Back from the Dead

Ok, I’ll be the first to admit it: I’ve definitely been slacking on the blog front. My last post was about a month ago! Oops. Well, I’ll give you the quick version. The DR part of my program was pretty cool. The week in the jungle with the birds taught me more than I ever wanted to know about tropical bird species. Along with my professor, 6 kids from my program, and 2 awesome graduate students from the University of Costa Rica, we basically counted birds in two areas: one close from the road and one far from the road, to asses the effect of roads on birds. We attempted to prove a negative impact from the noise, but the noise data we collected in those 2 areas basically sucked, so it didn’t amount to much. But counting birds was cool. We used two methods, one of which was standing at certain points along the trail and writing down all the birds we saw and heard for 10 minutes. The other was way cooler, and involved giant mesh walls that we set up in the forest and birds ran into it and got caught. Then we walked over every 30 minutes to check the nets and take out any birds…which meant handling them, getting pooped on, and having photo shoots with the cool ones! Probably the only time I’ll get to do that in my life.

After the research came the paper. We headed back from our jungle research station to the center, where we all spent the next week cooped up writing our papers. Ok, so we did other fun stuff, like frequent trips to the bar and lots of relaxing at the pool, but I ended up with a pretty good paper about greater species diversity further from the road—the only paper out of my group that had statistically significant results! That was nice to not be writing another pointless paper. After that was all done with, we all said goodbye.

For me though, I said hello to my mom and set out for 2 weeks of vacation with her and Sander. You may think I’ve been on vacation all semester, but this was REAL vacation. We rented a car and crisscrossed Costa Rica. We first hit the beaches of Dominical and Manuel Antonio. Dominical was pretty quiet, as Costa Rica has entered it’s rainy, low-tourist season. Manuel Antonio probably has more tourists than biodiversity, which is saying a lot. In between though, we got the experience we were hoping to get at Manuel Antonio, at a much less frequented nature reserve called Hacienda Baru. We saw tons of monkeys, birds, crabs, coatis, and beautiful views on our hike. The point of the hike was to get to the beach, which was huge and almost entirely deserted. We only saw about 5 other people, and they were so far down the beach they looked like specks.

To break up the beach time we went to Arenal and Monteverde. In Arenal we stayed at a hotel owned by a Swiss-Tico couple who had created a Swiss chalet in the middle of the Costa Rican countryside, complete with Swiss cows, a chapel, muesli, and a train that led to a rotating restaurant! Also while in Arenal we spent the evening at a secret VIP (seriously) hot springs and watched lava flow down the volcano. The next morning we hiked around the base of the volcano and watched and listened to car-sized rocks get catapulted out of the crater and down the side of the mountain. I think this might have been my favorite part.

Next we went to Monteverde, where we paid $7 a night at a sweet hostel that we all loved. We hiked, and the next day Mom ziplined! And went off the tarzan swing! I was very proud. After our brief break from the beach, we headed to the Nicoya peninsula. To get there you have to take a ferry, and ours was apparently the party ferry. As we sailed across the gulf, we were serenaded by Latin karaoke as we watched the sky being lit up first by the sunset, and then by lightening. In Montezuma we did some more hiking at the Cabo Blanco reserve, where we were treated to a tropical storm that lasted the whole 2 hour hike back from the beach. We also spent a day on Tortuga Island, where we didn’t get attached by Johnny Depp pirates but snorkeled and lay on the prettiest beach I’ve been to.

From there we dropped of Sander (sad) but distracted ourselves by splurging on a spa and then driving to Turrialba to go river rafting. I’m a little ashamed to say the strategy mostly worked. River rafting was amazing, and Mom is very proud of herself for that one (she only fell out once).

Oh, I skipped the part where I almost got a speeding ticket from a cop who pulled us over, but thankfully I was charming enough to get out of that one. Ok, I just lied that I had only been in Costa Rica for a week and had never gotten a ticket in my life.

Mom and I are leaving for the airport now, so this will just barely make it as my last post from Costa Rica! By sheer luck and my astute sense of direction, we’ve made it through San Jose 3 times, and we’re off to try again!

Thanks for reading all semester, I hope it was slightly interesting to you all. I’ll add pictures when I get home.

No News Is Good News

Well, I don't exactly have much exciting to report this time, but I figured an update was due anyway or you might all get worried. Since the end of break and midterms, we've all been pretty much hanging out around the center and watching movies pretty frequently. We've actually had a fair amount of work to do too, even though our classes are done with. Due to poor planning, we had 2 reports due today that were accumulated from field exercises we did over 3 weeks ago. And on top of that, we had presentations and another paper due from our new all-consuming class, the directed research.

For that, we've been divided into 4 groups and we're doing some cool research with our professors. My group has 5 other people and we're measuring the effect of road noise on bird distribution in Carara National Park. So basically, starting tomorrow I'll be living in a house in the park and birdwatching for a week. Preeeety exciting! Part of it is also catching birds with giant nets, so we'll get to hold cool tropical birds and put bands on them.

What else can I think of to tell you? The current controversy at the center right now is that they're practically starving us. This is a slight exaggeration, but here's the situation: even though the group of students this semester is smaller than those they've had in the past, we somehow consume such a larger amount of food that they've had to double or triple the food budget. This is putting quite a strain on the center, and they've cut back both the amount of food and the quality to save money. As you can imagine, this hasn't gone over very well. We basically had a riot today when they told us they can't buy more cereal.

