June 1, 2011

        Today we arrived in Puerto Limon, Costa Rica. I had an FDP (Field trip) for my class today. We visited Earth University, and then we went and saw a village where Earth University has played a major role. At Earth University we first toured the organic farm, then we saw where they raise the pigs, and then we kept walking around and we saw many other things too. While we there our guide told us how the university is trying to become completely sustainable in terms of food and agriculture. The majority of the food that they eat in the cafeteria has come from the farm. While we were walking around the farm, our guide used a machete and chopped a pineapple out of the pineapple patch. That was really cool. I guess I had never realized how pineapples grew. After we walked around the farm a while we went to this other area where there was sustainable agriculture. A different guide was telling us how a person could grow plants using any type of “soil”. They had plants there that were growing in cacao fibers and charcoal. The plants can grow as long as they have 5 things: water, air, nutrients, heat, and support. This was an interesting experience because our professor almost took me out with an umbrella! She was walking and then I was standing next to her but she didn’t notice where her umbrella was and then it hit me. Fortunately I am a bit taller than her because otherwise I would have lost an eye. Our professor was also trying to ask our tour guide some questions and he had no idea what the answer to the question was, but she kept asking until she got some sort of answer that she liked, at that point we all just wanted food though, and thought we should move on because she clearly wasn’t going to get her question answered. Oh well! It was an adventure to say the least.
        After we learned about the farm we then went to lunch at the cafeteria. Our lunch consisted of rice, beans, chicken, plantains and pineapple plus I had fresh milk! The whole lunch was delicious and most of it was made right at the university. After lunch we went to this local village that has been helped greatly by Earth University and surprisingly enough by Hewlett Packard (HP). This village has only had electricity for 5 ½ months, and they still don’t have potable water. HP we learned has to do a social service project so the people of this village applied for a grant from them. HP helped them build a futbol (soccer) field, a community meeting place, which consisted of a tin roof over some tables and benches, and they built a playground. There are certain committees within this village and I guess HP gives the special events committee $10,000 a year to put on special events.
        After we learned a little bit about the community, it was time to start interviewing the community members. Coincidentally it started to rain at that exact moment, and we were under a tin roof. It wasn’t just drizzling, the rain was coming down in sheets. If you stepped out from under the overhang in less than 1 minute you would be COMPLETELY drenched! Since it was raining so hard we couldn’t do the interviews the way we were planning on doing them. The only people that actually got to do the interviewing were the people who spoke Spanish because it was so loud that if too many people were gathered around no one would be able to hear. Considering I speak absolutely no Spanish, there were quite a few of us who basically just sat around and did nothing for about 1 hour. This got pretty boring after awhile. Around 4PM we were still at the village and we knew it was about time to go back to the ship, so someone asked our professor if we should head back. She said, “Yes, yes, we need to go!” After that a group of us ran to the bus so that we would try not to get drenched, but that was inevitable. After we got back to the bus, the bus decided that it would venture down the rocky road to pick up everyone else right from where they were. The bus backed up the whole way so they wouldn’t have to turn the bus around later on.
        Once the other people were going to get on the bus, our professor was trying to get on the bus with her umbrella still. The umbrella didn’t fit through the door and flew back and landed on my friend Julia. Julia then dumped the water out of it (it had filled up quickly), and folded up the umbrella to hand it back to our professor. Meanwhile, the professor is looking around like “Where did it go?” and blocking the doorway to the bus, so everyone else got pretty soaked too even though they didn’t have to run to the bus. We learned after the rest of the people got on the bus, that after I had already left to run back to the bus, the community members gave everyone snacks. Some people wanted to get off the bus just to get the snacks, but at that point we were already late, and we just wanted to get back.
        After we got back, I went and played a game with some friends, we played clue. I then went to bed because I was exhausted after a long day.