Conservation Areas in Costa Rica

I love the desert, but I’m biased because I grew up in it. Still, it is beautiful in its own way. I like its big open spacious valleys and that you can see for miles and miles. It’s big, mostly bare mountains tat are dark blue in the morning, gray in the afternoon sunlight, and purple in the sunsets. The big, open sky helps too contrasting with the mountains. This time I was crossing it to get to Costa Rica.

Everyone wishes they could fly; I love to fly, and when we do is it still the scene is still awing. And the fact we created the knowledge to do so is incredible. But we aren’t talented enough to harness the freedom of the birds. We are 30,000 feet in the air and not amongst the people and their doings, experiencing them like the birds. I started to think about this in the air, jealous of the people the birds meet and the things they get to see and experience.

I think everyone should travel abroad, to learn what you and what you don’t have. To experience the different lifestyles and know there is more than one way to do things. We can learn from the unknown and don’t have to fear it if we can take the time to understand it.

We had three destinations, UGA, San Gerardo and Caño Palma, with a couple stops in between at Alajuela and Arenal Paraiso. If you were to ask me which place was my favorite, I don’t think I would be able to answer that. I think each place for different reasons.

UGA

UGA is a branch of the University of Georgia Costa Rica. As you probably guessed lots of students from UGA come to visit. It was a nice campus, like a comfortable cabin lifestyle. The thing that was most impressive about this place was their range of food source and a recycle system called the bio-digester.

The range of source wasn’t impressive because of how big it was, but because of small, it was. They grew 20 percent of the own food on their farm, bought 65 percent of it from farms within a 10-mile radius, and the rice and beans from a little farther for the rest of the 15 percent. And this feeds all the people they need to accommodate. While we were visiting there probably was about 100 people at one time. I thought it was cool they only sourced from local farms and has definitely inspired me to buy locally more often at the farmers market and get involved with Bountiful Baskets. 

The more impressive was the poop recycle system. Most, if not all, the pipelines went lead downhill to a center hole in the ground and in this hole lived bacteria that ate our waste. The byproduct of the bacteria was methane, which is even worse the atmosphere than carbon, but instead of releasing the methane into the atmosphere it rises into a bag. This bag was connected to more pipes that lead to the kitchen, and the methane was used to cook our food. This recycling system was dumbfounding because it takes feces and makes it into a resource that is reusable other than fertilizer. It is also valuable because it fits into the scheme of our culture of plumbing as well. This recycling system isn't efficient for individual households but is doable of neighborhoods. Also, you haven't to be consciousness of the amount of soap, shampoo, conditioner and etc. you use, because the bacteria can handle too much of it. Regardless, it could become a recycle system that becomes quite popular. 

This was the test version of the biodigester when UGA first started doing research. The bag below it contains the bacteria and the bag above it will capture the methane. The methane bag isn't full in this one because they have a bigger one for the whole campus now in a different location. 

Eternal Children's Rain Forest

The Eternal Children's’ Rain Forest was even deeper into the rain forest. We have to walk down to the San Gerardo Station in the mud on a fairly wide road and eventually forked off into the trees. We were led there by our wonderful guide Alexia, who is an American who visited Costa Rica and never left.

Like UGA, this place had very accommodatable bunk room, and these ones sat on top of an extremely long back porch included with hammocks, a rocking chair and an incredible view of Arenal volcano. We were taken care of here, by a lovely family who lives there and whose job is to host visitors as they come and go.

The husband, Giovani, had grown up in this part of Costa Rica but knew it when it was covered in farmland not forest as a little boy. Looking at the forest now that leads all the way to Arenal, it is amazing to think that anybody made this land into a farm. The even more incredible thing is that grew back to become a forest again with the help of some children and funding in a foreign country.

I reflected on driving through the rolling green mountains to get here and seeing all the farmland there. I know farming is necessary, but Costa Rica has taught me that farming isn’t the greatest thing for the land and that the agriculture era may have done more damage than good in some cases.

I already use reusable bags, ride my bike when I can,  and actively recycle for me and my roommates, but again this inspired to start seeking more local means of food resource instead of relying on food in the grocery stores that has been shipped from miles and miles away.

Caño Palma

Caño Palma was along the coast and had some local people not too far from it, but still pretty deep into the forest. It sat next to a river as black and freshly brewed coffee and was probably the most diverse in people.

