We returned to Costa Rica the day before a group from Southern Nazarene University (SNU) came for a stay at QERC. This group was an astronomy class, with the majority of the class taking place on campus in Oklahoma, and ending with a trip to Costa Rica. Each night they set up a telescope outside and we all got to view various constellations and the moon. On one night in particular we invited members of the community over to view the moon, and had quite the turnout. It's always encouraging to activity going on at QERC, especially when it includes such positive interaction between students from the U.S. and local Costa Ricans!
While the astronomy class was here, our semester program students showed up to begin their 4-month stint at QERC (more about them later…). Since the groups overlapped a couple nights, we encouraged our semester-long students to jump in on astronomy activities. One such activity was an early morning up at Cerro de la Muerte. This was supposed to be a star-gazing activity, but the clouds had rolled in by 4:30 am and instead we enjoyed a beautiful sunrise, looking out to the Pacific Ocean from the top of the peak. The other two groups that have been here in the last 2 weeks include a large group from Spring Arbor University (SAU) in Michigan and a group from Oklahoma Baptist University (OBU). Since SAU was such a large group, we worked it out for David and me to take our semester-long students into San Jose for an orientation while our intern Peter hosted the group out at QERC. OBU is currently here for a few nights out of their 1 ½ week trip to Costa Rica. Again, it’s fun for us to see so much activity going on here at QERC!
So now back to our semester program students. We have 6 students this year, 5 from SNU and 1 from Northwest Nazarene University (NNU), in Nampa, ID. It is the first year we’ve opened up the program to other universities, and we are thrilled that we have an NNU student, along with an NNU professor who will be teaching one of the classes here. The 6 of them arrived in Costa Rica on January 5, which gave us a week of orientation before classes started for them. David and I led them in a variety of activities her at QERC, hoping to get them familiarized with the culture and the community. They are excellent students, all very excited about the language and cultural opportunities. To help integrate them into the community of San Gerardo de Dota, we sent them on a type of scavenger hunt, with the intention of forcing them to introduce themselves to people and making them visible to the locals with whom they’ll be interacting in the future. We also set up a “Mafia Night”, where we invited some of the younger people in the community over to play mafia with our students. This quickly turned into a highlight, and we now have Ticos knocking on our door practically every day with the hope of playing again! Since the first game, we have played mafia with the younger Ticos a total of 5 times. They are all on their summer break, so we are trying to take advantage of hanging out with them while they are not away in school.
At the end of our orientation week, we did a separate San Jose Orientation, with the purpose of allowing the students to become acquainted with the bus system to and from San Jose, and helping them feel comfortable finding their way in San Jose if they ever wanted to take a day trip out of the valley. We rode the public bus in together, and then they were split up into two groups to do another sort of scavenger hunt, allowing them to explore some of the more common sites downtown. They had a great time, visiting various museums and taking taxis and buses, and taking advantage of the good local ice cream store. Since it seems to be a rare occasion that David and I have our camera with us when running errands in San Jose, I’ve included pictures taken by the students of some of our favorite places in San Jose as well. The first two are our students exploring in their groups, the first group at the National Theater and the second at the Central Market.
We stayed at the Nazarene Seminary in San Jose, which was a peaceful location within the city. One night we also had our friend Alex Grant, former LASP staff, come speak to our students and do a cultural activity with them. It always seems to be a good idea to have a Costa Rican talk about his own culture, especially when that Costa Rican also truly understands the U.S. culture! Our students did great with their time in San Jose, and we now feel very comfortable with them traveling back and forth and spending time in San Jose safely, if they choose to do so. These couple of pictures are of one of the beautiful parks in downtown San Jose, and the yellow building is the National Museum. The next group of pictures is of the National Cathedral (inside and from the outside), and my favorite homeless man in San Jose, who has been playing the same song on his guitar for many years.
Probably the most exciting thing that happened while we were in San Jose was the earthquake. While our students were out exploring the city in the early afternoon, David and I were driving around running errands (our car was at the mechanics, a common occurrence). All of a sudden the car started shaking, almost as if we’d been hit from behind. But then we saw a big public bus in front of us, also shaking side to side. We started seeing people fleeing from buildings, some crying, and others embracing. The whole thing lasted at least a dozen seconds, which is a very long time in that sort of a situation. Our students reported similar experiences, even seeing buildings shake. The rest of the afternoon there were smaller after shakes, and parts of downtown were blocked off because of a cracked window or a little bit of cement fallen from the building. Thankfully, for us it was only an exciting afternoon, since the quake hit farther north from us. There were a number of deaths reported due to landslides and collapsed houses, and people were stranded in their small communities until help could reach them. After our time in San Jose, we returned to QERC for the rest of the weekend, showing the students the joy of Laura’s bakery that’s only open on Saturdays and Sundays. Classes started first thing Monday morning, and after only a week, it seems that everyone has settled into a bit of a routine. They have Spanish classes in the afternoon, and are enjoying the two Costa Rican teachers they have had so far, who make class time enjoyable by doing all sorts of interactive games and exercises. The other classes kicked off with a Skype session with the professor in charge back in the States, and that too has seemed to go well. It has been fun to see the students truly enjoy being here and take advantage of opportunities to spend time outdoors hiking, or playing games with the local community.
