In the beginning...

Well, I've been in Costa Rica for a full week now and it has been a whirlwind. I spent the first two days with my Mom at the beautiful Villa Blanca in the Cloud Rainforest. We did yoga, went on nature hikes, and had some really nice time to catch up. Definitely a good transition before starting the craziness of this semester with SFS.

The School for Field Studies operates programs in Mexico, Turks and Caicos, Kenya, Australia, and Costa Rica. Each field station focuses on a different topic, all loosely related to the environment. I'm at the Atenas field station, one of two in Costa Rica. Atenas is a town of about 8,000 people in the central valley region of CR. In 2004, National Geographic rated it the place with the best weather in the world. Not a bad place to spend a semester. Both of the centers in Costa Rica focus on Sustainable Development. We take classes in Tropical Ecology, Natural Resources Management, Economics and Ethics of Sustainable Development, and Culture and Language of CR. We also have a lot of field trips including one to Nicaragua to contrast practices and we end the semester doing research with one of our professors here.

So far, Costa Rica has been absolutely beautiful and incredible, the other students share a lot of my values and interests, and the program is shaping up to be very academically engaging and very rewarding. I would love to go through everything I've done thus far but instead I'll just provide a list of top six events of the past week, in no particular order.

6. Hiked to a 70 waterfall near the center to go swimming with friends from the program and a tico (Costa Ricans dub themselves ticos) guy who has been friends with SFS kids for the past couple of semesters.

5. Visited a Chiquita plantation and got to try carrying a bunch of bananas. They weren't so heavy but the pickers carry around 150 bunches per day. We also learned about Corporate Social Responsibility and Chiquita's efforts in Costa Rica to give back. I'm sure I'll write more about this at some point but note that Chiquita's income for 2010 was estimated at $80-90 million in their 2010 Q3 earnings report. The operating budget of the project which we visited (called Nogal) was $150,000 and that was in partnership with two other organizations: GTZ and Migros. It's a meek effort at best.

4. Saw hummingbirds on a hike in the Cloud Rain Forest (high elevation Rain Forests), learned that they eat about every 45 minutes.

3. Saw lots Coatimundi, a cousin of the raccoon.

2. Went mist netting to catch birds early in the morning at the Tirimbina Nature Preserve. Learned how to handle birds and how to use mist nets.

1. Visited the Demasa Heart of Palm plantation. Learned about their efforts in organic composting and microorganism fermentation. Got the perspective of a farmer who is working under the pressure of the company to which he sells his product. Of course, they're concerned about short-term profitability rather than the sustainability of the production chain.

I hope that this blog will become a great way for friends and family to keep up with what I'm up to as well as a way for me to keep track of this experience. Comments are always welcome and pictures will be coming soon!