Blog of a Wimpy Kid: Monteverde Rules

What a month honestly. If you are reading this, I am back home after a stressful day at the airport yesterday. Always make sure to read the date of a flight you want to change to because you might have to wait an extra day to leave. However, having a stressful flight experience doesn’t take away some of the final things that I have learned during this final week in Costa Rica. We started off our climate change unit by doing an activity we did in HUBI 200 called 6 degrees. Basically we had to find a passage in a reading we did that looked at what the world would look like if we heated the globe up by 1 to 6 degrees Celsius. For this trip we had to use an updated version, and if we thought the activity in class was bleak, this version of 6 degrees was a lot more miserable. While depressing, it really put into perspective what could happen to our world, like cities being swallowed and more droughts and floods. What I found interesting too was the inclusion of South East Asia in this discussion, because South East Asia usually gets overlooked in discussions on climate change. It made the whole book more personal and it had me thinking about my family back in Cambodia and how climate change is currently affecting them because even my parents complain about the heat now when they go to visit. But one of the biggest takeaways is that all this change can be mitigated, even if we are expected to heat the globe up between 2 and 3.5 degrees. I think it is important to have hope instead of being pessimistic about this issue since many of these issues are policy based. It is important that people have hope that change can occur because if you don’t believe that we can put the right policies in place, then you have basically given up on trying to solve the issue as a whole.

After our 6 degrees assignment, we had a full day of presentations and our UN debate. The presentations were fine and it was cool to see everyone’s projects and their ideas and their conclusions. The UN debates were also fun, no one took it too seriously like in HUBI but everyone still made an honest effort to make the debates interesting and fun; if people were gonna LARP, I would have lost it honestly. Not too much to say about those two days since nothing really happened. For me, the most memorable moment during these days was cutting open and eating my soursop fruit; some people were complaining about the texture but it was honestly so good and well worth the hype.

The last major thing we did was the homestays and working on the farms associated with Life Monteverde. This section of the last week was fun for me because I like doing work like that and we were able to work with some great people too. I know for the first day, the other group that worked with the animals ran into difficulties, but I got lucky and I was able to help make the compost.

The homestay was the biggest highlight for me though. Ofelia was such a sweet lady and she was almost like a second mom to us. She showed us around her farm and told us about how her and her brothers all live around that farm and how close they all are to each other and it was a really touching experience. It really does take a village, and Ofelia’s farm really showed that. She was also very hospitable and during our entire stay and was very accommodating of our needs; like how all of our food was vegetarian because she didn’t feel like excluding Jake from the food that she was going to make for us.

We finally ended at Valle Escondido, and I think everyone in the class (except for Raef 🙁  ) took happy hour very literally, but we all had a good time with no party fouls and it was just a very chill last night for the class.

While our last week was not too eventful, I think the last week was able to encapsulate what we were doing in class for the past month. Firstly, the last week highlighted one of the main parts of this class which was climate change. I had overheard Dr Wasserman telling some student about how Monteverde was much hotter than when he was there for his study abroad 20 years ago. This was surprising to me because Monteverde felt much more comfortable in a climate sense than La Selva; It also helped that I was able to sleep under blankets at Monteverde. That quote put into perspective how much different our world has become in 20 years, and while I got filled with a sense that something needs to change or else we’ll lose spots like Monteverde, I was also filled with gratitude that I was able to experience these places when I took this class. The last week also showed us what true sustainability could look like. While some of the other places we stayed at varied in their levels of sustainability, the last week had places that seemed to be some of the best examples of sustainability at different scales. Arenal lodge had trails built into the resort that had some cool areas to experience the area a little bit more, the home stays were able to provide food for us from local, or even homegrown sources, and Valle Escondido was similar to Arenal but it was also farm to table.These places showed me that major lodges or resorts can be sustainable and that there are ways for them to improve or simply be better. A third and final tie in was that it really does take a community to make things happen. This class would not have been the same without the people that I got to experience and learn these things with (special shout out to Raef, Jake, and Mira). It also helped that I became the class cameraman, and so these moments were able to be a little more special because I was able to capture them. This has been a pretty meaningful experience for me overall and I would recommend this trip to anyone interested in going. Just know that you’re gonna sweat a lot but the amount of beauty that you see will hopefully be worth it. Just watch out for the bullet ants though, I got bit on my toe and I couldn’t walk properly for a few days (just kidding! Or am I…). To end, maybe the real Costa Rica was the friends we made along the way.