By rachels522
Last week my group returned from a two week trip along the Caribbean side of Costa Rica and Nicaragua. We went to Los Chiles, Nicaragua, which is only accessible by boat. We went on a beautiful ride through the jungle of Nicaragua and Costa Rica where we saw Howler Monkeys, Slider Turtles, Crocodiles, and tons of cool birds. After roughly four hours we got to Los Chiles. It’s a beautiful town. There are no cars. We stayed at a rustic lodge. While in Los Chiles we went on a hike of the Indio Maiz reserve, which was amazing. I had never been somewhere where I felt so secluded (until later in the trip…). While in Los Chiles we got a chance to talk with Minor and Armando, two migrant workers. We were specifically supposed to talk to them about their experiences working on Pineapple Plantations in Costa Rica, but the conversation really branched out. They both work illegally in Costa Rica. They barely get paid enough to survive. It took Minor until he was 21 to finish high school because he kept leaving to go to work to make money. Now he studies agriculture and works whenever he is not in school. It seems like such a hard life. It can be a many hour walk to get to the plantations. While they live in the barracks at the plantations they must work every second they can to make as much money as they can in order to return to Nicaragua with enough money to support the family. It seriously puts into perspective the relative ease in which I live my life and the corrupt way in which food is produced. I’m going to seriously start looking into what is grown in the DC and Boston areas and start trying to make the Eat Local movement something that everybody that I am friends with is aware of and knows about.
On the way home from Nicaragua I experienced one of the most terrifying moments of my life. When we got to the border control area, which is still pretty much in the middle of nowhere, people started getting service on their phones. One professor got an email saying that there was a bombing at the Boston Marathon. I had completely lost track of what day of the week it was so for a second I thought that we were getting the email in real time. It turns out that I got the email a few days late. Of course though I was terrified. I knew friends were running the race. I live extremely close to the Marathon course. I have never been so genuinely terrified. I was lucky that one student on my program had a phone that can make international calls. I called my mom and asked her if everybody was okay. She said as far as she knew all of my friends were fine, but the bombing did occur only 4 blocks from my house. When I returned to Monteverde I was surprised that even my host family had learned about the bombings as they had made international news. I generally do not feel homesick. The day I heard about the bombing was definitely the most homesick I have felt since being in Costa Rica. Really this is the first time I have even felt homesick. I just wanted to be able to talk to my friends immediately, but didn't have the technology. It is still amazing to me how I went for so long in Nicaragua with absolutely no knowledge of the bombing taking place. It reiterates how isolated it is possible to be, even in a rapidly technological world.