Researchers bunk out here from all over. While we were there, there was one researcher from Scotland, one from Germany, one from France, two from Mexico, three from the Netherlands, and three from the United States. It was so fascinating to hear how they had gotten here and to help them with their research. They were doing all kind of surveys; sea turtles, macaws, snakes, otters, caimans, butterflies, and even community work at the nearby school.

It was rejuvenating to hear their stories and even more empowering that they were doing these amazing things and research and were all around our own age.

All three of these places in Costa Rica were very awe inspiring. 

Mister Araña

Short Story: Mister Araña

Solitude. It’s peaceful; It’s rejuvenating; it’s casi callado. I don’t think I’ve been to such an unfamiliar place that has made me feel so comfortable. I am curious, excited and nervous but calm to meet new beings. Even los bichos are fun to find and listen to; although I still could do without their bites.

Oh, look! Un extrañjero with red pelo. I want to meet him, but I am also a little shy. He was nervous too, but I grabbed con dos hojas and ran to a friend of a friend. He stayed calm for most of the walk and just stared at me. I glanced at him and back at the path as I continued to walk.

¿Christian, quien es? 

¡Oh, Mister Araña! I am surprised you found him!

Whispers, “Is he friendly?”

“Yeah, he can have a strong grip sometimes, if he is nervous.”

“Can you shake his hand first?”

Christian slowly and gently extends his hand out to Mister Araña. I could see a little nervousness in both their eyes, but the Mister Araña reached out gently too.

I reached out my hand. One mano, dos mano, tres mano, cuatro mano, cinco, seis, siete y ocho!

¡Hello Mister Araña, much gusto!

He was a little nervous still, but he warmed up after he walked around a while. You could see the innocence in his ojos and his pasos were so gentle and soft.

We had a nice walk back to where we met and parted at the tree.

¡Adiós Mister! ¡Tarantula! Pura Vida!

True Short Tale 

This story is a true story and happened one afternoon in the Eternal Children’s Rain Forrest near the station of San Gerardo. Our study abroad group was stepped out for the afternoon to walk around the rainforest and do a bit of writing. I became very fond of the birds in Costa Rica partly due to another we had and partly because I was just mesmerized by the life in Costa Rica and fell behind the group with another peer. The group seemed to go just around the corner and we didn’t take too much time to follow. We continued up the road behind their fading voices. After a while we weren’t so sure we were still on the same trail as them; we began to look for footprints in the mud and grass. We ventured down and back three trails until we finally found tracks on the fourth. It wasn’t a panic though, but enjoyable. We knew they couldn’t be too far and we knew the way back to San Gerardo. Along the way we have millipedes upon millipedes and more millipedes, a snake slithers by, and bird teased us with its call as it jumped up the trail alongside us in the trees never revealing itself.  

This is the tarantula I found hiking around San Gerardo int he Eternal Children's Rain Forest. I tried identifying him, but it is still unknown what kind of tarantula he is. 

We had been gone awhile by the time we caught up with the others, and they were finishing up their writing. So, I went a little farther and was getting ready to sit down and scribble down what I could when I saw this little tarantula cross the road. I had held a wild tarantula once before in southern Utah and I was excited to try and hold this one. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t poisonous and one of my peers was pretty knowledgeable about reptiles and such, so I thought he might know. It took a little to get the little tarantula onto a couple of leaves so I could carry it to my friend to ask. He said he didn’t think it was and slowly held it first, then we let him crawl amongst our hands. It was probably a good thing it didn’t bite anybody though because I have been trying to identify it and haven’t found a match yet.  

Nevertheless, it was a fun experience to hold our eight-legged friend and inspired me to write this short story along with the prompt from my professor.

My Final... So What?

Thumbs-up, double taps, and re-tweets are all forms of income. Income that people are willing to exploit behind the mask of a computer screen and name change of a screen-name. And behavior that advertisers are willing to pay for all for the sake of your attention. We live not only in a media world but a world where the media receives its paycheck signed by advertisement.

As technology had developed media followed shortly after. From pamphlets and newspapers, to the oratory of radio, then visual for the TV and not only affordable but free accessibility to surmountable amounts of information, and it is a beautiful and remarkable resource we have come to create for ourselves. But... it seems to me that in the beginning of these technology and media co-evolution people enjoyed being entertained, but they also valued being informed at an affordable cost. Now it seems we have blended the two values to create "infotainment."

