Sarah: We don’t have any pictures to share this time, but I figured I’d give a quick update over the happenings of QERC because we’ve been quite busy since we’ve been back.
Starting this week, we are going to have an intern staying with us for the next 6 months. His name is Peter and he is a graduate of Calvin College. While Peter is here with us, he is going to be dedicating 15-20 hours a week to work with us at QERC, developing his own project within the community, and having an RA-type role within our semester program. Peter arrived right after we returned to Costa Rica, and has been traveling around the country with some friends before coming to stay for good at QERC. We were able to meet him briefly as he stopped by here to drop off some of his belongings, and we are excited about the possibilities this internship position.
We also had another visitor last week, a professor from Eastern University who is a long-time friend of Leo Finkenbinder. He is in Costa Rica for a conference and was able to come early and visit the Latin American Studies Program and spend a few days with us at QERC. He has a lot of connections with environmental education groups, and we love being able to have more contacts for potential groups to stay at QERC in the future!
And this weekend we had a full house. It was fall break for LASP, so 19 students and an intern decided to come to QERC for a few days. As they had just returned from an intense trip to Nicaragua, they found themselves enjoying the relaxed pace of life here in the valley. They did lots of exploring, hiking, and relaxing while playing games and watching movies together. We’ve definitely enjoyed the activity at QERC since we’ve been back, especially since this time of year can often be a slow time with not many people around.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
to the U.S. and back
Sarah: We apologize for our absence from this blog, but there has been a good reason for it – we weren’t here in Costa Rica for most of that time! We recently returned from a 7-week trip to the US, and what a joy it was to drive into the valley and arrive at our home once again. But first, a recap of our time in the States:
This trip included 11 plane rides, 12 different states, 6 college campuses, and a visit with family members and many friends – from high school, college, Latin American Studies Program, QERC students, California work, church, etc. Exhausting, but well worth it.
We began our adventure in Urbandale, Iowa to visit my family and some good friends back home. During the course of our two weeks there we saw my youngest sister Rachel play volleyball, helped my other younger sister Katie move out to her own apartment, visited family down in Pella, and took a 4-day trip to Colorado with my parents. Though it’s hard living in another country because we’re so far away from family and friends, it’s great to have a decent chunk of time to feel like we can truly be with them. It was a special treat to visit Colorado – we went to Rocky Mountain National Park and stayed at the Y-Camp, which is where we used to stay every summer while I was growing up. We were also there for the beginning of the bugling season, so we were fortunate to see a few males fighting with each other and calling out in order to attract the females. Naturally, it’s our time with our families that seem to go by the fastest, so it was hard for me to say goodbye at the end of the two weeks there.
Our next leg of the trip was to visit Southern Nazarene University in Oklahoma, to help plan our semester program and speak in classes to recruit students to be a part of that program. We were on campus for almost a week and were busy during the day with meetings and speaking engagements. Because we were staying on campus, our evenings were kept occupied by our former students who had already spent a semester with us at QERC. It was great to reunite with them, play games, and share a lot of laughter.
Part of our trip to the States was a recruiting trip for other Nazarene universities, because this year for the first time we are opening up our program to the other biology departments in the Nazarene schools. Once we were well-equipped with information and schedules from SNU, we traveled out to Northwest Nazarene University. We spent about 2 ½ days on campus in meetings and speaking to classes about our program, and walked away feeling extremely positive about what their involvement with QERC will be like in the future, beginning even this spring. NNU is also David’s alma mater, so it was great for him to be back on campus, reminiscing and visiting people both on campus and around the area he hasn’t seen in years.
