YouthInkwell Publishing

Shaina here.

            A phone call forced me unpleasantly up at 5:50 am. 

            Still sleepy, Cate, Ivy, and I blearily trotted off to breakfast.  Breakfast was delicious as always…except that the mangoes were sour today and that the kiwis tasted like Sour Patch kids.

            Following the breaking of our night-long fast, we (we meaning Ivy, Cate, Matt, and I…hm, notice someone missing?) plopped down onto the green couch we adopted to christen ourselves as Mighty Morphing Power Rangers.  Ivy, our group leader and den mother, is the Red Ranger (group leader).  Matt, King of the Blues, is the Blue Ranger (group nerd).  I was dubbed the Yellow Ranger (female supporting character), because the Yellow Ranger is a girl.  Yes, I am a girl.

            Cate, unfortunately, received the much loathed position of Pink Ranger (token girl), despite her abhorrence of said color. 

            And, well, who wasn’t here?  Noel was dubbed the Green Ranger (anti-hero), the one that never seems to be around…

            But soon, the bus arrived and took us to the Indian Reserve.  The bus ride was boring and not worth mention.

            At the Indian Reserve, we climbed slippery mud paths framed with colorful tropical foliage.  Eventually, we managed to help each other enough so that we reached a big straw hut without much incident.  Inside this big straw hut was a Costa Rican Indian.

            He introduced himself as Choto (something like that), a shaman of the village and he proceeded to tell us all about the Indian lifestyle.

            We sat in a big circle, and I began sketching.

            He led us on a brief tour and showed us sugarcane and Indian artifacts.  I sketched throughout all of this.

            Then we were led to the primary school.  Everything was so cute.  I’m not kidding.  It was a huge cuteness overload.

            A cute little fifth grader, Maria, delivered a speech about the necessity of computer labs, and a cute little kindergartener, Manuel, gave an absolutely cute cute cute speech about water.  Then, these cute little kids danced a cute little dance.  The audience was dying of cuteness.  I was dying of cuteness.  The word cute looks really weird right now.

            After overexposure to too much cute, I sketched a girl and her baby brother.  Although neither of us could speak the other’s language, we tacitly communicated with smiles, laughter, and sign language. 

            Back at the hotel, Ivy and Ms. Sarja went to sleep while Cate, Matt, Noel and I caused a minor earthquake in our room.  Matt lay in my sheets with his wet swimming trunks, so Noel, with the aid of his minion Cate, folded up my cot and made a Matt-taco.  As he flailed his arms and legs, he caused my cot to fold in on itself and create a large banging noise, which somehow did not wake Jennifer.  Matt, feeling abused, stole my sheet and created a small tent in which he stayed for the most of the time.

            Then, second-in-command Ivy awoke and ordered us to be quiet for Jennifer’s sake, to which Matt responded, “Well, she already slept through this already…” 

            Ms. Sarja DID wake up, and she told us that she heard everything, including the previous little story.  When the Big Kahuna did awake, she sent Cate for three Cokes, and Noel and I for an extension cord, which we failed to bring back. 

            And then let us summarize the rest of the day in one long, Faulkner-esque sentence: After going to our “fiesta,” where we watched Costa Rican dancers and ate too much food, we headed back to our room, where we filmed each other doing relatively embarrassing things—Noel and yours truly having a tickle-war; Matt and Ivy doing two-person yoga; and Cate, looking like a demure little faun, scratching and violently attacking Matthew.

            It is now very late at night, and Matt, Noel, and Cate are finally back in their rooms.  Ivy is asleep, and Jennifer is doing important-looking stuff. 

            SO.  Good night, dearest readers.

            Shaina out!