Our orientation gave us the opportunity to spend 10 days in beautiful
Costa Rica getting to know one another and preparing for the rest of
our journey. We spent hours on the grass and in the pool reading,
playing guitar, and becoming increasingly impressed with our amazing
group.
Chris Stakich, TBB Co-Founder and U.S. liaison, led all interested
early-risers to the beach for surfing lessons almost every morning.
Our hotel “on the beach” was a muddy mile from any actual sand, but we
continued to get up before dawn to catch some pre-breakfast waves. Our
group also took several trips away from our town of Uvita. We kayaked
through a thick mangrove forest all the way to a wide muddy river and
back; we hiked through the rainforest to a picturesque waterfall where
we went cliff-jumping; we took a choppy boat ride to snorkel at an
island beach; and we walked down a dark, abandoned beach looking for
turtles laying their eggs. This last excursion was what is known as
“turtleing.” It’s aim is to collect any freshly laid eggs and allow
them to mature in the fenced-in hatchery to protect them from poachers.
Sandy and Robin introduced us to what would become our very familiar
seminars by posing the question “What is development?” The two-hour
discussion that followed was a good introduction to the intelligent,
passionate and opinionated people with whom we’d be traveling. In
following discussions, we learned about “meta-cognition” and began to
read between the lines of our curricular books to tease out the basic
assumptions of their authors. On a lighter note, we wrote and performed
some comic skits as part of our safety talk, demonstrating to the group
with creativity exactly what not to do in a restaurant, a marketplace,
a bus, an airport and when walking home at night. To prepare to handle
the different cultures we would soon encounter, we played Bafa Bafa, a
game in which we split into two different societies that had to find a
way to interact with one another. In addition to time spent with the
group, we spent several solitary hours composing nine personal goals,
writing a letter to our post TBB selves and filming a private message
about our current view of ourselves and our place in the world to watch
when we reach Virginia.
Costa Rica set the tone for the year with the perfect balance of
thought-provoking discussion, personal contemplation and plenty of
once-in-a-lifetime fun with our new group of best friends.