From NNU we traveled over to Spokane, Washington to spend the next couple of weeks with David’s family and some friends who live around the area. We spent a good amount of time both at his parents’ house with his younger sister Jenna, and also at his older sister Jordan and husband Rusty’s house with their kids. A real treat was spending lots of time with our niece Gracelyn and nephew Gabriel. They have grown up and changed so much in the past year, and though it’s always hard not to be a part of their early lives, it was nice that it didn’t take long at all for them to warm up to us! We also got to meet our newest nephew, Benjamin, who was only 2 weeks old when we arrived. While in Spokane we took a 2-day trip over to Montana. David is looking to get into grad school at the University of Montana in Missoula, so we went there for him to talk with professors. David’s parents and Jenna also came along, because from Missoula we went north to Kalispell, where Jenna was soon to move to begin a new job. While there we visited with a friend that we studied with through the Latin American Studies Program and his wife and baby, and took a quick drive through the beautiful Glacier National Park.
From Spokane, we drove over to the Portland, Oregon area, stopping first through Kennewick to visit more family members. We were in Oregon for another 2 ½ days and spent a day and a half on the campus of Oregon State University, another school David is pursuing for grad school. We were able to see more family in the area, more students who graduated from SNU and had spent a semester with us at QERC, and we stayed with good friends Lane and Hilary Chitwood.
After Portland came San Diego, California. We were there to visit Point Loma Nazarene University and have meetings to discuss potential involvement from their campus with QERC in the future. All meetings were positive and we were able to help a biology professor plan and make arrangements for his trip to Costa Rica in May. We happened to be at PLNU for their Creation Care week, which in itself was very impressive. As part of the week, David was asked to give an hour-long presentation over the conservation in Costa Rica. There was a pretty good turnout for students, and raised their interest in coming to Costa Rica and potentially QERC in the future. Also at PLNU we were able to get together with some good friends we worked with at Mission Springs a couple years ago, who are now living in the southern California area.
To end the trip, we made it back to Oklahoma for a few last days at SNU to wrap up and debrief our recruiting trip. We had more meetings during the days, and more evening adventures with our former students and friends.
After a few flight problems we finally arrived back to Costa Rica Wednesday afternoon. Thursday during the day we met with our muralist, who had completed a sketch for us of what the actual painting was going to look like in our museum. We were absolutely thrilled with the quality of his work and his depiction of our cloud forest! He is going to begin painting in the next couple days, and hope to have it complete to display at QERC in the next couple months. At this point we are around $700 short of what we would like to be able to give him for the mural, so if any of you are looking to donate some money to a good cause, let us know and we can help you do just that. :)
Thursday evening we made it back to QERC, and it hadn’t stopped raining since we landed in the country. We found out we were coming into Costa Rica toward the end of an incredibly rough 5 days of straight rain, with lots of damage to roads and landslides that have already caused 6 deaths. However, when we woke up Friday morning, the sun was shining. Ana, our housekeeper, came later in the day and told us how rainy it had been, but now that we were back it was sunny – and in her own words, that was explained because “todo el mundo esta contento”. :) It’s good to be back.
This trip included 11 plane rides, 12 different states, 6 college campuses, and a visit with family members and many friends – from high school, college, Latin American Studies Program, QERC students, California work, church, etc. Exhausting, but well worth it.
We began our adventure in Urbandale, Iowa to visit my family and some good friends back home. During the course of our two weeks there we saw my youngest sister Rachel play volleyball, helped my other younger sister Katie move out to her own apartment, visited family down in Pella, and took a 4-day trip to Colorado with my parents. Though it’s hard living in another country because we’re so far away from family and friends, it’s great to have a decent chunk of time to feel like we can truly be with them. It was a special treat to visit Colorado – we went to Rocky Mountain National Park and stayed at the Y-Camp, which is where we used to stay every summer while I was growing up. We were also there for the beginning of the bugling season, so we were fortunate to see a few males fighting with each other and calling out in order to attract the females. Naturally, it’s our time with our families that seem to go by the fastest, so it was hard for me to say goodbye at the end of the two weeks there.
