Student Post by Kaley R - Day 4: Wednesday, June 16th, 2021

Day 4! More like… week 4. Those of us in Climate Change Mitigation group 1 have
been talking about how drawn out every day feels, in the best way possible. Getting up at 6:30
A.M. for 7:00 A.M. breakfast has been… new, but it’s, nonetheless, a very good experience for
us all; it seems like a new day starts with each meal we eat because we’re doing so many
incredible activities every day. Day 2 feels more like 2 weeks ago!

We began this rainy day in the classroom, with our amazing teacher Pablo giving us a
lesson on carbon footprints: the amount of carbon dioxide, an incredibly important greenhouse
gas that’s a large reason for proliferating climate change, that you put out into the atmosphere
due to the way you live and the kind of energy your community uses. We calculated our own
carbon footprint that we tread at home, and it was incredibly eye-opening to see how much
impact one small household can have.

Pablo had a great exercise in-store for us. We hiked up the familiar Nino trail we hiked
the day before to the Nino farm area, and planted trees! Trees are one of the many ways to offset
carbon footprints, since they take in our carbon dioxide. This brings up a concept we were
introduced to: carbon neutrality. While you may not be able to completely reduce your carbon
dioxide emissions to zero, you can reach carbon neutrality by doing things that offset your
carbon emissions to achieve a net zero emissions. This is key in discovering how to mitigate
climate change! We took one step towards offsetting our carbon footprint; how can you?

Our 2nd great adventure of the day was touring the CIEE campus’s Camino Real hiking
trail, one of their longest. It was a trek about an hour long, with absolutely gorgeous sights, but
lots of sweat, huffing, and puffing. Experiencing the amazing wildlife and the Monteverde
mountainside was priceless, while also being one of our greatest challenges yet. We hope that, by
the end of the trip, maybe we’ll have grown stronger, and could hike the Camino Real trail much
easier.

Now on the horizon… we can go explore trails on our own with a buddy. We’ve grown
so close and so comfortable with each other, we’ll certainly have no problem finding a buddy,
but it’s very exciting to get more independent privileges on this absolutely astounding campus.
Thank you to our teacher Pablo, our group leader Cailey, and all the staff and my cohort
members for making this possible. I’m sure I speak for all students when I say that we CANNOT
WAIT to experience what the next 2 and a half weeks brings us!
Take a look at the carbon footprint calculator we used on this day and calculate your
own!

Here’s the link:
https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx