SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Seven Ecole Allain St-Cyr students didn't spend their spring break relaxing at home or taking part in camps like many of their friends.

Seven students from Ecole Allain St-Cyr, from back, Cliff Tuyishime, Philip Bilodeau, Rene O'Reilly and from front, Abigail Guthrie and Mikaela Smith (missing are Bryan Tuyishime and Christopher Moore) went to Costa Rica to take part in humanitarian service projects in March. - Katherine Hudson/NNSL photo

The students, ranging from Grades 9 to 12, were hard at work fixing up and painting a church and creating a gravel pathway in a biological reserve in Costa Rica.

The students touched down in Costa Rica on March 14 to participate in the two week humanitarian project. They spent their time in Monteverde area in the northwest region of the Central American country.

The church was located in a community called Canitas while the pathway was an addition to the Santa Elena Biological Reserve.

"The pathway was hard. We hauled big bags of gravel. It was physically tiring, but fun," said Cliff Tuyishime, a Grade 11 student.

"We finished work, came home and went to bed at 8 (p.m.)," said Mikaela Smith, another Grade 11 student. Smith said the opportunity to live with a host family and experience day-to-day life in the village of Canitas was an amazing adventure.

"We were in a new place with people we knew and we were doing something for the community which was nice," she said.

Although some in the group had travelled outside of Canada before, it was the first time many of them immersed themselves in another culture and helped out in a community.

After taking Spanish classes at Ecole Allain St-Cyr for the past four years, the students were fluent enough to have simple conversations with the Costa Ricans.

"There were a lot of hand gestures and you know the basic words. It wasn't too hard to communicate," said Smith.

Rene O'Reilly, a Grade 10 student, now has his host family on Facebook after staying with them while the service projects took place.

When asked if they would like to participate in a similar experience again, there was a resounding "Yes" from the students.

Principal Yvonne Careen, who went on the trip as a chaperon, said the students were in Costa Rica for about two weeks, and returned to Yellowknife on March 29.

"We didn't go as tourists. We went to do a service project," she said.

"We were living in families. We were not living in hotel rooms. We had the full experience. In many of the families , the only language spoken was Spanish, so the students were able to focus on learning as much Spanish as they could," she said.

Careen said the international service learning trip is organized in cycles. Many of the same students participated in an exchange trip to Montreal last year. In a few years' time, a new group of students from the school will take part in a Canadian exchange trip and then on an international excursion.

"We prepare them with the exchange trip inside Canada and then the big trip comes in their Grade 10, 11 and 12 year," she said.

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