Bike riding in Costa Rica

Author: Outward Bound Costa Rica

I Like Big Boofs and I Cannot Lie

Every once in awhile you learn a word that, despite having no home in the dictionary, seems to wedge its way into your vocabulary where it resides instead. After a week of kayaking with our Water & Wave semester course, my brain’s language center has a new onomatopoetic roommate – in this post I’ll introduce […]

Leadership Profiles: Past and Present

Planting seeds of leadership, watering them with outdoor activities, and cultivating fully grown student leaders is a crop cycle we’ve been refining ever since our inception. This is especially true of our Leadership Semester Course. In this post, we’ll briefly discuss benefits of the course and why it might be an alternative worth looking into. Don’t […]

The outdoors takes the national stage

In case you missed it, yesterday President Obama gave some inspiring, albeit slightly short-winded remarks about the America’s Great Outdoors initiative that he began 10 months ago. As an organization that supports environmental preservation, outdoor pursuits, and experiential learning in wilderness settings, we were excited to tune in for his comments about these subjects. Besides, […]

Trying to make Dr. King proud

25 years after one of the most devastating moments in the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. remains one of the most celebrated figures in modern American history. His assassination was a near-paralyzing blow to the entire movement, but his ideas and principles resounded too deeply with the social psyche for the legacy to […]

Top 5 Outdoor Videos of 2010

As an organization that is constantly outdoors (“Outward Bound” is definitely no misnomer), we thought it necessary to compile a list of our favorite outdoor videos from 2010. Although the criteria was only loosely based on material that sparked our imagination for new experiences, made our jaws drop, or was just too awesome to miss, […]

Pura Vida: The True Meaning

Having lived in Costa Rica for a staggering four weeks, I’m going to be bold in honor of the coming year – I’m going to define what perhaps one of the most ubiquitous national expressions really stands for. But first, let’s review pura vida in its fundamental form. Literally translated, it means “pure life.” In a way, […]

Happy Holidays, Version: Tic.O

If you subscribe to our newsletter and caught our recent December issue, you likely read the blurb about Costa Rica’s grandiose end-of-the-year celebration, the Festival de la Luz (links to the Costa Rican Municipal page). Although it provided a good basis for understanding the premise of the Fesitval de la Luz, you may have missed out on the event firsthand. […]

Allow me to introduce myself

As the new Social Media Coordinator for Outward Bound Costa Rica, I wanted to properly introduce myself since I’ll be managing our social networking platforms, including Your Hanashita. Having just graduated from the University of Washington with a marketing degree and an emphasis on international business, I’m excited to bring our followers updates about what’s going on here in […]

A Costa Rican Thanksgiving

Cross cultural exchange is one of the things we value here at Outward Bound Costa Rica: both learning about someone else’s culture and sharing our traditions with others. This week is Thanksgiving, and us gringos here on base are excitedly preparing a Thanksgiving dinner that we can share with our Tico friends. However, it’s not […]

How to Treat a Burn Outdoors

Outward Bound Costa Rica Fall 2010 Leadership students act out burn victim scenarios during their Wilderness First Responder training. Burns are a common injury for outdoor aficionados. Between sun exposure, cooking accidents and campfire burns, knowing how to treat a burn can be invaluable if you plan on spending time outside. Here are a few […]

Expeditionary Learning: The Outward Bound Philosophy

Ten Expeditionary Learning Principles Outward Bound was founded by Kurt Hahn, Hahn’s educational philosophy was based on respect for adolescents, whom he believed to possess an innate decency and moral sense, but who were, he believed, corrupted by society as they aged. He believed that education could prevent this corruption, if students were given opportunities […]