Oh, I also had my birthday! I had a pretty good day, especially because it was a Sunday so we had the whole day free. I got some nice flowers from Sander, and mom had stowed a small present into my suitcase before I left that I had to save for this very occasion. On top of that, my friends made me a delicious cake with mocha icing that everyone shared for dinner. A 21st birthday is not quite so exciting here as it is in the US, since I've been drinking legally for 3 months. Still, I won't be complaining when I get back! Watch out San Anselmo.

Other than the normal schedule, we've had a few community events. We spent one afternoon at a center for disabled people in Atenas, where we hung out, danced, and sat with them while we made clothespins. The center doesn't get much funding from the government, so they have two enterprises that earn them money: sorting recycling (they're one of the only recycling groups in the area) and assembling clothespins for a manufacturer. If you've ever wondered how clothespins are made, it's kind of fun! You set up the two plastic parts in a little mold, set the spring in place, and then whack it with a metal bar to get everything set in place so it'll stay. I myself made probably about 100 and felt very accomplished. We also went and played more soccer, which is always fun. We've been playing the same neighborhood team all semester, and we've only improved since our first game. They still win most of the time, but it's a lot more fun and sometimes we score.

Well, I guess that's all! No pictures this time, since there wasn't anything very exciting to take pictures of. You'll have to use your imaginations to visualize me making clothespins and losing weight.

Bob Marley Country

Last time I mentioned that we went to Poas, and now I’ve got the pictures and I’ll tell you more about it. Poas Volcano has collapsed and now has at least three craters, two of which have lakes in them. Poas National Park is the most visited in Costa Rica, and it was modeled after Yellowstone so it’s really accessibly by car and people who don’t want to walk much. The main attraction is the semi-active crater, which has an incredible opaque, aqua colored lake at the bottom and sends out puffs of steam and gas that reek of sulfur. In this picture, you can’t really see the color of the lake, but that’s really the coolest part. That’s me on the right with my friends Kaitlin, Kaitlin, and Miranda.

We also hiked to the other crater lake, which is also a beautiful color but doesn’t smell and isn’t opaque. Our crazy old econ teacher, Juan (who today told us, “I feel just like Winnie the Pooh this afternoon!”) used to work for the park and so told us everything we’d ever want to know about it plus an hour extra. Oddly, the park has no potable water system! You’d think they’d do something about that, but Juan mysteriously didn’t have anything to say on that topic. And sorry, but I couldn’t resist putting up another picture of me looking like a midget next to a huge leaf.

Then the next day was Spring Break! My break was pretty fabulous, and included what I declared was the best day of my life. Sander and I went to the Caribbean coast, spending two nights in Puerto Viejo and two in Cahuita. The journey there was kind of long, but we broke it up with lunch in San Jose with Sander’s friend from UNC and a stroll along a pedestrian street that was lined with painted cow statues. Once we got the Caribbean, I almost immediately liked it. The food is great, everybody worships Bob Marley and plays chill tunes all the time, and everything is totally relaxed. Plus, the food is actually flavorful and delicious. At dinner our first night, we ate outside and had musicians, fire throwers, and a magician perform for us from the street! The next day we found this incredibly delicious German breakfast place that had the best juices, coffee, crepes, and bread that I may have had in my life. Except for my mom’s bread, of course. Can you think of anything better than a fresh crepe with avocado for breakfast? If you ever happen to visit, don’t miss breakfast at Cabinas Kiré! We were also able to meet up with 5 of our friends who were also staying in the town, and spent the day on the beach, riding the bikes that we rented for $4/day, and eating more really good food. I took an extremely pleasant bike ride with my friend Alison to Punta Uva, which was gorgeous and we saw howler monkeys on the way. The one and only bad part of this day was that I got a flat tire on the way home and the road was pretty bumpy so my butt hurt by the end. At night we found a restaurant that offered a beer and a slice of pizza for $2, and then we hung out with our friends more at the beach until it started downpouring. If you haven’t guessed, this was the day I declared as the best day of my life. Honestly, what more can you ask for than getting to sleep in and then spending the day with good food, good friends, a good boyfriend, good beaches, and nothing to answer to? Anyway, here is a picture of me with a sea urchin skeleton I found while we explored the tidepools we passed during our bike ride.

After our time was up in Puerto Viejo, Sander and I hitchhiked to Cahuita, which is a smaller, less touristy town up the coast a little bit. We spent the first hour or two wandering around to find the best hotel for the best price, which I would recommend as a good way to get to know a town unless it’s hot and you have a heavy backpack to carry around. We ended up staying in a pretty cute place, close to the park entrance that is the town’s main attraction. The park is another of Costa Rica’s most visited, because it includes a coastal rainforest with tons of wildlife, a beautiful stretch of white sand beach, and the largest living coral reef in the country. Admission is a voluntary donation, which is also pretty sweet. We met up with some other friends here, one of whom gave us their leftover pizza so we didn’t even have to buy dinner. One of the coolest things we did on the break was go snorkeling the next morning. Our guide gave us breakfast and then took us out on a boat to the edge of the coral reef, and we jumped into what has to be why snorkeling was invented and spent 3 hours there. The water was shallow so everything was up close, and I saw tons of tropical fish of every size and color, cool coral formations, giant sea urchins, starfish, and an eel! You would never know the stuff is down there unless you jump in, and then it’s just startling how much is going on. I was amazed the whole time, and was an elated prune by the end. That’s me in the middle.