Also the surmountable information provided by the internet seems to have given us the inherent right that information should be free. David Raanan writes in his in his Linked-Post "Do We Care More About Being Entertained Than About Being Politically Informed?," that our culture has put on emphasis on entertainment and we now subjected to a "Darwinian process [where] the less entertaining is weeded out [and] the more entertaining survives to be broadcasted," or now with social media shared, retweeted, and reposted with the identity of a hashtag. Along with entertainment comes the value of escape, because we can opt out when we don't want to be informed or when we aren't being entertained enough. No wonder mediums are now competing with other mediums for our attention and fact and opinion are hard to decipher between the two. Because media is willing to exploit whatever to get our attention for profit, and now we are doing it to ourselves on social media. This is becoming the norm and why we are being desensitized.

Despite the negative intro I don't think everything in the media is bad, there is a lot of good, a lot of information and a lot of people taking advantage of that resource, but I don't think that is of the majority. As Monica Lewinsky had as one of her points that along with our amendment right to freedom of speech and expression comes responsibility and for some reason the internet seems to throw that out the door. 

One thing I didn't agree with that Lewinsky had said was that "shame cannot survive empathy." In some cases it is sadly the truth, but I think random acts of kindness can deter people from taking there own lives and show even the slightest light or bit of good in the self-consumption of shame. Like Lewinsky said "consistency creates change" and that led me to ask the question "How do you build change?" I think like most things that starts individually and individually you can start consuming social media and media with a sense of responsibility.

One way I think we can do that is by using the report feature given to us on most, if not all social media, because its not just for reporting explicit content, but you can even click on the option to say that "I'm not interested in this tweet," or Facebook Post, or Instagram picture. Instagram provides even more options that I think are powerful like "Hate speech or symbols", which could be used to try and break down stereotypes, or "Self injury" that could provide help for people that are seeking it and need it.  The algorithm for those seem like a curiosity to me, but I think it can be a step in the right direction. 

I know over the past two years my consumption of social media has dramatically declined, keeping up with a few people from time to time, but I think it is because I hated wasted my timing on things or even people I didn't care about. I have gone through and tried to filter people into groups, but still haven't seen the changes in my feed like I have wanted. I think the report feature is worth a shot to try and help me filter through social media to make it a more powerful tool for myself. 

To see a consistent change in our culture today I think we have to re-separate our values of being informed and entertained and realize the value and opportunity we have to be informed. Individually that starts we us becoming more conscious of what we want and don't not want to be consuming, which is a goal I have been working toward and want to continue to do so.  

Extra Credit: From Alexander the Great to the so-called Islamic State

My memories of September 11th, 2011 are short, being that I was only the age of seven. The second grade memories I do have started with a class interruption then we turned on the TV to the news and watched as the events unfolded. Beyond that I remember Mrs. Greenland trying to have a class discussion with us explaining what was happening. There of course was a lot of confusion and questions, and it was hard for us to grasp what the bad guys were doing. The only other thing I remember after school is the news was on a lot at my house, more than usual, which I despised because I hated the news as a kid. But then that was it, in my mind 9/11 only lasted a few days.

Only years later was I able to grasp the magnitude of what had actually happened, but honestly since then things haven't gotten much clearer. I am still confused on what the "bad guys" are doing and why.

Shadman Bashir is a very knowledgeable man and an inside view to what is actually going on and was a unique experience to listen to him. Chronologically I am still very lost and I think that I definitely would have a more comprehensible understanding if I could listen to the lectures two or three times over. Then maybe I could have a basic sense of what happened, why and be able to answer those questions contemporarily as well. But the theme that I took away was the fearful question of "Who is our enemies?"

His lecture reminded me of a picture I had posted earlier to my blog.

For one reason or another this picture or more like the statement within the picture resonated sincere to me. "The group most affected by Islams terrorism is Muslims." This was also further supported by by Bashir's lecture. But yet we are ignorant by our own western fear that we are more at risk and the media feeds our fear by reiterating the Paris attacks over again and again, but ignoring stories of Beruit and minimize the attacks because they weren't western?

