Hello friends! Today, Lilly and I, Isherlina, had the opportunity to be leaders of the day! This was a really exciting experience for both of us. Today’s main topic was, as our title reads, exploring conservation. We were able to further immerse ourselves in this idea of conservation by learning information as we sat beside young students who are still in school here. We were able to learn more about the volcano that is just a short distance from which we are staying. This was the volcano of Turrialba. The park rangers who were very generous to us had informed us of the different wildlife that resides around the volcano and around all of Costa Rica! We were able to interact with the children through card games and even soccer! After such a thrilling time, we headed back to Aquiares to have lunch and relax.

Back at our home base after lunch, some of us played Marco Polo in the pool, while others slept and recharged, and then some people also played four square outside. At 2 we had the guest speakers that we met at the school come back to our home base and they explained the history of the conservation of Costa Rica. Fun fact, at one point Costa Rica had almost depleted their resources but has been working on improving since the 60s. We watched videos regarding tourism in Costa Rica and how it affects the environment. We also saw videos on what the active volcano that we can see from our home base, Turrialba volcano, looks like up close. There is a lot of ash and not a lot of life. After that, we had our nightly meeting and we had a discussion about sustainability, and why it is important to integrate into the development projects.

This picture is of PINTA!!!!