By Samantha Pinksy
Staff Writer
While many students choose to take classes over the summer through the MBX Athletic Foundation’s summer school, senior Gabby Wolf spent her summer learning in a completely different environment. Wolf studied Spanish and Environmental Science abroad in Costa Rica for four and a half weeks.
Wolf was accepted to the Punahou School in Hawaii, which then allowed her to attend Environmental Science and Spanish courses at La Universidad de la Tierra, in Guanacaste, Costa Rica.
While she was there, she worked closely with a group of students her age and learned primarily about integrated pest management, which is pest control without the use of fertilizer or pesticides, to increase the usable mango yield from 35 percent to 85 percent.
“My step mom went to Punahou School,” Wolf said. “My parents heard about the program and asked me to apply because they knew [that] I have recently been interested in studying Spanish and Environmental Science more in-depth.”
According to the Punahou School website, the trip to Costa Rica is one of the Summer Study programs offered through the Wo International Center in an effort to provide prosperous opportunities for the students to interact with the people of the host country and to immersively experience their language and culture.
“I chose the program because I wanted to further my grasp of the Spanish language while simultaneously learning about a different culture,” Wolf said. “My father lived in Colombia for many years, which greatly inspired me to explore both Central and South America.”
For the first week of the program, Wolf stayed in a dorm at Earth University and attended Spanish immersion classes for three hours a day. For the remaining time that she spent in Costa Rica, she lived with a host family. She dedicated most of her time to manual labor, which included field work, cleaning, harvesting mangoes, taking water samples and building canals.
“While I was in Costa Rica, I grew very close to my host family,” Wolf said. “My host mother, Vanessa, was practically like a second mother to me. My host grandfather, Don Felipe, also doubled as my mentor. Don Felipe and I took many frequent hikes, and we visited several different ranches.”
According to the Punahou website, the object of the program is to teach its students about sustainability. In order to do this, Wolf and her companions applied integrated pest management.
“The Costa Rican attitude toward the environment is infectious,” Wolf said. “Food is never ever wasted. Table scraps are given to dogs and chickens. Water is re-run through sanitary systems to be recycled, and very few people own and drive cars.”
Wolf stayed in a town called Cañas Dulces. While there, she had limited access to the internet and electricity and took showers using only a bucket. Wolf expressed that the most exciting occurrence during her visit was when she saw a monkey traveling on top of a stampede of goats. She also partook in adventurous activities such as hang-gliding.
“My parents were generally supportive about me living in Costa Rica,” Wolf said. “My father spent time in Colombia while in the Peace Corps, so he told me how amiable Latin Americans are. My mother was slightly worried, but my step mom was especially excited about my opportunity to go [to Costa Rica] and experience Punahou.”
More than anything else, Wolf was appreciative of the Cañas Dulces’ mindset. She has made it her goal to apply it toward her own life, especially when she has stressful burdens such as the college application process to compile.
“The program was perfect for me because I really have a passion for the protection of the environment,” Wolf said. “It was a really great way to learn more about agricultural science and sustainability.”
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