A visit to EARTH

Last weekend we ventured from the dusty smog filled streets of San Jose (what can often seem like a foreign planet) to EARTH.  Earth is a private university, established in the 90s with leftover USAID money, to teach students from all over the world about agriculture and ecology.

In a manner totally typical for our study abroad program, we were provided  at least a pretense of a schedule, which they then proceeded to disregard and change as needed.  [pura vida =) ?  ] We arrived at the university Friday afternoon.After a nasty welcome by fire ants (so many life lessons there.) I marveled at the beauty of the campus.  It certainly was reminiscent of Elon's botanical gardens, and something I had so been craving since starting at Ulatina (whose "campus" consists of two monstrous concrete blocks).  We talked to two of the students about their marketing projects, a unique part of the Earth curriculum. In their third year they form groups of six and are in charge of marketing a sustainable product, everything from developing the product to its design. They have an opportunity to take out a loan from the university, but as the interest rate is 19%,  they also are in every way required to pay it back in full. Some of the the most successful products have transitioned from student idea to university purchased copyright, which they then sell in the gift shop. The projects were just yet another example of Earth's mantra of learning by doing, and seamlessly integrating classroom knowledge with real life experiences.

We were then divided into our pairs for the weekend, and met our host families. Connor and I stayed had the pleasure of staying with Don Eladio, an old, tough looking man who apparently likes to chat.  My Spanish is pretty good by this point, but was little match for the local tendency to speak quickly and slur words, and combined with exhaustion, we ended up doing a lot of nodding and smiling.  As to the apparent lack of family,there were pictures of his kids on the wall and he mentioned their mom living with his daughter in a nearby town. But this seemed like a topic  I shouldn't press further.  We were however joined for the weekend by his house maid/ chef / lover?,  the lovely Olga, who was really everything you might imagine a woman named Olga to look like.

Saturday morning we awoke to the incessant squabbling of the parrots (roosters I can do. I was raised in Lancaster County after all. But parrots?!) and began our day with gallo pinto. Then we were handed machetes (oh boy!) and shown how to properly wield this all-encompassing tool of wonder.  Don Eladio had over 800 coffee trees which he raised completely organically, necessitating a gardender's favorite activity -- weeding.  After samurai-swording down masses of weeds and earning ourselves some worthy callouses, we set off for a lovely hike through the property and down to the river, where the swim was four times as refreshing after having worked for it.

We then went to the La Argentina community center, where we rejoined with the rest of the gringo crew. Afterwards, we  went to one of the other farms for a soccer game, where I learned that my subconscious thinks its a good idea to shriek abruptly in the face of any opponent and then kick the ball mistakenly to the other team (ha!  thanks for taking me out of soccer in the third grade, ma.  I never would have made it).

The weekend overall was a true learning experience, and though I longed to stay longer and learn more about the university in particular, the romp in the dirt had done my soul good and adequately prepared me for another week of catcalls, polluting buses, and surprise torrential rainshowers in the good ol city of San Jose.