Visiting Café Malinche three weeks after arriving in Costa Rica feels like a full-circle moment. I feel different than when first arrived at café. I am much more familiar and comfortable with Costa Rica and being outside of the United States in general, and there’s no more uncertaintity about how the trip is going to go. I’m sad to be leaving, but I’m going to bring some of Costa Rica back to the United States through ways to be more sustainable, not just in souvenirs.
The home stay in Monteverde was my favorite place we stayed at. Our host family was extremely nice and fun. The family was made up of one woman named Ofelia and her husband Miguel, and they had two kids named Jose and Kimberly. We only met Jose once, but they were all welcoming and made me feel at home. Ofelia lived on block with her family all in homes nearby with shared family farm. They grew produce like lettuce, lots of herbs, and vegetable she used to make a spicy sauce for dinners that was really good. All of the meals we had were delicious, though. I want to start gardening back home so that I can avoid harmful growing practices like insecticides, and so that I can try to implement some of the sustainable growing practices we learned on a smaller scale. When my mom used to garden as a kid, she would grow the same plant in one area, but I think it would be cool to try growing different crops near each other to keep the soil healthy like we saw at the banana plantation.
The community our host family in Monteverde had was also inspirational to me. Their kids, parents, and some of their extended family all lived on one street, and they all take care of their farm together. They also all have lunch or dinner together once a week. Community makes it easier to be sustainable because there are people to hold you accountable, and gardening can be a lot of work alone. Having multiple people to help out would make me more likely to stick with gardening instead of going back to easier options like buying all my produce from the grocery store, and we could grow more things together than I could alone. My roommates back in Bloomington and my family in Fishers would probably be interested in helping out, and we could all use gardening time to hang out and catch up with each other. A major part of living more sustainably is to make the environment better for other people, so using that time to form stronger connections with my community makes sense to me.
The house wasn’t very far from town, and Ofelia was really chill, so we walked to town on the first night to finally try Pollolandia. There weren’t a lot of sidewalks, but the cars and motorcycles went around us, and it was a lot less scary than I thought it would be. I live close to the downtown area of my hometown, so I will try to walk there more as opposed to driving. We have sidewalks, but people never really walk on them. I always think it’s strange when I see people walking around Fishers on the street I live by because of how rarely people do it which is sad because most places people go aren’t that long of walks. The cars do speed a lot in that area, but I don’t think there’s that much danger. It’s just annoying how loud the cars are when they pass you. It’s worth it to make small sacrifices to improve the environment, and being less reliant on cars is one way I can do that. The traffic is horrible anyway.
Costa Rica gave me more of an appreciation for nature. The waterfall at Arenal was beautiful, and I will miss the wildlife we’ve seen as well. Seeing all of the diversity in the animals there made me think about what we would be losing if climate change got worse, and that I should try to appreciate the animals we have in Indiana, even if I think they are more boring. I will start going on more hikes with my mom, and I would like to start volunteering more at the parks to be improving the environment while enjoying nature. The ecotourism aspect of Costa Rica allows you to help the environment through learning about it and paying to access parks while having a good time, and I’d like to do more of that in the United States through volunteer work.
I am also hoping to keep the friendships I’ve made here. I thought I would get tired of being around the same people for three weeks, but I never did. When I think of Costa Rica in the future, I will definitely think of them because all of my favorite memories from the trip involve us together. It’ll be weird to go home and not eat with them or play cards at night, but hopefully we’ll find time to hang out during the school year. It’d be hard to get us all together again, but I bet it could happen at least once. Costa Rica would have been a lot more boring without this group of people.
This trip affected me more than I thought it would. I was mostly excited to leave the U.S. for the first time and thought that the class would be interesting but not something that changed me, especially not in only three weeks. Now, I feel more of a personal responsibility to change my behavior to stop climate change from worsening, and I have ideas on how to do it. It was also fun to learn about Costa Rican culture and to see how differently people live in other countries compared to us. I never would have considered not using air conditioning before this, but now I think I could live without it. I’ll miss Costa Rica, but hopefully I’ll come back at some point.
Leave a Reply