The Whole Enchilada: Wrapping Things Up

Personal Journal Week 13

With my coursework completed, my daughter and I spent the last week visiting several Rotary Clubs, the world famous rainforests above Monteverde, and the beaches around Manuel Antonio.

Club Rotario de Cartago

The day after completing our course Huckleberry and I visited the Rotary Club in Cartago. After visiting the Basilica de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles and eating a fabulous dinner at a nearby restaurant, we headed over to the Social Club to meet with the Club Rotario de Cartago. It was a very pleasant time where I learned about the club’s efforts to help build a new hospital and provide drinking water to a small indigenous community in the southwest corner of the country (they asked me to share this work with the Grand Junction Rotary Club which I will do upon my return). I presented information about similarities and differences between the US and Costa Rican educational systems and my work with local students in Santa Ana. Afterwards, we were invited to an elder member’s house for dinner and we spent the night with another family before heading off to Monteverde the next morning.

Living on a Farm and the Cloud Forests of Monteverde

While Monteverde is normally packed with tourists we were lucky because most of the tourists left a month earlier. Once we arrived we decided to live on a small 350 hectare farm with about 40 dairy cattle. Over the next few days we explored the farm on horseback, learned about the milking process, and played with a new litter of puppies.

The story of this community is an interesting one. According to the Lonely Planet Monteverde was founded by a small Quaker community who left the United States in 1949 after some members of this pacifist group were arrested for refusing to serve in the military during the Korean War. After moving here they settled into farming and dairy production. As part of their work they preserved a small remnant of Costa Rica’s rare cloud forests.

Wondering through (and zip-lining) these misty forests left me in awe of the diversity that once covered most of the mountains in this area. There are several efforts to preserve the remaining stands of old growth forests and restore others. Perhaps the most interesting one is the Bosque de Los Niños which is further described in my daughter’s website.

Surf´s Up Dude: The Beaches of Manuel Antonio

After a few days in the cloud forests it was time to head out to the coast to visit the beaches and Parque Nacional de Manuel Antonio. Manuel Antonio is your typical surfer town with laidback beach bums teaching sun burnt tourists how to stand on a moving surfboard. Knowing that my professional surfing career ended tragically by being born in Colorado years ago, I opted to bogie board while my daughter took surfing lessons. We both had a great time playing in the waves. Afterwards we gobbled down some nachos and local drinks and then headed into the National Park. While having imminently beautiful sandy beaches, lush forests, and wondering groups of monkeys, the park is being loved to death by the numerous tourists and intense development sprawling around its boundaries. Although I am worried about the parks futures, we enjoyed our time there. Our experience in Manuel Antonio was topped off with a picture perfect sunset.

Club Rotario de Ezcazul

I was invited to attend a Rotary meeting in Ezcazul. This club has been working on a wide variety of projects in Costa Rica including donations of books and glasses to local schools, medical equipment to a nearby clinic, and scholarships for scholars. They also have been supporting a Rotary Club in Iraq which recently celebrated it’s fortieth anniversary. Like my earlier presentation in Cartago, I discussed the similarities and differences between our educational systems. I also discussed the importance of having teachers from different nations work together on behalf of children in all nations. This final formal presentation helped reinforce my belief in the power of cross cultural dialogues. It was also a nice way to cap off my experience here in Costa Rica.

During the last few days Huckleberry and I are visited Zoo Ave (a wildlife rescue faclilty near San Jose), watched the The Isle of Nim in Spanish, and packed for our journey home. The flight back through Houston post Ike should, unfortunately, be quite eventful.

¡Hasta Luego!

Escuelas Publicas y Los Volcanes

Personal Journal for Week 12:


My daughter Huckleberry is joining me for the last few weeks here in Costa Rica. Like me she has school work to complete. She has been posting some of her work on her own blog (http://costa101.blogspot.com/). This week I want to write about completing my service work here, recent experiences in local public schools, and our trip to see Arenal (a volcano).

My Service Project Winds Down

While I am still trying to coordinate visits with regional Rotary Clubs with my students to discuss the possibility of future exchanges with the US(because of cultural differences this goal has been difficult to accomplish), my classes concluded this week. We celebrated with a pizza party at a local restaurant.

Recent Visits to Schools

Over the past several weeks I have visited several public schools in Costa Rica. Similar to my experience in while visiting schools in Mexico, I was impressed with the passion and dedication Costa Rican teachers bring to their students. At Escuela Anoches Bella in Santa Ana I met a wonderful sixth grade teacher named Patricia Benamburg Guerrero who beamed with pride over her students. Senora Guerrero teaches math, science, and social studies to approximately twenty five students. Her class is mixed ability. There were no textbooks or other books in the class (every classroom was the same) but the school had a nice library. The students wrote everything in their notebooks. They also glued in worksheets, newspaper articles, and other sources of information that they needed as they studied different subjects. During my brief visit in her class, she and her students were working on cards for Dia de Las Madres (Mother´s Day).

