Great Weekend Part 1 - School Play

Just finished up a great weekend, one of our last here in Costa Rica. Tara is off in the Great White North for her high school's 50th Anniversary Party. Go Waterloo Collegiate Vikings! We missed her but still had fun.

We kicked off the weekend with World Environment Day at the kids' school. The morning began with Baker walking the Guanacaste Provincial Flag on the stage (an honor Riley had a couple weeks ago at another school event). He followed this up with three presentations. One, with a classmate, was a poem about conserving water. The second was an academic presentation about the water cycle. These two were in English. His third presentation was a dialogue in Spanish with another student about preserving water quality. (The theme of the day was water!) He did a fantastic job on all three presentations.

Riley's class then stood up and sang The Ocean Song, which was videotaped and will be put on YouTube. We'll share it when it goes up.

The big event of the day was the school play, the Journey of the Litterbug. Riley had a major role as Becky Bird, a Toucan who played the narrator of the play. She was awesome! Baker had an important role as the Big Litterbug, who was the foil for the main character's transformation from a litterbug into an earth-friendly butterfly. And, Tae stepped up--entirely unplanned--and served as solo dancer during the entire school's singing of La Bamba (with lyrics changed to a reduce, reuse, recycle sort of theme in spanish). It was fantastic!

Riley (right) as a storytelling Toucan, sitting on her perch with her friend Oceanna.

[Baker and his friend Omid played intimidating Big Litterbugs. (Riley in Background)]

I shot video of the whole thing and have put together a Casagrande Highlights. Alas I am again having Youtube difficulty. In the meantime, our friend Koz is a super video dude and has posted a lovely edited version of the show on YouTube. You'll see a lot of Tae's dance as well as Baker's scene (as he was alongside Koz's son). You see a bit less of Riley, but you'll still see her, if you can recognize her---she has a big beak on her nose! I'll get our video up soon too.

Riley enters the stage as a narrating Toucan!

The school-wide chorus backs up Tae on his improvised, unannounced breakdance!