That yogurt though...

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain and birds chirping.  The rain was great, but I think some birds were having a heated debate from the sounds of the chirps that they were making.  I have to say one thing, when you don't have air conditioning, rain is your best friend.  It cools everything off so much and definitely makes things better.  After getting dressed and reminding myself that birds are beautiful creatures in nature, we headed to EARTH University.  This university has students from over 30 countries in the world.  The degree that students earn from this university is a bachelors on agronomy.  After getting to EARTH, we went to their cafeteria for breakfast.  We were served fresh fruit, eggs, beans, rice (obviously, you knew that one was coming), and also yogurt.  Most of the foods that we ate are produced on the campus grounds.  The yogurt was so good.  I can't wait to eat more for breakfast tomorrow.  After breakfast, we viewed a video about the university.  EARTH receives about 1,200 applications from students every year and they usually accept around 100 students per year.  The interesting thing about this university is that they only accept students that are leaders.  They also refer to them as "agents for change."  The goal at EARTH is that after graduating these students can go back to their home countries and  use the knowledge they obtained to help their communities grow.  After watching the video, we toured the banana plantations. It was so cool to see all of the banana trees lined up.  Each tree with banana plants had a blue plastic bag wrapped around the plant.  These bags helped to create microclimates for these plants.  After seeing the banana plants , we went to the banana processing plant.  This was by far one of the coolest parts of the day.  We were able to see how the bananas were packaged to be shipped out to Whole Foods in the U.S. and to other countries around the world.  The ship about 940 boxes of bananas everyday.  That is a lot of bananas.  The blue bags that were wrapped around the bananas were also turned into plastic pieces to support the boxes that are shipped.  After watching the workers place the stickers on each individual banana, my mind was blown (not to mention they were incredibly fast).  I don't think I will ever be able to look at bananas the same way again.  After the processing plant, we went to another area of gardens that are on the property.  These gardens had unique ways of making the most out of the area that they had.  We also got attacked by killer ants.  Those things were no joke.  Our last stop was at the farm.  They had cows, horses, pigs, and a few rabbits.  At the farm they take manure and send it through a process to create methane gas.  This has helped many businesses and individuals to conserve energy and save money.  Along with the farm came some wonderful smells (I'll leave those up to your imagination).  That was the end of our tour and then we went eat lunch.  we spent the afternoon hanging out at the university.  Most of our afternoon was spent hanging out by the pool.  We watched some Costa Rican swimming lessons and also got to watch Chris play soccer with a little kid named Alejandro.  Alejandro was pretty good even though Chris believed he represented the United States well.  EARTH University is definitely a unique university that provides many opportunities for their students.  Dr. mike gave us another phenomenonal question to answer today. :) He asked us, 

"As a student or employee  are there any principles or concepts that you take with you from EARTH to benefit your organization or other businesses in the U.S.?"  I believe that the main concept that I would take back with me from EARTH to benefit organizations and businesses in the U.S. would be to understand the true importance of ethics.  The video for EARTH stressed and made clear just how important it is for their potential students to be very ethical individuals.  As an accounting major, I learned quite a bit about the importance of ethics.  The topic of ethics has proven itself to be a very important concept of accounting due to scandals that have happened, such as Enron.  I believe that having a strong foundation in ethics would help to make businesses better in the United States.  Don't get me wrong, some professions do have a focus on ethical behaviors, but I believe that if more companies would take ethical behavior more seriously businesses could improve.  A step that businesses could take is to begin implementing ethical behavior programs for their employees.  I also believe that if the top management shows that they care about being an ethical business, then that would trickle down to all employees.  In my eyes, having ethical awareness could be a step in the right direction for U.S. businesses and organizations. Today was really a great day.  It was so cool to see how universities in other countries operate.  Tomorrow we are headed back to San Jose!  The Costa Rican 500 will probably continue. Until next time, adios muchachos! 

Oh and Mason switched to Geico last week so he got a magnet with a gecko! He was so proud!