Terrorism is a tactic of fear but when the trending act of a shooting occurs by one of our own they are labeled as a gunman, but when it is someone foreign to us we label them as terrorism. Yet the the minimal occurrences of terrorism we have had in the US is trending in the middle-eastern daily, but we are the victims? They are truly the ones faced with the question "who are our enemies?" when they are misunderstood by most and therefore feared by all because our ignorance won't let us see past the our fear of differences.

I think the most surprising thing was that is wasn't always religious, but I do think that plays a huge role in masking who the enemies are for us and even more so for them, because they can't tell the difference between a Muslim who has been promised 72 virgins and one who has not. But our western downfall is that we aren't even aware of the different Muslim interpretations and the exploitation thereof for the younger generations born into these desperate times, but instead have we have labeled them by their looks under our western universal belief of their religion.

This inside from Bashir has helped me find some of the pieces unseen in our media. I definitely will use my notes to help put the pieces together on trying to continue to understand what is really going on, but I am fearful that that what I find will only be a filtered westernized answer.

Facebook Final

Originally I was hoping to work with an already existing page titled "NCHC Partners in the Park", but was still waiting to get the OK. Which I did, but not before the honors adviser at SUU, asked if I wanted to do a more specific page underneath the same organization. But if we are being honest, I wish I would have gone with my plan c to scratch the back of a local auto-body shop after they helped me out in the recent collision I was in, just because I believe it would have been a more successful page.


Anyways the page I worked with was the late bloomer titled, "Partners in the Park: SUU," which is     just a branch under the same organization hosted by SUU with their specific adventures, or projects as they are called, down in southern Utah.

Execution of Tactics: So PITP is an organization that was made to give honor students the opportunity to outdoor experiential learning at national parks and monuments across the country. And I was going to try and cater to the projects specifically offered by SUU, such as Cedar Breaks, Zion, Bryce, and Sequoia. I planned on building a specific community of people who already had a experienced, is experiencing, or will be experiencing one of the projects offered by SUU, with potential of advertising to eligible participants. Not only did I want to find these people, but remind them of their experience, tease the experience they were about to have, or let them know what type of experience was offered and start discussions that way. Also was hoping share PITP goal of educating how to love your parks, but not love them to death. My Facebook campaign definitely had hints of what I was trying to accomplish, but didn't reach to the potential I know it can generate, one of my hindrances was lack of guidance from the adviser I was working with on ideas she wanted to see, as well as not having access to old photos, registrants lists, and itineraries. This also hinder my own research for potential content for the page, but I definitely think I could have been a bit more proactive then I was.

Logos: PITP originated at SUU in 2007 with two projects, one to Bryce and another to Cedar Breaks. PITP has now grown into offering 11 projects for 2016 spread out across about ten different states, and yet they don't appear to have a recognizable logo.

So when creating this logo my goal was to try it universally recognizable, but versatile enough to adjust to the individual projects.


 This is the versatile logo. (Not this specific color)












The logo selected for the page.

The logo I'm proposing for the organization overall.
(Also not necessarily this color.)






Likes: I first started recruiting likes by inviting the people I had met on my PITP project and then the students that had signed up for the upcoming trip in Zion, along with the advisers thereof and a few others associated with SUU honors program. All my likes were organic, other than the desperate class likes Professor Young gave me for my second wave of likes, but desperate likes do pop up on the charts. I topped out at 42 likes, got a straggler at the end, and didn't have any unlikes.

Posts, reaches, types:

So a quick screen shot of some of the posts I made. Once I got things moving along I got, I've averaged about a 50 percent reach given the number of likes I had at the time. The interesting thing is that it didn't seem to depend too much on my timing, whether it was nine in the morning, or three or four in the afternoon, it stayed about 50 percent reached. The reach seemed to reflect about what I got, but I feel as though Facebook was lying to me when it came to the shares, or at least I never got notified. 

I was surprised to see that the couple of links I posted reached a few more people than I thought they would and I even got a click, woop woop. Definitely my most successful post by far was an album I posted from the recent project I went on. Pictures obviously a huge context on Facebook in our visual era, more importantly those pictures have people, and more importantly than that is that you tag those people. The album reached 444 and 33 engaged and continuing to do so, so that is exciting and which is why I had access to some photos from those older trips. 