The rest of our break was hanging out with friends more and laying on the beautiful beach until it came time to head back to the center. This was largely unexciting, but we stopped to check out the city of Limon (fairly nice) and were lucky enough to catch a sweet double-decker bus with air conditioning back to San Jose.

Since we’ve been back from break, I’ve been nauseas a lot, the internet at the center broke, I had to register for Smith classes (big pain in the butt), and we’ve got midterms tomorrow. Needless to say, I wish break had never ended. We took a field trip on Friday and Saturday to camp in Santa Rosa, a park in the tropical dry forest, which was actually kind of cool, but we did a really dumb field study so the whole thing seemed kind of pointless. It also rained, which got a lot of people wet who don’t have such great tent skills as me. It’s kind of funny, because wherever we go, the weather is the exact opposite of what our teachers tell us it will be. It’s been sunny the three times we’ve visited the cloud forest, rainy in the dry forest, foggy when we were supposed to go on a really hot hike, and clear when there were supposed to be clouds covering the tops of volcanoes.

Also kind of related, lightning just struck down about 50 feet away from me! We’ve been having dry lightning for about an hour, and I’m sitting out on the porch with some other people who all just had the shocks of our lives. The last two days it’s been super hot in the morning and then in the afternoon it’s downpoured. I think the rainy season has begun!

As a final thought, I will share this picture of the beach at Cahuita, just to make you all jealous and book plane tickets to visit me.

Also, If you want to see any of these pictures bigger, just click on them!

Nicaragua

Phew, things are busy here! I’m back from Nicaragua after a packed 8 days, and in tomorrow is the first day of spring break! We’ve barely have time to catch up on our sleep, do laundry, and check our email. Sander and I are going to wander the Caribbean coast for break, and meet up with some other people here and there that are doing the same. When the time comes I will write about that, but for now let me tell you about Nicaragua.

For those of you who aren’t very familiar with the area, Nicaragua is just north of Costa Rica, about a 5 hour drive from the center to the border. It’s one of the poorest countries in the Americas, second only to Haiti, and this is pretty apparent. Most of the country looks a lot like what I’ve seen on Mexico Missions, to give some of you an idea. For others, this is what a typical house looks like: We heard many people say that Nicaragua is what Costa Rica was like 20-30 years ago, before it came a huge tourist location. A lot of people there have a lot of hope in the tourist industry, to better their future, and there is no doubt that it will. However, one of the major roadblocks to this is Nicaragua’s global image, which is still one of a war-torn, dangerous country. Here, I have to do my part and tell you that Nicaragua isn’t dangerous, it’s actually beautiful, with very friendly people and enchanting places to visit. And you should all go there.

We spent the first few days on an island called Ometepe, which is in the middle of Lake Nicaragua and was formed by two volcanoes, Maderas and Concepción. Maderas has been blown apart so doesn’t have a cone, and instead has a lake at the top. Concepción is still active so it has a perfect cone, but most of the time it’s covered with clouds that look like a fluffy hat.

The island produces 30% of all the plantains in Nicaragua, and there’s not much else. There are a couple beaches, you can hike the volcanoes, look at petroglyphs, check out a cool natural spring, and visit an old coffee plantation. Otherwise, driving around and seeing the daily life on the island is pretty incredible. I’ve also never seen so many pigs, horses, and cows just wandering around. During our time on the island we hiked to a waterfall on Maderas, interviewed locals about their opinion of the new national park, and had dinner with ex-street kids at a rehab center called Si a la Vida. We stayed at a biological center that was really more like a lakeside hotel. The last night we spent on the island we had the interesting experience of drinking at a bar that was run out of a gas station mini-mart, meeting our professors inside a disco, and going back to our hotel for a spontaneous pool party.

After Ometepe we went to Granada, which is a colonial town on the edge of the same lake. Granada was also beautiful, in a different way. The city has old churches, brightly colored buildings, and houses with courtyards in the middle. It was fun just to walk around an explore, because every block had something interesting to see. (These are my favorite travelling buddies, Alison, Kaitlin, and Miranda

There was good food, good drinks, and everything for cheep. Actually, all of Nicaragua is cheep—a beer costs $1 max! Cheep means I bought a bunch of souvenirs, including lots of jewelry from really cool vendors in the park. My favorite purchase is a red and white hammock with fringe on the edge, exactly like the ones at the center that I love so much. While we stayed in Granada, we saw two more volcanoes, Mombacho and Masaya. Both are collapsed, Mombacho is covered by elfin forest and Masaya has a huge smoke plume and caves that we spelunked in. This one is Masaya:

Our hotel in Granada was possibly one of the nicest hotels I’ve ever stayed in, thanks to a sweet group rate. It seemed like a castle and had a tub! I had my first bath since being here, which was glorious.

Not glorious was the ride home, which felt much longer on the return because I wasn’t dead asleep at 3 in the morning. But a couple of Harry Potter movies made it bearable, and now we’re back. Of course we jumped right into the swing of classes, with an unbearable 8 hours yesterday. Today we went to ANOTHER volcano, Poas. Every volcano we see is different, to my continuing surprise. I had no idea there were so many volcanoes here in Central America, but apparently there are 12 in Nicaragua alone.

