LOCAL STUDENTS SERVE FOREIGN COMMUNITY

CARTAGO, Costa Rica - One group spoke almost no Spanish. The other spoke
almost no English. Somehow music, work and a willingness to forget grammar
for the sake of communication brought them all together.

Students from Columbus studying biology and Spanish in Costa Rica during a
summer study-abroad program spent Sunday and Monday working with Costa
Rican students on a community service project and learning that basic
language skills suffice when you really want to communicate.

"I get along with them so well," Glenwood sophomore Alyssa Crouch said.
"They are our ages, so we want to communicate more. If there's someone your
age, you try to understand. I'm more fun this way."

The Costa Rican police, who spent six weeks at Fort Benning last fall
studying peacekeeping at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation, set up the homestay and work project in the province of
Cartago for the visiting American students.

Each American student was paired with a Costa Rican student for a two-night
homestay. All of the students planted trees and cleaned the grounds and
classrooms Monday at Colegio Alejandro Quesada, an area magnet school
focused on academics, ecology and tourism. When they were not working, the
students taught one another local dances.

"We got to blend with other teenagers our age from another country, and we
worked together to do something good," Shaw High junior Kristan Lowe said.

Since visiting Fort Benning and the Columbus Police Department, the
national police in Cartago have begun expanding youth community service
programs, a foreign concept for most Costa Rican students.

Col. Edwin Arce, head of police in Cartago, brought D.A.R.E. to the
province to combat drug use. Almost 9,000 students have worked with the
program in two years, and drug use is down in area high schools.

Arce wants the police to continue working with students and spreading the
concept of community involvement and service, he said through U.S. Army
Sgt. Maj. Ramon Cantu, a group leader for the American students.

American students working side by side with Costa Rican students at the
school is just the beginning, Arce said.

In the future, he wants to expand the homestay program and work on bigger
service projects like building projects in national parks.

Police Commandante Jose Urena said Monday that he wanted both groups of
students to leave with knowledge of another country and to learn to
exchange ideas, to find solutions through discussion, not weapons.

The students from Columbus took away at least that much.

"Teenagers thousands of miles away, they have the same wants, the same
ideas, the same fears," Brookstone senior Hugh Ogletree said. "We're more
alike than we think we are."

After struggling through conversations with Costa Rican students using his
basic Spanish skills, Glenwood junior Matthew Gaylor told Shaw language
teacher and group leader Donna Carter that he wants her to "really" teach
him Spanish this summer.

"I love it when a student gets motivated to learn, and I didn't have to
force it," Carter said.

Both groups of students went to the San Jose airport at 5 a.m. Tuesday to
say goodbye. The Costa Rican students stood on the front sidewalk waving
even when the American students were out of sight.

Neither group wanted the Americans to go home.

"I'm not leaving," Ogletree said. "You'll have to drag me out of this country."