People: So because my audience is such a specific group I wasn't surprised that my main age group was between ages 18-24, the average college and undergrad age. More women are involved and like that page, which might be because women are typically more active on Facebook, but also because the majority of women attend these projects. Something I am hoping to change and think the Facebook page could help accomplish to appeal to young men, like Derek Walters, in my targeted audience. 

The next biggest age group was the one after between ages 25-34, which I would guess are some of the advisers and professors involved thereof and likewise into the older ages. Definitely would like to see an increase in the ages as older trips and brought back and as the page and program continues respectively to really build that community and the memories made there. 

The people ranged from all over the country, which also doesn't surprise me based on the PITP organization, but also exciting to see it branch out in those ways. Below is the map of my targeted audience in the ad I created to give you an idea. 

Self-Evaluation / Summary: This campaign definitely has a lot more potential than I was able to produce over the summer. One of the reasons being I didn't have access to the information I wanted, but I also wasn't as proactive as I could have been. I was a bit hesitate to just "go for it," being that I was representing another organization and university. I am hoping to actually continue working with the page. I love this organization and want to continue to be a part of it as it continues to grow and help it in its growth. Couple things that I would and/or will continue to do differently is; One, become more educated on the parks and the projects that will be and have been offered. Two, if I took on more campaigns I might make a separate individual, but professional Facebook account, so that way I could like people and pages that I need to like for the campaigns, but keep my personal page separate.

I definitely still have a lot to learn about Facebook and its inner workings, but this has been a great introduction.

Facebook Ad

The demographics of my ad were a little tricky. I wanted to appeal to the ages of 18 to 25, specifically, but I feel like it might reach them word of mouth through honors advisers and programs. So I kept  the range from 18 to 35, hoping to accomplish that.

I tried to accomplish gearing toward universities also used the most recently list of participants who are attending the next project in Zion and set my zones on the maps in the cities and towns where their universities were located.

I geared the demographics and interests toward fields like college students, college advisers, honors students and outdoor exploring, national parks, etc. 

I didn't have too many photos to work with, so I just wanted to use to logo I had created, also as a starting point to build some familiarity there. I found it frustrating trying to size the photo to fit well and so it was so skewed. It still wasn't the best, but I am not the most tech savy person. 

For future ads, I would definitely like to see them craved out to be more specific, like gearing toward a specific university or reaching out to more male students, as the majority of the participants are female students. Also if I had access to some of the older photos, definitely using them to re-express what the experience could be like for people. 

Automatic Attitudinal Response: Food Stamps

This post took me a little longer to think about, which is probably a sign that I am not very aware of my automatic attitudinal responses. I tried to think what makes me a little tick and memories of my hometown actually popped up. Now a little disclaimer, I love my hometown and glad I grew up there because I think it helped make me who I am, as did the places or places you grew up, but as always there is a but.

But I had two pet peeves when I worked as a cashier at our one and only grocery store. One, scanning all the junk food that went through the check line before they swipped their food stamps and two, helping them out to their Cadillac Escalade.

Of course I defaulted to finding a source that defaulted with what is wrong with food stamps.

Top 10 reasons Food Stamps Need to be Reformed

This article agreed with some of the points I felt was wrong with food stamps, such as creating dependency, and it is prone to fraud and being an abused system. It also brought awareness to maybe some other issues, such as the programs goal aiming for enrollment versus need.

This short documentary explains some of these same points also, although I am a little skeptical about where the source of the this documentary, very one sided perspective.

I tried to learn a little more about how food stamps work. This video makes it seem like it isn't easy to abuse the system but then how many more people are getting boob jobs while on food stamps? Or is this a marginalized example? 

I am sympathetic to the families who truly do need it like Mercedes. She is very respectful and has an incredible amount of integrity, but is she also a marginal example?

Thinking back to that job now I wish I would have paid a little more attention to who was really using food stamps, to who was buying the junk food versus nutrition, etc. Is it marginalized in my own mind based off my own experiences? Is the media only showing us marginalized examples?

I don't notice food stamps really anymore since I haven't been a cashier and don't see it on a daily basis, but I am still skeptical of the system. I definitely there is room for improvement, less abuse, quality over quantity and so families like Mercedes can have afford nutrition while they are trying to get back on their feet and even buy a few sweet treats to enjoy for her and her family.