Cindy – Journal Entry July 20th, 2019.

On July 20th I went to Playa Grande, Marino Las Baulas with Amanda and Katherine. There we met with some students from University of Costa Rica and joined their project for 1 day. During the first hours from 9:00 to 11:00 am they were explaining the importance of the project since it included doing an interview to people from the place in order to analyze better the level of pollution at the beach of Playa Grande and therefore come up with activities that can actually help us minimize our impact in the environment. After the explanation, we started interviewing people as we walked on the beach, some of the questions that we asked were: “How often do you visit this place? Have you ever left trash on this beach? From a scale of 1 to 10 how acceptable do you think leaving fruit peels/aluminum/plastic… is? How informed are you about climate change?” Once we were done with this step, we went back to the national park from 11:00 to 1:00 pm and we helped with waste separation such as: plastic bottles, bottle caps and cans. They were teaching us their way of doing it. They would put together the plastic bottles based on their colors and had a bag were bottle caps had to be since they contribute to another project in Brasilito where they reuse this items to build ramps for disabled people. At the end, I could realize how amazing this project is because even though I was helping another community, I appreaciated the fact that students from the University of Costa Rica took the time to teach me how I was able to make this project anywhere I wanted to. I know that many people would be wondering why we were wasting time doing interviews or why we did not start the project without doing that? And in my personal opinion, that was a great idea (interviewing people) since having the opinion of others might help you find better solutions and even their support if they hear about what you have in mind which relates to the IB profile “open-minded” that I was trying to improve during break. Also, meeting these students made me realize that there is still hope in a change for humanity, working together as a whole team helped me understand why it is really important to have the ability to communicate effectively with others since it leads to a peaceful working environment. I am truly thankful for having the opportunity to volunteer at Marino Las Baulas with my team. These are the kind of activities that I like to be part of, because you get to have fun while doing something meaningful.