Well, I’ve kept this amazingly short. Can you believe it? I would say more, but I really can’t think of anything else. As always, feel free to comment with questions and I’ll do my best to answer!

Trina's Guide to Everything Sustainable in Costa Rica Ever

I’ll stick to the exciting things this time, for your sake and mine. The first field trip and weekend I have to tell you about I spent in Carara National Park and the town of Jacó. Carara is a park right near the beach and waterfall that I visited my first weekends here. We walked around the park learning about the forest dynamics and having cool things pointed out to us by our teachers, like birds, monkeys, leaf cutter ants, and the Jesus Christ lizard that can run across water. Only Sander and I happened to be looking when the lizard decided to do its thing, which was pretty cool to see in real life. There is a bridge over a river in Carara where a bunch of crocodiles hang out, including one really fat one.
We spent the night in a pretty snazzy hotel right on the beach, complete with a pool, air conditioning, and cable! We had a class up on the roof right at sunset, which sounds cool but it was actually kind of irritating to have to pay attention to a lecture when we could have been just sitting on the beach watching the sunset. Fortunately, we had that weekend off, so our teachers left us at the beach and we got to see the sunset the next night. I spent the weekend at Jacó with 5 of my friends and had a really great time. We stayed in a cabin about 200 yards from the beach, so anytime we were bored, we just went back there to hang out. Other than that, we cruised the tons of souvenir shops, ate some good food, and had a pretty eventful night that lasted till 4am. Can you tell which one is me in the picture?? 5 points if you can.

Then came the week, which had some classes and nothing interesting that I can remember. Oh, we went back to the school where we did community outreach and taught another class, this time about how deforestation and water pollution is bad. We also had a party for all our homestay families, which involved about 100 people, High School Musical 2 dubbed in Spanish, and lots of dancing (which I have been having lots of fun with).

That brings us to our trip to Monteverde and La Fortuna. This trip was our longest yet in terms of traveling time, because the road to Monteverde is a really terrible dusty and bumpy one. It took us about 5 hours, but once we got there is was amazing. I think it’s safe to say that it’s the most famous cloud forest in the world for a reason. We took a hike to a place with an great view of the mountains, the Nicoya Gulf, and the Nicoya Peninsula. The hike also involved an Emerald Toucanette (the smallest toucan species), some cool hummingbirds, a really cool fat blue bird with an orange belly that I can’t remember the name of, and a canopy bridge that looked a lot like the Golden Gate Bridge. At lunchtime, my friend Sam accidentally dropping his tupperware container off the side of the mountain after we had yelled at him for throwing his avocado pit into the forest, which led to pretty hilarious recon mission. There were also some plants with really huge leaves that I found really entertaining. That night we had a lecture by Dr. Alan Pounds, which I was ridiculously excited about. He’s a biologist that has spend basically his whole life linking species extinctions to global climate change, and is kind of a celebrity to dorky biology people like myself.

The next day we did a field lab in the Children’s Eternal Rainforest, which is really cool place and you should all donate money to it. After that, we took another long ride to La Fortuna, past the Arenal Lake and Volcano. The lake is huge and beautiful, and the volcano is also. The volcano is active, and at night you can see red-hot lava spewing out the top! The next morning we went and took a hike to a very pretty waterfall, which was cool and refreshing. Ally, if you’re reading this, I found you a cool rock! That was the end of our field trip, but we had another weekend off.

Almost everybody elected to spend the weekend back at the center, so they all went off on the bus and left me, Sander, and our friend Erin in La Fortuna. We were planning on meeting up with Alex Webster and her friends visiting on their Spring Breaks, so we headed back to Monteverde via a Jeep-Boat-Jeep adventure. It was pretty fun to just be on our own after spending so long with everyone else on our program, and the view of the volcano from the lake was perfect. You could even see the plume of smoke coming out the top! It was a long trip, but I listened to a really funny This American Life and the scenery was gorgeous, so I didn’t mind.

We finally got to Monteverde and found our friends by sheer luck, went out to dinner at a restaurant that had a tree growing through it, danced at the bar, stayed at a really cool hostel, and did a zipline tour the next day. The zipline was crazy cool, it was totally worth the $30 we shelled out. There was a series of 11 cables which threw you whizzing through the air in and above the canopy. There was one really amazing one where the ground dropped away and all of a sudden you were 100 meters above the trees! The tour also involved a Tarzan swing, which scared the crap out of me but was also tons of fun.

The weekend ended with another bus adventure, which was ridiculously hot and uncomfortable and took about 4 hours before we were dropped off by the side of the freeway and had to sprint across it in the dark. It was a little sketchy for a while because we had no idea where to go from there, but we made it home safe and sound eventually.

Now I’m off to get some 4 hours of rest and then drive to Nicaragua for 8 days! Hopefully I won’t get anything stolen, and I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.

Un Monton de Cosas

Hi Everyone!

I’ve been dreading writing this post a little bit, just because there’s so much to say. Unfortunately, procrastinating only makes this worse, because every day I don’t write, the more things pile up to write about. But now I’m in the middle of midterms here, so I have more important things to procrastinate for! So, let me apologize for taking so long to write, and now I’ll finally get around to telling you what’s new.

