Presentation Night...and goodbyes

Sarah: Well they're gone. All of the students. And it's pretty quiet around here, without the constant noise of activity--games, movies, laughter. They will be missed.

So let me recap their last days at QERC. Things were pretty busy as everyone was preparing for their presentations to the community, not to mention all of the lasts--"one last movie night" or "one last game of 7 up 7 down" as their time here in Costa Rica was coming to an end. As Presentation Night got closer, we were all getting ready--lots of cleaning, rearranging the laboratory into a suitable room, handing out invitations to everyone in the valley, and students getting their research in order to make a good presentation.

Then some interesting things started happening...we had a few crucial power outages. And not the kind that are caused by the weather. On Thursday night, the night before Presentation Night, we had our first power outage. We learned that the power was out throughout the entire country of Costa Rica. The papers reported that it was because of a power generator malfunction at Arenal, so the government and ICE (the only power and communications company in CR) turned off the power in order to work on the problem. The students started having minor freakouts, since they were going to present the following night. On Friday late morning, the power went out again. At this point we were hearing reports that the government had ulterior motives for turning it off--some people suspect that it has to do with the fact that the country is going to be voting on whether or not to ratify the CAFTA agreement. The theory is that if the government can show faults in the power company, they can encourage people to vote in favor of CAFTA, because CAFTA would mean privatizing the power companies. Regardless of why the power was turned off...it was bad timing for us! Friday the students were panicking, trying to finish their power point presentations while trying to conserve their batteries on their computers.

We were relieved when the power came back on around mid-day, giving us plenty of time to bake lots of cookies, make refreshments, and for the students to feel ready about that evening. However...Presentation Night was supposed to begin at 7:00, and right at 6:00 the power went out AGAIN. Talk about frustration! We were somewhat hopeful that the lights would come back on by 7:00...but that didn't happen. A few people showed up anyway, and we got a few phone calls, but sadly the power didn't come back on until 8:00. We decided to call as many people as we could on Saturday and go ahead with the presentations Saturday evening at 7:00.

After the frustrating power outages up until Presentation Night (now on Saturday night), we were nervous that people wouldn't come. However, we were thrilled that around 40 people still ended up coming. And our students were a hit! Everyone got really into their presentations, asked questions, and were genuinely interested in their research. Paola Chacon (their Spanish teacher from the beginning of the semester) interpreted for everyone, and she did an outstanding job. The community was so into the presentations, that it ended up going really late--we didn't end until almost 11:00! The hit of the night was Clint, who had done his research on the water quality of the river that runs through the valley. This was a major issue for community members, especially when Clint showed evidence of E. coli in their river. This turned into a community discussion right in the middle of his meeting, where people started trying to figure out who was the cause of the E. coli. It might be a good thing for Clint that he didn't have the right equipment to figure out the exact source that was causing the problem. That will be a future research project.

Sunday the students packed pretty much all day, so that we could all be ready to head into the city on Monday morning. They had one last day in San Jose to do last-minute souvenir shopping, and then we all met up for dinner and a movie for their last night in Costa Rica. We all stayed out at the apartment connected to the LASP office, so we stayed up late playing games and chatting. Most of them got a couple hours of sleep before their transportation picked them up at 4:30 in the morning. We all gathered in a circle and prayed before they left, and there were lots of tears and sniffles. It was a good goodbye.

David and I are now finding ourselves trying to put back together QERC after being overtaken by 13 college students. :) Saturday we leave to go to Guatemala for a week, which will serve as a good relaxing week and a chance to renew our visas one last time before returning to the states in July. We are looking forward to having some down time!

Recounting Old Environmental Times

David: No, I’m not talking about spiking trees and putting rattlesnakes insides the truck cabs of loggers. I’m talking about the two week accounting of what happened during the first portion of the Environmental Science Concentration that Sarah then later joined as we went to the Osa Peninsula for some crazy wildlife adventures.

I know that this is extreme back logging of Costa Rica information but the experience was so unique and interesting that I thought it worth passing along, albeit a month late.
The three-week ESC experience is meant to challenge students in their global perspective of the Earth as God’s creation. Is the Earth just a resource to be used or is it intrinsically more than that? What role did God intend for us to have in the management and stewardship of creation? What problems are the tropical Americas facing in conservation and how is that affecting the lives of the people to whom this is home? And most importantly, what does all of this mean on a personal level for a rich North American, which we all are? The connections from our North American lifestyles to tropical ecological travesties are much tighter than most of us will ever know.

So where do you begin in providing an experience such as this—how about with sea turtles? We started our time at a beach town in the Guanacaste region called Ostional. This beach is one of 10 or so beaches in the world where a specific event called an “arribada”, or “arriving” occurs. The Pacific Olive Ridley, for some proposed scientific reasons, has developed a method of nesting that involves hundreds of thousands of females nesting on the same beach within a three day time span. The females all wait offshore until enough have gathered and then the arribada begins. For three days hundreds of thousands bombard the beach in hopes of laying a successful nest. The trick is that these sea turtle eggs are a prized delicacy. This is causing sea turtle conservation problems all over the world. It is illegal to collect sea turtle everywhere in the world except for Ostional, which is where we took the students. The government has an arrangement with a community cooperative that allows them to harvest a certain percentage of eggs every arribada. It is a controversial setup to some but in the end it is an attempt to meet in the middle of providing resources and conserving at the same time. The students stayed three nights with families from the cooperative and we had the opportunity to witness several Olive Ridleys nesting. It was not the arribada, but it was still impressive.