While schools here would lack many of the resources our schools have in the United States, Costa Rica´s literacy rate is approaching the level of many other rapidly developing nations and is the highest in Central America. While the classrooms are sparse, students in these schools have more access to written materials than their counterparts in Mexico (which would suggest why their literacy rates are slightly lower than Costa Rica).

Although one teacher told me her class was one hundred percent proficient, the director of another school said her students were only seventy to eighty percent proficient on yearly assessments. The director felt that issues of poverty (drugs, abuse, neglect), a complete turnover in her staff this year (teachers move to more affluent private or public schools), and the lack of resources necessary to teach adequately are factors contributing to the schools current level of success.

Students do not progress to the next grade without passing their exams. Some students are repeating the same grade for the third or forth time. While there are special education laws on the books, the schools I visited had no support or special accommodations for SPED students and all but the most severely disabled students were mainstreamed. I was not able to visit a facility for these students but as far as I know at this point they are taught in separate facilities.

While I wish I could help these schools more, I couldn’t help but admire what the teachers were trying to do for their students. On more than one occasion I was warmly invited into different classrooms to share different projects and talk to students. In addition to learning about the system of education here, the teachers in Costa Rica asked about schools in the United States (which I was glad to answer). The real value for us as educators here in Costa Rica and back in the United States is to maintain an open dialogue where we can learn, understand, empathize, and in the future support each other. I hope to return to schools like this in the future not just as visitor, but a colleague who can breach cultural barriers and initiate true partnerships for change and transformation. Both educational systems in developing and developed nations have something to offer and receive.

Living at the Base of a Volcano

I am going to defer to my daughter´s website on this topic (see addres above) with the following addition. Seeing a large, rumbling and active volcano for the first time and living underneath it for two nights in our hotel is humbling to say the least. The power these geologic giants have to transform, extinguish, and support life is something to behold and I hope everyone gets the opportunity to see an active volcano in their lifetime.

¡Pura Vida!

Mis Estudientes #3: Embajadores Culturales

Trabajo Voluntario de la Comunidad:



La experiencia yo desfruto mas aquí in Costa Rica es trabajo con mis estudiantes en a biblioteca publica. Durante mi tiempo aquí yo digo a David Kaufman que he sentido fantástico cuando yo ayudo la comunidad que me ha dado mucho. Corrientemente tengo siete estudiantes maravillosas. Ellos tienen 13 a 17 anos. Durante las siete semanas pasadas esos estudiantes trabajaron muy duro.

Para mi esos estudiantes son lo mismo que yo. Ells son embajadores culturales de Costa Rica que me enseñen muchas cosas diferentes aquí en Costa Rica. Me gusta la oportunidad de enseñar y aprender con ellos.

En los EE UU los niños de las inmigrantes son embajadores culturales también. Ellos son los testigos ricos con muchas información de los lugares y las culturas diferentes. Yo creo que muchas gente en los EE UU necesita aprender para ser joven embajadores especiales en el mundo.

The Delicate Balance Between Progress and Preservation in Costa Rica

Author´s Note: Due to camera glitches I pulled many of these images from the web. I am working on the kinks and will correct this ASAP.

Personal Journal Week 10:

Throughout my travels here I have been impressed with the amazing diversity of life here in Costa Rica. I am also impressed in the sense of pride Costa Ricans have regarding their national parks. In an article by Newsweek about environmental stewardship, Costa Rica was identified as one of the most environmentally responsible and sustainable countries in the world. Within the last fifty years, this small nation has protected and conserved thousands of hectares of endangered habitats in a complex system of national parks and refugees.

While controversial in some rural areas that resent land use restrictions, Costa Rica´s unique geological, natural, and geographical importance is critical in this part of the world. According to the Lonely Planet, what is now Costa Rica rose up from the ocean 3,000,000 years ago linking North and South America. This provided a rich landscape for the biodiversity of both continents to comingle and diversify.

More than 46,000 species of plants and animals live within a diverse range of habitats in Costa Rica ranging from dry deserts and plains in Northwest Guanacaste to the rich montane and tropical forests in the central mountains and along the coasts. Costa Rica supports numerous marine species as well off its coasts and within the World Heritage island of Coco off the Pacific Coast.

In addition to it´s national park system, Costa Rica´s energy sector is more sustainable than any other nation in this hemisphere. Excluding imports for it´s automotive fleet, more than 95% of this countries electrical power comes from renewable resources (solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro-electric).

Despite Costa Rica´s success there are significant challenges as well. Costa Rica´s rapidly expanding population and development is overtaxing environmental and sanitation systems. Massive developments (including many luxury hotels and other tourist industries) threatens sensitive habitats. Future demands on the electrical grid will create significant challenges (including whether or not to build more large scale hydroelectric projects in environmentally sensitive areas along the endangered Pacuare river.

While Costa Rica is a model for environmental stewardship in this region, there are still significant challenges here. However, it affirms my belief that many of the solutions to complex environmental and energy issues in our own country can be found in the environmental experiments and research that exists in other nations like here in Costa Rica. The key to solving many of the world´s most complex environmental problems will be founded on internation cooperation and research.

¡Pura Vida!