Since I last wrote, we’ve started our outreach projects, visited coffee plantations, organic and conventional farmers markets, spent a lot of time in San Jose, went to a place called La Paz to interview people in rural towns about water usage, and had a homestay. So here we go.

Outreach: every Wednesday we split into groups and go out into the community to do various things with the environment. This includes cleaning up the Municipal Forest, and going to various local schools to help build a nursery for native plants, sing songs, and teach them about environmental issues. I went to a school in the Sabana Larga community and taught 4^th and 5^th graders all kinds of things about watersheds, the water cycle, and conserving water. This was lots of fun, and we were a pretty big hit. For those of you who know the game Wizards, Elves, Giants (we played this on the way to Mexico), we switched that up to Clouds, Rain, Mountians. Afterwards, our center director took us into town and bought us ice cream, we were that cool!

Coffee: This field trip took us to visit a few different places, all right around Atenas. First we visited an organic coffee plantation that was straight up this huge hill that we all died climbing. The coffee trees are in bloom here now, due to the 4 days of strange rain that happened a week ago (it hasn’t rained in February here for 9 years—global climate change anybody?), and they smell really good. I bet you didn’t know that coffee flowers smell almost like jasmine! Anyway, we sat down in the middle of a coffee plantation and had a field lecture for an hour, which was a new experience. Then we followed the farmer to where he makes his compost, past a single cow and into this little shed that had neat rows of dirt. He took a shovelful of dirt out of one of the rows, and it was absolutely crawling with worms! He told us he takes the manure from that one cow, gives it to the worms for a few months, and then has some of the best fertilizer money could buy. After this scintillating demonstration, we went off to an organic co-op to see what was done with the coffee after it gets picked. We drove up to this guy’s house, walked around the back, and learned how they select the good fruits, get the bean out, and dry the beans. Once all that is done, they send them off to other countries to be roasted and enjoyed.Below: the huge hill and drying coffee beans (this is what they look like before they're roasted).

Markets: One of our field exercises for our Environmental Econ class was to descend on an organic market and get people to fill out surveys about who they were, why they made the effort to buy organic produce, and the major barriers. We woke up early to make sure we got there before all the good products were gone, drove the hour or so to San Jose, and spent the morning at a market that was surprisingly similar to a farmer’s market you would find in Marin. Same hippie consumers, small stands, really friendly people, and a little place to sit down and eat. The difference was that the farmers were selling coconuts and exotic fruits alongside all the carrots, potatoes and broccoli. Amazingly, they also sold fresh bread and pesto, which my friends and I promptly bought and devoured as part of a complete breakfast (not). After that we stopped at a conventional farmer’s market to compare, and that was crazy. It was basically a gigantic farmers market, but not organic. This thing took up about 3 city blocks and had people shouting out to buy the biggest produce I’ve ever seen. The carrots were the size of my forearm! Below: the organic market. The stand right in front had some really good carrot cake.

San Jose: After checking out the markets, our teachers let us loose and drove away. We had a rare weekend away from the center, and got to explore the city and fend for ourselves. This was pretty successful—we got some cool souvenirs at an artisan market, walked around and did some shopping in the downtown area, found our hostel, ate dinner at a Pan-Asian restaurant (sooo good; it had Indian, Thai, Chinese, and Japanese food all in one place!), went to a fútbol game, watched bellydancers and Flamenco dancers at a classy jazz café, spent $40 on American cookies and candy at a grocery store, and witnessed a girl having a seizure during breakfast at our hostel. All in all, a pretty packed weekend. We got back on Sunday, and then drove back to San Jose on Monday to go to a lecture at the University of Costa Rica on GMOs. We also got to get lunch on our own, and I am now in love with empanadas. Below: Sander, Megan, Miranda and I at the Saprissa game.

La Paz: Our next field trip we went to a rural watershed to walk around and get people to fill out another survey about water use. We split into groups to wander around communities, and my group definitely got the better end of the deal. We got dropped off on a random street with 2 surveys each and were told that we’d get picked up “later” (no time, no place). Fortunately, the first lady we met decided to walk around with us and help us find people to interview, and as we went we collected her friends and our posse grew. The area was beautiful, everyone was really friendly, and even though the survey was really badly designed, we learned a lot about the community. Below: My friends Sander and Kaitlin interviewing a farmer with a really cool hat.

Homestay: I spent this past weekend with a Tico family, and had a really great time. There was a little mixup about our meeting place so I ended up waiting for them for about half an hour, but this was about the nicest family I’ve ever met (besides all of yours, of course). There was a mom, dad, 17 year old daughter and 15 year old son. We talked about really random things, like fútbol, fútbol players (my host sister was obsessed with all of them) Way to Live, robbers, and Spanish slang. They lived next door to all their aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, which was really cool. They were super Catholic, and took me to both a liturgist meeting and a mass, but thankfully skipped the vigil that lasted until 2am. It was really restful—I got a room to myself and a queen size canopy bed, took naps and slept in till 10, and then spent the next day lounging and playing fútbol with some kids at the community pool (I scored twice and they called me Triney). Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so I don't have pictures of any of that.