From there we spent a day having conversations and learning from the people at a non-governmental organization called Casa del Sol (House of the Sun). It is a community based organization that has a purpose of empowering women to cook with solar ovens, use local seeds and produce, and be educated in ways to cook healthy and environmentally responsibly. We also received a little lecture on potential woes of Costa Rica ratifying their part of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. They are worried about their crops and seeds being overrun by genetically modified seeds, which would be more readily introduced into Costa Rican agriculture and more than likely not monitored by multi-national agricultural businesses. These businesses would have the doors to Costa Rican soil opened up to them if CAFTA is passed.

We spent some time at the beautiful Arenal Volcano studying volcanology. The more impacting event here was a visit to a hot springs run entirely sustainably, called Ecotermales. This is a big deal because in that region there are many hot springs that cater to ecotourism and have gigantic environmental impacts to the local ecosystem. Ecotermales demonstrates responsible business practices by using a natural resource while not negatively impacting the land. The students were all fired up over this because it was so exciting to see that when creative ideas are put in place conservation of natural resources showing respect for God’s creation is indeed the most beneficial way for both the land and humans.

We then visited EARTH University on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. EARTH University is attended by agricultural students from all over Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Tuition is almost completely covered for most students and their education is founded on agricultural and environmental principals that they can take back to their homes and implement on a community level. Not only is its mission statement one of meeting the worlds’ needs by taking care of the earth, but also it is an impressively large campus that showcases how a university can be environmentally ethical when it comes to its operation of facilities.

Our last stop before heading back to QERC and then onto Campanario was La Selva research station. It is a place in dense tropical rainforest where some of the top tropical research goes on in the world. They have an impressive campus with fantastic facilities for researchers. It was a chance for the students to see a different model and approach to conservation so they could compare it to others they experienced.

The best thing is that throughout all of this the students were put in ecosystems that showcase the biological diversity of Costa Rica. They were being challenged in their environmental thinking while given a chance to just experience the magnificence of God’s creation. The combination of those two is something that we all need.

Good Times...

Sarah: Whew there’s been a lot going on around here. Once we got back from the Osa Peninsula everything was going so well, like I said in the last entry. Everyone was getting along so well, studying all day, and hanging out together in the evenings. Unfortunately, there were some things that happened last week that disrupted all of this. All of the students had signed a contract upon coming here that they would abstain from drinking and smoking, or they would be sent home. We reiterated that in February as a second warning to all of them. However, 3 of our boys were caught having a casual drink over at the hotel a week and a half ago, and David and I had to tell our bosses at SNU to make the final decision on what their punishment would be. Sadly for everyone, the decision was made in Oklahoma to send the boys home. We took them into San Jose last Friday and they left on a flight Saturday morning. It was tough on everyone to break up the group of 13 students, and the dynamics changed quite a bit around here.

During this time we had one of the SNU professors here, Nancy Halliday, and her husband Frank, and his sister Lydia. It was really great to have them around—Nancy did an excellent job with the situation of the boys drinking and helping with all of the students left, Frank did a great job of hanging out and playing games with students, and Lydia was a great motherly support for those struggling with the whole situation. Each of them also helped out with the research projects quite a bit.

On Easter Sunday instead of having our normal gathering mid-morning, we arranged transportation to take us to the top of Cerro de la Muerte for a sunrise service. We left here around 4 a.m. and made it to the top in time for it to get light out with some beautiful views. It was cloudy over the Atlantic side, but it still was beautiful with the coloring of the clouds. We were even able to see all the way to the Osa Peninsula on the Pacific side, where we had just been a week earlier! It was a neat time to worship God and praise Him for Jesus’ resurrection together.

Later that week Scott came back through, and this time with his family. His wife, Dawn, and her parents were here visiting, along with Scott and Dawn’s 16-month-old baby girl, Selva. They spent 2 nights here in the valley, and it was great to see them. Scott and Dawn were good friends of ours in California, and we had the privilege of knowing Selva for her first few months of her life, so it was fun having all of them here with us at our place.

This week has been just as busy—but not nearly as much drama. The students who were a part of the ESC had to do a group presentation for LASP on Thursday, so on Wednesday morning we got up early and headed back into the city. They had all day to work on their presentation, while David and I got to hang out with Scott for some last quality time. We also had a great time spending the night at Trevor and Laura’s and talking with them and Scott until late both nights. It was fun to laugh and hang out with friends, especially since Scott was leaving this weekend and we’re not sure when we’re going to see him again!

Thursday was fun for David and me to see the group presentations, because we got to see the other groups as well—those that had been in the Advanced Language and Literature program (ALL, the program that I did as a student), and the Latin American Studies concentration (LAS). After the presentations, we took the students out to the OTS library (Organization for Tropical Studies), so that they could find other research papers on their topics in order to include them in their own projects.

And Friday was the most fun of all. The students had received money from a NASA grant to come study here this semester, and apparently there was some money left over to use for a fun and educational purpose. As a group we decided to go white-water rafting. The guides are great because they point out wildlife and talk about conservation and the indigenous tribes who live on the land by the river, so that made it be educational as well. We had a blast. We were on 2 rafts and were on the water about 5 hours, with a stop for lunch as well as a stop to swim in some waterfalls. Everyone had such a great time, and it was a great thing to do together as a group before they leave home. Now they only have 10 days left here at QERC, so everyone is frantic in trying to finish things up before they leave.