INEX » ISU Costa Rica

ISU Diary, 1st of August 2011: Departure

Chantal Strobel — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:45:44 +0000

I enjoyed every day so much that i do not want to leave my new friends so abruptly, but my flight is booked and i am going to take it. After saying goodbye to my beloved host family, i meet Johannes, Anna and David at the airport. We had the first flight together. In Newark our ways finally parted.

Being alone for some hours I started reminding every moment of the previous month in my head, realizing how happy i am having had the opportunity to take part in this program. If you are still thinking about taking part, my dear reader, stop doing so. Thinking doesn’t make you feel – so go out feel the culture of Costa Rica, feel the wind over the costs, hear the nature and laugh with your new friends.

text and picture: Enri Chantal Strobel

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ISU Diary, 31th of July 2011: Our last day in Manuel Antonio

Chantal Strobel — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 15:08:40 +0000

Dear INEX Diary,

Manuel Antonio has been amazing! Sadly, most of us will be leaving today to San Jose for our last day in Costa Rica tomorrow and we’ll be saying goodbye to some of our friends who will be continuing with their adventures through Central America.

After a few hours of sleep, we all met up at the lobby and said goodbye to Laurin, Max, Mariko, Viola, Chris, and Linda, who were headed to Corcovado National Park. There were many hugs, kisses, and promises that we will meet up soon again.

The journey to San Jose was pretty smooth and we only had a bit of traffic at the end. At the bus stop the rest of the group said our final goodbyes and I walked with David back to our Tico families.

Until we all meet again.

text: Sabrina Delgado, picture: Enri Chantal Strobel

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ISU Diary, 26th of July 2011: Final presentations and some great news!

Chantal Strobel — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:50:53 +0000

Dear INEX Diary,

Today, after a great weekend in Cahuita, we attended the final day of our Corporate Social Responsibility class. We took a last look at how corporations can commit to social responsibility. Organizations should strive to, among other objectives, 1) take the leadership, 2) adopt a holistic approach, 3) invest in innovation, and 4) invest in education in order to have sustainable consumers. We concluded the class by breaking up into groups and analyzing FLOREX’s framework of social responsibility. Each group presented their observations to the class based on what they had seen during our visit to FLOREX and based on additional internet research.

After class, Illeana Castilllo, the International Programs Director for ULACIT, came to talk with us about the concerns we had raised regarding the program. On the subject of guest speakers, she brought us the wonderful news that they had managed to arrange three speakers for Thursday: Alicia Jimenez from the Earth Charter, Esteban Ericksen from the Rainforest Alliance, and a representative from ICE. We also discussed and offered suggestions on how to improve the program in general for future participants.

During our lunch break some of us prepared for our Spanish class final presentations and took time off to play some Ping Pong!

Spanish class with Profesora Carvajal was quite fun. Both Chris and Max volunteered to do final presentations today while the rest of us (Petra, Johannes, Viola and I) decided to present on Thursday. Chris presented us with a talk on the Bri Bri indigenous people, while Max gave us his perspective on tourism in Austria and Costa Rica.

At night, some of us met up at Rollings Stone! A place I will dearly miss ;).

Until the 31st…Sabrina

text and picture: Sabrina Delgado

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ISU Diary, 25th of July 2011: Holiday

Chantal Strobel — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:40:34 +0000

On July 25th, a few of us(including me) took the chance to use the one day off to stay a little longer in Cahuita! That short vacation was what we needed to recharge our batteries and to fight our lack of sleep! We stayed in a high-end hostal right at the sea, enjoyed the carribbean weather and food and also enjoyed a couple of drinks! All together it was a rather successfull extension of our Cahuita-trip… unfortunately we couldn´t stay longer and had to take the 4pm bus back to San Jose, where we were expected by our hostparents already.

text: Maximilian Haller

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ISU Diary, 24th of July 2011: Cahuita National Park

Chantal Strobel — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 14:38:20 +0000

On Sunday we went by bus from our nice Hotel in Puerto Viejo to Cahuita to see the National Park there at the Caribbean Coast. At the National Park we had a little tour by our travel guide Jenny from Horizontes. Unfortunately there was not much wildlife to see but the landscape and nature right next to the beach were quite beautiful. Thus most of us decided to have a relaxing time at the beach to enjoy the ocean and the sunny weather.

In the afternoon our tourist bus went back to San José but half of the group decided to stay one more day in Cahuita because the following Monday was a holiday in Costa Rica. Apparently I was one of the lucky people to spend one more day at the Caribbean culture part of the country. In the little village where we stayed it was how you would expect the Caribbean side – everybody was totally chilled and in a good mood. And thanks to our great hostel next to the ocean with great hammocks in the front yard we had no problems to adapt that mood! After some good food at a tiny restaurant and a get-together in front of our hostel we went to a small pub and enjoyed there the rest of a very recreative day. To sum up, it was definitely worth it to stay a little bit longer at this side of the country!

text and picture: Laurin Wuenneberg

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ISU Diary, 23rd of July 2011: Banana Plantation

Chantal Strobel — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:13:41 +0000

This Saturday our field trip already started at Parque de Tibas at 6 p.m. We were looking
forward to an interesting field trip to the Caribbean coast to visit a banana plantation being
located close to the Cahuita National Park, which we will visit on Sunday.

