Sustainability

After a long day yesterday we went out last night to a little bar named Pescaditos.  I had tons of fun with everyone and we all got to know each other even better.  Plus beers are super cheap and the Costa Rican beer "Imperial" tastes great.   I guess I officially bought my first legal beer last night because the drinking age here is 18!  Exciting!  This trip is seriously going to be amazing mainly because of the group of people I am with.  We talked a lot about what we are going to do on our off day next Wednesday, and we are thinking about going surfing at one of the most beautiful beaches in Costa Rica!... hopefully being able to snowboard will help me with that.  After we took a speedy cab home from the bar (which only cost $3 bucks!) we had a little incident at the house with hundreds of ants!  Abbey found a nest of red ants behind the picture frame in her room, and we decided to drench the whole room in Raid.  It was pretty gross but eventually we got it all cleaned up.  People here are just very used to bugs, and I guess we are gonna have to learn to live with them too.

We had our first real class today in a small classroom at Veritas University. Our classes are about environmental sustainability in business and we jumped right into it today. We talked a lot about businesses in general and their goals and how these goals can conflict and be in accord with nature and the environment. We are trying to stray away from the idea, though, that businesses are inherently bad and that environmentalism is good. Businesses should be able to work with their environment rather than against it, and environmentalism can help companies be profitable.  This stiff is so interesting to me and yes, I officially think I am a tree hugger.  We also learned some interesting facts, like when large fishing boats off the coast of Hawaii used nets to try to catch plankton, they found 6 times more plastic at the bottom of the ocean than plankton.  This led us into talking about eliminating waste and certain aspects of the cradle to cradle idea in one of our books.  There is this new clear, plastic film that contains nanocells for solar power and it can be put on windows in order to power buildings and homes.  All of this stuff makes me want to help out with the design plans for the addition my family is putting on our lakehouse.  Maybe we could make it the first eco-home in Lake Geneva.... but I'll have to talk to my dad about that one haha..

Tonight we are going home for dinner with our host families, and Carmen and Fernando always make delicious food so I can't wait... it is so much fun trying all these new things, like the dish we had last night called locro, which has potatoes, corn, some type of yellow vegetable, and spices all mixed together with a cream sauce. Fernando made us some type of vanilla cinnamon cake for tonight so that will be delicious as well I'm sure! After dinner the whole group is off to dance class haha, where we will be learning how to salsa and merengue.... Alright I guess thats it for now, I'll be posting all week so get ready for some exciting stuff (especially this weekend when we go ziplining through the rainforest!!)