Part II (of III)

Sarah: To continue...here's Part II.

The last couple weeks of the semester flew by, with the students taking every opportunity to go on a hike, watch a movie together, or play a game. During the last academic week they were all busy finishing papers, collecting data for their research projects, and preparing for their community presentations. At the end of the last academic week, the very end of April, the final SNU professor came down, Bob Lively. He didn't come down to teach, but to be a part of the wrap-up and debriefing process and to observe the community presentations. It's always fun having Bob around, especially since his sole commitment is to evaluate the program and talk to students about their experiences.

Commuinty presentation night is always a highly anticipated night by both us at QERC, and also by the community. Unfortunately, the weekend we had laid aside for presenting the students' research turned out to be a busy weekend for the Chacon family, who is often most of our crowd. One night there was a soccer game in an adjacent valley, so many family members were going to be gone for that night. We scheduled the presentation night for Friday in hopes of gathering as many people as we could, but that day also proved to be an unexpected day for the Chacons. It was the day that many family members came to visit with the purpose of hiking the trail from San Gerardo over to Providenciea with Efrain Chacon (the grandfather and patriarch of the family) in order to re-walk the steps Efrain took when he first came over here in the early 1950s. I think they may have underestimated how exhausted they would be after the trek, and all ended up falling asleep by the time our presentations were to begin!

Needless to say, we had a very great turn out, with about 40-50 people in attendance. Many people hadn't been to QERC before, and we enjoyed hosting them and showing them around our building. Our students did a fantastic job presenting their research, with Raul Fernandez (grandson of Efrain) doing our interpreting. It's always a fun night to see everything finally come together, and the students also were relieved to have the final academic component complete! As a celebration we had a sleepover with popcorn and a movie and leftover cookies from the presentation night.

Once presentation night was over, the students only had one last weekend here at QERC and in San Gerardo de Dota. Much of their time was spent packing and saying goodbyes to friends in the community, but they also had to get in many last card games and hanging out with each other. Some of their friends from the community came over for one last night of playing "sardines" outside and Mafia inside when they'd had enough running around. After a good last weekend with little sleep, Monday morning rolled around and the final goodbyes were said to this place.

We had scheduled a few days at the end of the semester for a debriefing/re-entry retreat with our students, and like last year, this took place up at Arenal Volcano. This year we stayed at the Arenal Observatory Lodge, the closest lodge located near the volcano. We had beautiful views of the smoke coming out of the top of the volcano and rocks tumbling down the side. It's also a great location for watching some beautiful birds and swimming in their pool and Jacuzzi while watching the volcano. One afternoon we took advantage of some of the attractions around the area and did the Arenal Hanging Bridges. We had a great time exploring and going on one last hike together, while being able to cross 6 bridges suspended up in the canopy. It put us right at eye level with some beautiful birds and made for some terrifying views (for me!) of the land far below us.

Though our time at Arenal may sound like it was all play and no purpose, that was not the case. We had scheduled 4 different "sessions" where we had lively discussions both in order to debrief the entire semester, and also to prepare the students for re-entering their home country and culture. It was a good time of recapping all of their memories, and pulling out the more meaningful experiences and worldviews that they wanted to bring back to the U.S. and implement in their lives back home. We also discussed reverse culture shock in full detail, complete with fun skits where the students tried to imagine what their lives would be like upon their return.

After Arenal, we returned to San Jose for one last night together, complete with a movie at the VIP theater where we saw a movie sitting in our own personal recliner chairs, and a nice dinner to finish. And then it was time to say our goodbyes at the airport the next morning, not only to our students, but also to Peter, who had been our intern for almost 7 months and an integral part of the semester program. They will all be missed!

To be continued with Part III...