On our way to the coast we made a quick stop for having breakfast with lots of fresh fruits
and some delicious gallo pinto. After everybody was now full of energy, we were directly
driving to the plantation. Our field guide Jenny already told us that our guide on the plantation
would be absolutely inspiring and that her whole knowledge about bananas would come
up from this person. Coming up to the plantation the guide warmly welcomed us and gave
everybody of us a small cap out of a net, which everybody had to wear for hygienic reasons.
Going around the plantation he gave us a quick overview about the history, the harvesting
and the packing of the plants until being exported. During the presentation lots of mules were
going going up and down the plantation to transport the bananas from the plantation to the
machines, where each banana will be perfectly prepared for the export. After his presentation
we also had a great Q&A session, in which he e.g. said that the biggest importer would be
Sweden and that he hopes that China will become more interested in Costa Rican bananas in
future times.

After learning a lot about the harvesting of bananas we were driving to Puerto Viejo, where
we were finally cheching in to Perla Negra hotel. It’s been a great location with a pool,
lots of various plants and we also had a nice terrace. Nevertheless everybody wanted to go
to the beach next to the hotel. It’s been absolutely amazing, but we had to take care not to
swim out that far because the waves were extremely strong at that area. After taking dinner
in downtown some of us decided to go back to the beach at night, during which we had an
exciting moment when we saw some falling stars.

text: Dennis Scherer, picture: Mariko Yamamoto and Dennis Scherer

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ISU Diary, 22nd of July 2011: Florex

Chantal Strobel — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:12:36 +0000

Today, after meeting at the entrance of ULACIT at 8:30 a.m., we went to Florex in Alajuela. Florex is a company of cleaning products. Their products do not contain ingredients that are considered carcinogenic, mutation generators, fetus malformation agents or that are neurotoxic. Not only that, their products achieve biodegrability over 70%, and the majority of products can reach 100% biodegradation over 28 days.

Through lectures and discussions, we could understand the importance of producing environmentally friendly products.

After lunch, we visited PARQUE DEL LAGO, The living hotel in San Jose. It is a so-called sustainable hotel, however, I could not understand which part of the hotel is sustainable. (；一_一)

The tour ended at 4:30, and I went to downtown SanJose for shopping with Anna! （*^_^*）

text: Maiko Temmei, picture: Enri Chantal Strobel

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ISU Diary, 21st of July 2011: Salsa

Chantal Strobel — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:47:55 +0000

Todays program at the university was supplemented with another dancing class, this time with a new instructor. But first we had our regular corporate social responsibility class followed by our Spanish lessons. Our Spanish professor brought some of the fruits, we tried yesterday at the mercado central to class, and to there where again some completely new ones amongst them. We had Mamón chino, Yuplón, Limón dulce, Guayaba, Guanábana and Jocote. After classes we were invited to go to the dancing class in the university’s aula. Our Salsa instructor showed us how a good Salsa Performace should look like, when one has trained long and hard enough how to dance. It was very interessting, but probably none of our group is dedicated to Salsa enough to reach that level and unfortunately there were less attendents than in the first class.

text and picture: Johannes Rauter

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ISU Diary, 20th of July 2011: Mercado Central

Chantal Strobel — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:39:11 +0000

Hola!!! Como estas? It’s the 20th of July and unfortunately we have already reached the halftime of the programme. Nevertheless we are having a really good time. The day started with the CSR-course where we learned about responsible marketing and the sustainable way how Costa Rica deals with tourism, which is their number one income.

The Spanish course was very different to the other days because we visited “Mercado Central” which is in San Jose downtown. “Mercado Central” is a big indoor market which is well visited by Ticos and tourists. For me, as a European, it was impressive how much different kind of fruits, vegetables and herbs you can buy. Papayas, Pineapples, Maracuyas, Mangos, Kiwis, Bananas and many more fruits opens up the heart of everyone who loves tropic, colourful and sweets fruits. So for sure it opened up my heart!

A few of us have spent the evening in a Lebanese Restaurant which changed to a discothèque at night. Electronic music and nice people guarantied a really nice ending of this intense day. I’m looking forward to the dancing class tomorrow. I hope we can improve our Salsa and Merengue skills.

Raggeaton and Rock’n’Roll!

text: Benjamin Zessner, picture: Enri Chantal Strobel

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ISU Diary, 19th of July 2011: Integrate CSR

Chantal Strobel — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 12:25:31 +0000

The second lesson of the Corporate Social Responsibility course was given by Florencia Gonzalez. The overall Today’s topic was how to integrate CSR into business operations, with special regard to human rights, labor issues, and shareholders. Firstly, we talked about were the principles of social responsibility defined by the ISO 26000, which are accountability, transparency, ethical behavior, and respect for shareholder interests, the law, international norms of behavior, as well as human rights. Secondly, we defined the business phrase shareholders and classified ways how to identify and priories them. We continued with a group exercise, which was about the tourism industry in Central America. We were given three examples of hotel chains whose actions lead to social conflicts in new settings, like for instance the destruction of natural resources or disputes with the local communities. Our task was to identify their shareholders and come up with socially responsible but realistic solutions.

After a short break we continued with the seven principles of social responsibility and the specific actions that are related to them. Regarding labor practices, we discussed the case of the ice tea producer Lipton which benefits from their positive labor actions in Africa since they satisfy their labor force so that they are faithful and motivated. Finally, we had a second group exercise which was about actions regarding organizational governance, human rights and labor practices taken by supermarket chains and the chemical company Beraca, which produces in Brazil.

After lunch break and Spanish class, we had the possibility to enjoy a private dancing show in the auditory. Camillo, our dancing teacher, and his dancing partner showed us a compilation of various Latin American dance styles which we presumably will have to learn next Thursday.

text and picture: David

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