Meet Meredith

Sarah: When we returned to Costa Rica from our trip to the States at the end of September, our new intern arrived at the same time. We were excited to be able to promote the internship position after having such a positive experience with Peter last year, and even more excited when one of our former students and friends, Meredith, applied.

So, meet Meredith. We first got to know Meredith during our first year down here, during the first semester program SNU ever did at QERC. She was part of the guinea pig group - the group that was able to hold onto their class schedule from SNU while living at QERC for the spring semester. To supplement their SNU workload, QERC joined up with the Latin American Studies Program (LASP) for certain aspects of the semester in order to give the students more of a cross-cultural experience. Meredith enjoyed her experience so much that semester that when the following year rolled around, she actually decided to participate in our second semester program. As the program was developing and becoming more of a formal program with actual classes IN Costa Rica, Meredith was able to take advantage of the opportunity to study again at QERC with new classes and new experiences and hardly any overlap. Through both of these semester programs (8 months total!), we were able to get to know Meredith very well.

When graduation hit for Meredith and she was still contemplating what to do with her life (and still is!), a year-long internship at QERC seemed like the perfect fit. Meredith is using this year to figure out which venue she wants to pursue and she is able to put to good use her passions while being a great asset to furthering the development of projects we have going on at QERC.

While Meredith is here for almost 8 months, she is both developing her own projects to work on as well as fitting into projects we already have going on. She often works outside in the sunny mornings to help David with the native plant demonstration around the building, and he is grateful to have the extra help. In the afternoons she has been helping with the development of the museum. We are thrilled to have an extra hand around here and are extremely hopeful that with her help we can get the museum in a very presentable state (one that we don't have to say is "in progress") by the beginning of the semester program in January. These are two projects we have been working on basically ever since we took this job and we have high hopes of seeing them to completion this year!

One project Meredith is developing is basically an audit of the sustainability practices here at QERC. She is picking apart each aspect of energy and products being used at QERC and developing ways we can be more environmentally conscious of our actions. We are excited to hopefully implement some of her suggested changes already this year, and suggest long-term changes for future years.

Once the semester program starts in January, we will rely on Meredith to take on some staff responsibilities to help take the weight off our shoulders. We are thankful for her help and glad that she already has the experience of two semesters under her belt in order to step up and take on a new role during the program. Aside from all the work that Meredith is contributing to QERC, it's fun for David and me to have someone around to interact with and spend our evenings with. :)

One other exciting thing for us to share is how we have created our own version of a CSA here in Costa Rica. A family that we've gotten to know quite well that live in the next valley over have a very impressive farm that is completely organic. Every time we visit them we are overwhelmed by their generosity in loading us up with fresh fruits and vegetables. We were just there visiting a couple weeks ago and asked if they would be interested in selling us a basket of fresh produce every 2 weeks. The idea is that they would drop the basket off at the truck stop at the top of the hill every other Friday afternoon, and we would leave the money and pick up the basket the following Saturday morning. They were excited about the idea of supplying us with whatever produce they had on hand, and of course we were thrilled with the arrangement as well. This past Saturday we picked up our first basket and were dumbfounded at the array of fruits and veggies we received - many of which we'd never even seen or heard of before. This load only cost us around $12.00! The family was kind enough to even supply us with some recipes for some of the food we didn't know what to do with. We are excited to continue with this new arrangement!