December 2016 – Liz Guinessey: A Gringa Living the Pura Vida

Saludos de Costa Rica!

I am just about to hit the one month mark of my Fulbright, and I truly cannot believe how the time has flown! The transition to living here was remarkably easy, especially after spending several months in south Florida directly before my departure.

I am currently stationed in San Pedro, a a city in the San Jose area of Costa Rica. It is home to several large universities, including la Universidad de Costa Rica, and it’s an area known for having a lot of students. It is also close to Fundacion Neotropica, the NGO I will be working with throughout my Fulbright year. I was originally not looking forward to living in the capital, as it’s not particularly known for its green spaces, but it is truly starting to grow on me. There are several cute little neighborhoods that have a very Brooklyn feel, and especially with the holidays coming up there are cultural events just about every weekend. I am particularly looking forward to the Festival de la Luz this upcoming Saturday – essentially a giant parade of lights and floats for the holidays.

This past Sunday I had the chance to head to Chomes, Puntarenas, one of the areas that I will be working in throughout my time here. I went with Fundacion Neotropica for an Environmental Festival celebrating the end of their season down there doing environmental education and mangrove reforestation activities. We left San Jose at the crack of dawn to get there with enough time to prepare, and the whole Festival was nothing short of adorable! There were brief presentations on Blue Carbon and its importance, and then the attention shifted over to the children of Chomes. They built a paper mache model of their watershed, including where their little town falls right by the mangroves. They read a poem on the mangroves and had a choreographed dance to a song against pollution. Like I said, nothing short of adorable..