October showers

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.