This was our last day working at Plenitud. We put in the standard morning work day, but there were a couple of differences. First, the students prevailed on the staff at Plenitud, who are predominantly vegetarian, to kill some of the chickens and cook them for dinner that night. One of the students grew up on a farm with chickens, so he became our butcherer-in-chief. But he wanted someone else to help, since some of the other students were giving him a hard time about killing a chicken. So, he asked me to kill the second chicken, which I obligingly did. Here’s a clip of the chicken killing:
WARNING: Don’t watch this if you’re a bit squeamish!
That was the student. I followed shortly thereafter with a different chicken. Then the students de-feathered the chickens and the staff cooked them for dinner.
While most of the students stuck around Plenitud that afternoon, the student leaders surprised me with a chance to go visit the Arecibo Observatory. I hadn’t realized that this massive radio telescope would be fairly close to where we were staying until we drove past Arecibo on the first day. I mentioned to the students that it would be fun to go see it if we had the chance, and since it was raining, a few of us decided to go. It’s pretty remarkable, actually! It’s enormous. The exhibit there talks about its past and what it does. Very cool stuff.
That pretty much wrapped up the trip. We stayed up fairly late that night getting things packed up and saying goodbyes, as we had to leave early the next morning to get back to San Juan in time for our flight.
