Final thoughts.

Now that I have been back in Canada for a couple of weeks, I have had a little time to reflect on my experience over the past three and a half months. To sum it all up our internship coordinator, Larissa, has given us the task of filling out the follow four questions/statements with the first answer that pops into our heads...here it goes.

Five things that I enjoyed about my internship experience are:
1. The people I met. Probably the most interesting people I have ever met.
2. Living simply
3. Being able to spend time with the community in San Francisco
4. Constant learning
5. Having a physically active job

Five things that bothered me during my internship experience are:
1. Homesickness – at first.
2. Lack of sleep
3. Bug bites
4. Being confined to one space for an extended period of time
5. Living and working in the same place - could be good and bad.

Five things I missed most about Canada/Toronto?
1. Family and friends
2. Hot water
3. The dry season – ie. not 200mm of rain every 3 days
4. Sushi
5. My cat (and now I sound like a crazy cat lady…)

Five things I will miss from my host country?
1. The people I met at the station
2. The abundant wildlife
3. The natural beauty, especially the mountains
4. The simplicity of life
5. Rice and beans...OH AND Lizano sauce

More reasons why I miss Costa Rica...

This is who we were greeted by on morning census walks

My new favourite thing. Why can't Toronto have an ocean?

This view.

And this view...

And this bird! Male resplendent quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno)

Global Citizenship?

This blog assignment, which was to form an opinion on "global citizenship", made me think of the quote from the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall when Russell Brand’s character gets told about his tattoos, “that is Buddhist, that is Nordic, that is Hindu, that’s just gibberish. They are completely conflicting ideologies, and that does not make you a citizen of the world, it makes you full of shit!”. I’m not sure how much I agree with the statement, but when I saw that this blog was supposed to be about our opinion on global citizenship it is what popped into my head first.

This is a hard one…my opinion on global citizenship. Its quite tricky, to form a black and white opinion on something like this, but I guess I have to pick a “side” – at least sort of? For me, I don’t necessarily think it is a redeeming quality, as Larissa put it in her blog assignment, but not a load of hooey meant to make us (privileged North Americans) feel better either – well, maybe a little.

I think that the term "global citizenship", as it exists now, is probably a term used for those who are privileged enough to travel and experience different cultures. That being said, I think that as someone with that privilege (this sounds a bit like Spiderman) it is also our responsibility to not just think within our cultural boundaries.

Being away made me appreciate other cultures, and inspired me to learn more about them, but definitely didn’t make me feel like I was a part of another culture. I still felt like I had a lot more to learn, and no matter how long you stay somewhere, as long as you have plans of returning “home”, I don’t think you can ever fully understand the other culture. I do think that travelling and experiencing different cultures gives you different perspectives and makes you think about your own world differently, which is important. It can open your eyes to issues you never even thought about, and make you appreciate what you have even more. In that sense I think “global citizenship” is a valid notion, however I would not use the term “global citizen”. The connotation that it carries (that you are just a part of the globe like everyone else) makes sense, but the other connotation that you are just as much a part of the other cultures you visit, I think is a miss.

Pura Vida.

“Everyone thinks you need millions to do good things. Really it’s not like that, you just need a little”. This was what a manager at a bird sanctuary told me while visiting the refuge during my last week in Costa Rica.

Taken at the Macaw Sanctuary at El Manantial.

I think that his sentiment and outlook on life really represents a large part of the culture of the people of Costa Rica – not for everyone in the country, but definitely for more than a few people I encountered. To him, in order to run a bird sanctuary successfully – which in his terms, meant successful reintroductions into the wild for hurt or mistreated birds – there needed to be a balance between how much tourism they allowed into the sanctuary, and between education in the community on their work. This meant they needed to limit tourism in order for the birds to have as natural a habitat as possible, therefore there was less income for them. For him, it was more important for the birds to have an undisturbed habitat during their time at the sanctuary than to make lots of money from tours entering the site.  Although Costa Rica is big on eco and volun-tourism, I think that the fact that you don’t need a lot to do a lot, or to be happy, translates through many parts of the culture there. In my experience, some of the most happy people I met were the people that lived the most simply.

Compared to North America, this is obviously very different – I don’t think I need to state the differences (now that I am back home they are even more pronounced). The same idea also carries over into the “pura vida” phrase that you hear all over the country. At first I didn’t get why everyone said “pure life”, to everyone else. But from what I understand, it basically means that no matter where you are you will never be “poor”. You will always have access to food or shelter because the country is so rich with fruit and forests. Everything you need is right there, provided for you by the country. It is pure life.

The person who exemplified "pura vida" the most!

Here are a few more pictures from the beautiful landscapes we had the chance to see before and during our last week in the country.

View from the top of the dock at the station.

Waterfall that we rode to on horseback!

Montezuma scenery...

More Montezuma...can you tell I liked it there?

View from the ground in a cloud forest in Monteverde.