Fair warning, I was a ding dong and left my camera at the hotel so I have no pictures from the evening's activities. I know most of you readers reader only check this blog to look at my pictures.
Started the morning off with a very quick tour of el Modulo Lechero. I was under the impression that it was going to be a production plant much like the sugar cane plant, but this site was pretty much the exact opposite. The Modelo Lechero is actually an ongoing science experiment (what the UCR folks call an "investigacion"--it is a very VERY small operation, with about 16 cows that are used for milking and about 8-10 baby calves.
The site kind of looks like a farm, and for the ease of writing I'm going to refer to it as a farm even though it's not really one. The farm is located on the UCR Turrialba campus, just about an eighth of a mile down a gravel road past the main cluster of classroom buildings. A few acres of fenced in grass on which the cows graze, and a small building/corral that is used to milk the cows and probably do some other agriculture-y things.
Oscar, our guide, explained that all of the cows are grass fed and are not used for meat. They do regulate very closely the amount of grass that the cows in-take, and we even saw one cow with what appeared to be a hole drilled into its stomach so that they can do regular colonoscopies (sp?) to check for contaminants in the food sources and also to check the status of the microorganisms living in the stomach that help break down the food. A few students had concerns regarding the "humaneness" of drilling a hole into a cow's stomach, but Oscar explained that it's safe, necessary, and with the cow's best interest in mind because they can't check the microorganisms once the cow's waste has been evacuated--too many other conflicting microorganisms in the air and on the ground, as well as other contaminants, that the UCR faculty wouldn't be able the differentiate between.
The "milking station" is small--only room for one cow at a time. They hook up what looks kind of like a regulator (for my SCUBA readers) or multi suction vacuum that uses air pressure to suck the milk out of the udders. Apparently milking by hand doesn't cut it anymore. They also use the manure for fertilizer. If I don't have to smell cow sh*t ever again in my life, it'll be far too soon.
The morning's tour only took about 2 hours--after that, we were free to prepare for our farewell ceremony and dinner that was scheduled for later that evening. Naturally, I was CRAVING milk after the tour, so as the students and I walked back to the center of town (about a mile from campus), I stopped at the nearest convenience store and ordered a carton of milk (about 1 liter). When I received the carton, I was disappointed that it was not cold...at all. Room temperature in every sense of the term. I saw that the store had refrigerated cartons, but when we inquired about exchanging my carton for a cold one, the vendor said she couldn't sell the ones in the fridge. WHAT. At this point, I'm like, screw it, whatever, I want milk. And proceeded to put away half the carton of room temperature milk right then and there.
Ever been to a restaurant and built the meal up so much in your head that when you eventually get it, you're disappointed? That was me and my milk. In addition to the room temperature, milk in Costa Rica has kind of an odd aftertaste. That didn't stop me from drinking it, but it did make me like it less. Luckily, Coca-cola has universal taste, and I ordered a bottle right when I got back to the hotel. It was fantastic. Dad, keep up the good work. Back at the hotel, while Natalie worked on the presents, I worked on putting together a slideshow of pictures from the program's events--now all you Facebook creepers know why I took so many pictures this week!
The ceremony was very nice--everyone got all gussied up, we decorated the cafeteria with 'murican red white and blue streamers and flags (red, white, and blue, by the way, are also the colors of the Costa Rican flag), and set up the projector with our slideshow. Funny story. I keep all of my music on an external hard drive, which I did not bring with me to Costa Rica for fear of it getting destroyed. I wanted to have music that was representative of American popular culture, but I didn't have access to my iTunes collection because I didn't bring my hard drive. I also didn't want to download any music illegally, because that's not cool, and I didn't want to buy any music while I was down here because that seemed a little overkill to me. Then I remembered that I had music available on my Amazon cloud drive--which could be downloaded and used in my presentation. I had a LIMITED selection of music to choose from--probably like 30 songs--so we showed the slideshow alongside an eclectic playlist of Coldplay's "Paradise", Bob Seger's "Night Moves", Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks", and Edward Sharpe's "40 Day Dream". Ha! Okay maybe not as funny as a story as it sounded in my head.
I just want to offer a brief but heartfelt thanks to a few folks who in particular made our trip so special: Johanna, Jimmy, Juanca, Lolita, Ali, Saul, Lily, Franklin, Iveth, Julio, Luis Pablo, Yudi, Christian, Ileana, Jazmin, and all of the other students, administrators, and host families that made our time at the Atlantic branch campuses so special. Costa Ricans have hearts the size of their meals--absolutely huge. Thank you all for your warm welcome, hospitality, knowledge, patience, and friendship. I promise my Spanish will be better this time next year!
(As a heads up loyal readers reader, we are in the country until Friday, but we leave Turrialba on Wednesday morning). Tomorrow we are going to a Jaguar reserve and a beach in Limon. After that, we're in San Jose for about a day and a half before returning to the States.
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