morning, but it wore off, thankfully. We arrived in Houston safely and got through customs pretty easily, though Jason left his passport on the plane and Laura's wood carving was questioned. We got up to our gate to find that the flight was delayed. We grabbed lunch in the airport. It worked out well since we were all craving some fast food. The flight took off only 30 minutes late and arrived to Chicago safely. We grabbed our bags, meet up with a few parents and headed back to Champaign. I got back home around 9 pm.
As you can probably tell from the length of this, I had a great time! I might go as far as saying it was the best vacation I have ever had!