That is about everything interesting that I’ve done in the last 2 weeks. We’ve finally had to do some studying here, and wrote one big paper and have another due right after our midterms. My group of friends is solidifying to some pretty cool people, and I’m still loving the campus and most of the things we do. This weekend we have a surprise weekend away near the beach, so that should be fun. Now that we’re all caught up, it’s time for me to get some rest before the fun day of midterms I have tomorrow!

Such Is Life in the Tropics

Hi Friends. So much has happened since I last wrote, and it’s only been a week! Let’s see if I can remember it all.

I believe I left off last on the eve of our first day off. We have classes or field trips 6 days a week on my program, so our Sundays are much anticipated. For our first one we went to the beach, of which was about an hour and half away. We woke up early (breakfast here is served every day at 7am, even on our days off! I have become quite the early riser) and took a taxi into Atenas to catch the bus. This costs about $2 for as many people as you can fit, so we do this often when we don’t feel like walking. The buses come through town fairly often, but they are almost always crowded. We didn’t get a seat on either ride, and I have to say, the bus was the least pleasant experience I've had here thus far. They are the charter-type busses that we have in the US, but no air conditioning and the drivers pack on as many people as they can manage. The roads are bumpy, curvy, and all-around carsickness machines. We ended up sitting in down in the aisle on the way there so as not to vomit, but on the way home there were people pressed in all around us so that was impossible. Other than that, the beach was great and totally worth the hassle of gettting there (as I've since decided, most things are in Costa Rica). We had gorgeous weather, the waves were perfect for floating on, and we just laid out in the sun and got tan. What more can you ask for?

Let me tell you a little more about life at this field station. Every day we have a Student of the Day, which sounds like an honor but basically you just have more responsibilities. You fetch latecomers, are in charge taking pictures with the group camera, write out the day’s schedule, enforce quiet hours, and lead RAP. RAP is every morning at 8am, and the SOD has to think up something for a Reflection, ask for Announcements, and teach a Physicality. SOD rotates alphabetically, so I was SOD one day this week. My RAP involved a rousing game of Wild Wild West, which my friends are big fans of now. Another thing we have here are our pandillas (gangs). Weekly chores rotate among pandillas: meal set up, meal clean up, bathrooms cleaning, organizing social activities, and “moral support” (aka week off). My pandilla, the Pumas, was on social this week. This entailed baking a cake for a birthday, organizing people to go to this really bizarre but excellent concert, and arranging for everyone to have a secret Valentine. The Valentines were a pretty big hit—we convinced our director to buy us a bunch of candy to give each other, made cards, and then spent the day guessing who their secret Valentine was. It was pretty cheesy, but we all had fun with it.

Another hit was salsa lessons—not a part of the social pandilla, but actually our culture class. This happened in the outdoor classroom one night, with a ghetto boom box. One of our teachers and his sister taught us a few steps, and soon we were all looking real fine and spinning each other like pros (ok, maybe at least slightly awkward amateurs). This was SO much fun. We are now in search of a salsa bar in town to show off our new skills.

Our field trip this week was to a few different places, but had a general theme of agriculture/land use. It was a dramatic contrast to last week’s trip to the rainforest, since most agriculture is biologically considered a green desert due to the total lack of biodiversity. It all started with a 6am breakfast and a 3 hour drive south. We visited the largest sugar cane plantation in the country in Juan Vinas, chewed on some sugar cane (as modeled below by my favorite roommate Miranda and I), and then drove a little further to a co-op sugar processing plant that has over 800 small farmer members. It was amazing to see trucks towing huge loads of sugar cane at one end and refined sugar coming out the other end. Surprisingly, the plant was extremely sustainable. Their two sources of energy are the crushed cane (which comes out totally dry and like sawdust after all the sucrose has been extracted), which they burn, and the steam that they get from heating up the sugar juice to concentrate it. I also added a picture of a sugar cane field, and you can see the natural forest behind it for contrast. After examining this monoculture system, we drove across a very sketchy bridge that barely fit our bus, and toured a pejivaye and banana plantation. This is a very little known fruit, but you may have heard of peach palm? Probably not. This setup uses the mature palms for fruit, the baby ones for heart of palm, and others for their wood. This part of the trip was really cool (even though it was raining), and we witnessed some crazy machete skills that provided us with heart of palm straight from the tree! We also visited CATIE, an international agriculture research and development institution, where we sat through a few really boring lectures and one really cool one about analog forestry. Analog forestry was developed in Sri Lanka, and is a model that helps farmers convert their monocultures into a forest using biological succession and plants that they can still harvest and turn profit from. If you ever happen upon a label that says Certified Forest Garden, you should buy it. Oh, also we went to the Botanical Garden run by CATIE, where they had all kinds of plants. We had a really cool tour and ate lots of fruits that we had never even heard of and others that we had never seen on trees. They had a small grove of cocoa plants, the pods of which I attempted to eat (see left).

We spent the night at a hotel in Cartago, and got to go out for dinner. Because it was Valentine’s Day, we were specially allowed to have extended curfew, which led to a fun night. On the way home the next day we stopped at the national Cathedral, where they have the La Negrita statue, who is the patron saint of Costa Rica. The legend has it that an indigenous girl found this statue on rock and brought it to her priest, who put it in a cupboard in the church. The next day the statue was gone and the girl found it on the same rock that she had visited earlier. This happened a few times, and the statue is believed to perform miracles. They now have the statue at the front of the Cathedral, covered in gold all except her face (you can kind of see a black dot in the middle of all that gold inside that red arch in the picture to the left). Thousands of people from all over Costa Rica make pilgrimages to the Cathedral, especially on August 2^nd. Anyway, the finale of the field trip was getting stuck in traffic in San Jose, which was absolutely ridiculous.