Our next leg of the trip was to visit Southern Nazarene University in Oklahoma, to help plan our semester program and speak in classes to recruit students to be a part of that program. We were on campus for almost a week and were busy during the day with meetings and speaking engagements. Because we were staying on campus, our evenings were kept occupied by our former students who had already spent a semester with us at QERC. It was great to reunite with them, play games, and share a lot of laughter.Part of our trip to the States was a recruiting trip for other Nazarene universities, because this year for the first time we are opening up our program to the other biology departments in the Nazarene schools. Once we were well-equipped with information and schedules from SNU, we traveled out to Northwest Nazarene University. We spent about 2 ½ days on campus in meetings and speaking to classes about our program, and walked away feeling extremely positive about what their involvement with QERC will be like in the future, beginning even this spring. NNU is also David’s alma mater, so it was great for him to be back on campus, reminiscing and visiting people both on campus and around the area he hasn’t seen in years.
From NNU we traveled over to Spokane, Washington to spend the next couple of weeks with David’s family and some friends who live around the area. We spent a good amount of time both at his parents’ house with his younger sister Jenna, and also at his older sister Jordan and husband Rusty’s house with their kids. A real treat was spending lots of time with our niece Gracelyn and nephew Gabriel. They have grown up and changed so much in the past year, and though it’s always hard not to be a part of their early lives, it was nice that it didn’t take long at all for them to warm up to us! We also got to meet our newest nephew, Benjamin, who was only 2 weeks old when we arrived. While in Spokane we took a 2-day trip over to Montana. David is looking to get into grad school at the University of Montana in Missoula, so we went there for him to talk with professors. David’s parents and Jenna also came along, because from Missoula we went north to Kalispell, where Jenna was soon to move to begin a new job. While there we visited with a friend that we studied with through the Latin American Studies Program and his wife and baby, and took a quick drive through the beautiful Glacier National Park.
From Spokane, we drove over to the Portland, Oregon area, stopping first through Kennewick to visit more family members. We were in Oregon for another 2 ½ days and spent a day and a half on the campus of Oregon State University, another school David is pursuing for grad school. We were able to see more family in the area, more students who graduated from SNU and had spent a semester with us at QERC, and we stayed with good friends Lane and Hilary Chitwood.After Portland came San Diego, California. We were there to visit Point Loma Nazarene University and have meetings to discuss potential involvement from their campus with QERC in the future. All meetings were positive and we were able to help a biology professor plan and make arrangements for his trip to Costa Rica in May. We happened to be at PLNU for their Creation Care week, which in itself was very impressive. As part of the week, David was asked to give an hour-long presentation over the conservation in Costa Rica. There was a pretty good turnout for students, and raised their interest in coming to Costa Rica and potentially QERC in the future. Also at PLNU we were able to get together with some good friends we worked with at Mission Springs a couple years ago, who are now living in the southern California area.
To end the trip, we made it back to Oklahoma for a few last days at SNU to wrap up and debrief our recruiting trip. We had more meetings during the days, and more evening adventures with our former students and friends.
After a few flight problems we finally arrived back to Costa Rica Wednesday afternoon. Thursday during the day we met with our muralist, who had completed a sketch for us of what the actual painting was going to look like in our museum. We were absolutely thrilled with the quality of his work and his depiction of our cloud forest! He is going to begin painting in the next couple days, and hope to have it complete to display at QERC in the next couple months. At this point we are around $700 short of what we would like to be able to give him for the mural, so if any of you are looking to donate some money to a good cause, let us know and we can help you do just that. :)
Thursday evening we made it back to QERC, and it hadn’t stopped raining since we landed in the country. We found out we were coming into Costa Rica toward the end of an incredibly rough 5 days of straight rain, with lots of damage to roads and landslides that have already caused 6 deaths. However, when we woke up Friday morning, the sun was shining. Ana, our housekeeper, came later in the day and told us how rainy it had been, but now that we were back it was sunny – and in her own words, that was explained because “todo el mundo esta contento”. :) It’s good to be back.
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