A pictures worth a thousand words

I love the gym here where I can go and workout!

The school doctor (on the left) invited Taylar, Raeanne and myself to a bible study at the president´s house. We all shared (in Spanish) prayer requests and then a man with the smooth voice of a tape-recorded book reading gave a message on Psalms 40:8-10 and taught us that God loves us regardless of what we have done and we should share this love with everyone we come in contact with.

5:45 am sunrise heading to volunteer on the beach

Dead sea turtle we saw. This was the only picture of the turtles I could get because the beach prohibits anyone to use white flashlights or flashes on cameras because it causes the turtles to go back into the water

In class! Yes I do study here in case you were wondering

Psalm 57:10 "For great is your love, reaching to the heavens;
    your faithfulness reaches to the skies."

Handstands on the beach

Rules, Rules, Rules

School Lunch- Rice, beans, salad and pinapple juice. This is a very typicall meal here. This weekend we had rice at EVERY meal so I have to get crafty by adding lots of hot sauce or salsa verde to spice it up a little.

Great friends I have meet studying abroad. I am so blessed to be surrounded by these positive, encouraging and smart girls.

Our dinning room

Girls beds for the weekend

Olive ridley sea turtle laying her eggs at night (I think she laid about 120 eggs)

 

This sign reads. Christ is our peace

The government is Costa Rica has made it legal to collect and sell turtle eggs in Ostional. The mission of the project is to fully protect costal and marine ecosystems in particular breeding habits of sea turtles in the Ostional wildlife refuge while local communities benefit and participate in the conservation. The whole community is involved in the collection process, cleaning debris from the beaches and patrolling the beaches. Community members collect eggs by using methods and strategy that are very precise. The men often find the holes with their feet then dig them up. Women are in charge of putting them into bags and then they are put into the ocean. When the eggs hit the ocean, the embryo stops developing because it gets rid of the oxygen and the salt cleans them. The eggs are then brought up the beach to a building where they store all the eggs. The community members are all given 200 eggs for helping out. The eggs are distributed to neighboring communities and the rest of the eggs are taken to be sold. When the eggs are sold, they need a stamp and receipt to certify that it is official. The eggs are sold in bags of 200 for about $22. Any extraction of the eggs without a receipt is illegal.  On average, 4.5 million eggs are extracted for human consumption which is about 1% of the total eggs.

Olive ridley sea turtle nest year round but the peak time is during the rainy season in Costa Rica. The time when sea turtles emerge from the sea and go onto the beach to lay eggs is called “arribadas”, which means arrivals in Spanish. The phases of the moon signal the turtles to come onshore and lay they eggs. The turtles come onto shore, dig a hole with their back flippers and lay their eggs. The turtles lay an average of 100 soft-shelled, white eggs into the hole they dug. Once the eggs are laid, they cover the nest with sand and compacts it down.

My Envoirmental Awareness and Sustainable development class on our weekend field trip to Ostional Wildlife Refuge

This week was full of new and exciting experiences. I also got to volunteer at an orphanage in town and it was one of the highlights of my week. I got to play with a little girl who was three years old and she didn't talk much but she just wanted somone to hug her and give her attention. The smiles on the kids faces made my heart melt and I am very excited to volunteer again. I also got to organize the food pantry at the orphanage becuase they had random donations all over the place with bugs and cocroches crawling everyone. It was such a relieving feeling to get all the food on shelves and organized for the kids. Pura Vida