Saturday night we went to the concert I mentioned earlier. We found it randomly in the local paper, and since it was nearby we decided to check it out despite having no idea what it would be like. The band was Malpais, which might be described as a Latin Grateful Dead. The concert cost about $8, took place in a bullfighting arena, and was a bizarre mix of a high school production, circus, and really excellent music. Between the songs there were some pretty amateur fire dancers (who dropped their gas-soaked batons a few times), people in huge masks and giant costumes, and some kind of storyline about a smelly guy giant who was in love with a woman giant. Everyone else in the audience belted out all the words to every Malpais song and was super excited, so that was fun to be in the middle of even though we had no idea what was going on. They also were selling caramel-filled churros, which are amazing. Overall the concert was a little weird, but a cool experience.

This brings me to the second day off, which was Sunday. Miranda and I organized 8 people to go to some waterfalls that we had seen evidence of on a sign on the way to the beach last weekend. After some sketchy taxi negotiations and 4 or 5 u-turns, we got to a hut by the side of the road nex to the trailhead. We had to pay the man $15 (very pricey here) to pass, but it was totally worth it. We hiked about an hour down a really beautiful forest valley and got to what claims to be the highest waterfall in Costa Rica. We pretty much had the entire valley to ourselves, it was beautiful, the water felt great, we saw some sweet bugs, and frequently exclaimed about how incredible the whole thing was. The picture to the left is me and Miranda again, and the waterfall keeps going down more, about as much again as you can see in the picture. It was huge! The hike back up to the road was pretty much straight uphill, so that sucked. But about 50 seconds after we made it to the lookout at the top, a pair of scarlet macaws flew out in front of us! These birds are the one thing I really wanted to see this semester, and they were absolutely beautiful. It was like watching a rainbow fly, they’re that colorful. We didn't get any great pictures because it happened so quickly, but I put up the best one.

Now I’m going to attempt to get a full night’s sleep before embarking on another, equally promising week. I’ve gotten the early to rise part fairly down, but early to sleep is still a challenge for most of us. There’s also some really obnoxious yappy dogs on our street that enjoy barking at about 4am. Hope you all are well and enjoying American food, which I am craving. Buenas noches!

Settling In

Well friends, I almost hate to tell you all the details of what I’ve been up to. I’m afraid you’re going to be really jealous and give up reading. Right now I’m lying in a hammock with my laptop, looking out over the orange orchard, tropical plants, and the valley that our field station lays at the top of. There’s a warm breeze that almost makes me want to nap instead, except that I did that before lunch. I’m not going to lie, this place is pretty great.

I’m in the town of Atenas, which is about a half hour drive from the capital, San Jose. It’s been said (by National Geographic, I believe) that this town has the greatest climate on the planet, year round. As a result we have the Mejor Clima del Mundo Restaurante, as well as the Mejor Clima del Mundo Internet Café, and so on. I don’t disagree, but it’s a little hot in the sun at midday. There’s no need for a sweatshirt or pants at any time of day, and I really can’t complain.

Our field station is about a 35 minute walk from the edge of downtown (as we discovered last night because we couldn’t figure out how to call a cab). The road along the way is lined with cute houses and gardens, and everyone has a porch furnished with anything from a bench to a full living room set. The people here sit outside in the afternoons and evenings and watch the traffic or nap. Our campus has a small sign outside our property, which says Centro para Estudios Sobre el Desarollo Sostenible (Center for Sustainable Development Studies) -- School for Field Studies. Apparently the locals know us as the Universidad de La Presa (the dam), for reasons that are kind of unclear to me. Anyway, our campus is gorgeous and fairly spread out. There’s a dorm with our rooms, a living room, lab, computer lab, and the indoor classroom. The picture is what I see every time I leave my dorm to go to breakfast (and every other time of day), and I don't think I'll get used to it all semester.There’s also an outdoor classroom on the edge of slope, which is a concrete slab with a tin roof over it, and we can look out on the entire valley while we also pay extremely close attention to our professors. There’s a pool, garden, orchards, the Casa Grande where we eat and the professors have their offices, and 3 other houses where the staff live. There are campus iguanas, which live on the roof of our dorm and make lots of noise when they run around (and, they tell us, do acrobats off the roof). They feed us 3 meals a day, and the food is really good so far. It includes rice and beans for every meal, which I enjoy and have taken full advantage of. The cooks serve us a nice mix of Costa Rican dishes and stuff like pasta and omelets.

I haven’t seen too much of the town yet, but what I have is nice. We went with the staff and took a tour one of the first few days, and we went back today to interview people in the market about the Municipal Forest. We played soccer against one of the local teams, which had real uniforms and completely schooled us. Regardless, it was a lot of fun and I even went into a nearby house to use the bathroom! My first excursion into a Tico house. My Spanish is not as great as I thought, but I get along fine and am way better off than the majority of my friends.

We’ve had a few classes so far, and all the teachers are pretty cool. All but one of them have really great senses of humor, but the other one isn’t bad. Our Economics professor is this old Honduran named Juan who wears his pants halfway to his chin and is fond of picking on students in the front row. He yells things at them like “You almost drove wolves completely out of your country! You almost made the bison go extinct!” while leaning over their desks. It makes for pretty interesting Econ lectures. All the classes are in English, but all our professors are latinos so sometimes it’s hard to understand what they are trying to say.

The highlight of so far was the field trip we just went on. We spent two days getting acquainted with the insane biodiversity in the rainforest. We woke up early on Thursday and hopped on a bus to the Braulio Carillo National Park. (The picture is a logging truck that we saw when we were at our bathroom stop. Are those not the biggest logs you've ever seen??? Our teachers told us they were probably extracted illegally--Costa Rica has really good laws controlling things like this, but little manpower to enforce them). The rainforest is amazing. There are literally so many plants you can’t see the ground. Plants grow on plants growing on plants! It’s got plants you can go see in the greenhouse, but they’re outside and nobody planted them. Driving into the park was like being a kid in a candy shop (and for me, that’s saying a lot!). There were plants with circular leaves 3 feet across that covered parts of the hillside. Orchids popped out of the ground and impatiens grew wild in banks by the side of the road. Everywhere you look there are buds that are about to bloom into something incredible. We passed a big rig that had tipped over the side of the road and was leaning against the hillside, but it didn’t even attract much attention from our bus full of biology and environmental science majors.

We spent a few hours on a hike in the rainforest, where our professors stopped every 20 feet to point out cool things and explain stuff. We saw a giant wolf spider and a quetzal, and swung on a hanging vine during our lunch break. (Pictures: My group heading into the forest at the beginning of the hike. Then we have said vine and Tarzan). After the hike, we got back on the bus and continued towards the Caribbean Sea, getting into the humid lowlands. We spent the night at La Selva Biological Research Station, which is run by the Organization for Tropical Studies. It’s a haven for researchers as well as a popular place for rich birdwatcher tourists. We spent our time checking out super cool animals and doing some labs, which we like to call FLABs (Field Labs). La Selva a protected area of rainforest in the middle of plantations and pastureland, so there’s a concentrated amount of animals living there. We saw toucans, parrots, wild boars, iguanas, Montezuma orapendulas, multiple other little birds, bullet ants (which are over an inch long and feel like you've been shot if they bite you), poison dart frogs, geckos and spider monkeys!

So, pretty much I’m having an amazing time. The only part I'm not crazy about is that you all can't do this stuff with me. Tomorrow is our first day off, and lots of us are planning on taking the bus to the beach about an hour away. Hopefully we’ll be able to navigate our way, not get sunburned, and make it home in time for 10:30 curfew. Wish me luck! And sorry this is so long, I've just got lots to tell you all. Let me know if you're wondering about anything that I haven't thought to tell you, and I'll work it into a future post.

Safe and Sound

Hi everyone, I've made it! After at least 12 hours of travel that I would normally have spent sleeping, I'm at the field station. En route I managed to rendezvouz with my friend Ally (in SFO) and my uncle Steve (in Houston), and to chat with varied friends via the phone. (Sorry MK and Becky, I ran out of batteries!)

Everything I've seen so far of Costa Rica is AMAZING. It's all incredibly beautiful and lush, with plants and flowers everywhere of all shapes, colors, and sizes. Including tons of bougainvillea, my favorite. S0 far I can say I have 3 roommates, cold showers, and delicious food--giant bowl of guacamole, anyone? Everyone is friendly, thought it's quite an effort to pretend I'm interested in everything they're saying when I just want to go to bed.

I'll write more later, when I get a chance. The internet here is slow, and we're not allowed to use the station's connection to load photos or use Skype. So those things will have to be done at internet cafe's at some indetermined time. But they will be done! I'd love to hear how all of you are, so send me an email!

No news yet...

Now I can say I've done at least one thing on my list of things To Do Before I Leave: Make travel blog. I decided to chronicle my adventures this way to avoid mass emails down the road. Plus, it feels much cooler and official this way. While I've read my small share of other blogs, this is my first. So forgive me if I sound cheesy, make run-on sentences, or bother you with prolific parentheses (as is my usual style--case in point). The main purpose is to keep those of you who care to know updated and assured that I don't have malaria, dengue fever, or any other tropical disease that might prevent (or expedite) my return home. Having just regained normal use of my biceps after getting my series of travel shots (that tetanus shot kills), I can tell you I've done my part to prevent that. I'm also fairly sure you'll be able to come here to read geeky and excited descriptions of the biodiversity and ecology I come across in Costa Rica.

For those of you who don't know, I'll be spending the next 4 months abroad, getting credit for Smith by doing what sounds like ridiculously sweet stuff. I'm signed up with the School for Field Studies, a program that does environmental field studies in really cool countries. My 28 new best friends and I will be studying tropical ecology and how to preserve it, while learning about sustainable development and how the two can happen together.

That's all for now, really. I don't leave for 2 weeks, so there won't be much to report until then... unless you want to know the details of my decision of which shoes to bring (a daunting one, I assure you) and my search for lightweight pants that don't make me look like a grandma with a UFB.

My current plan is to post here when the fancy strikes and let you all know when that is. This way, you only have to visit the blog when you know there's something new, and won't be disappointed when there isn't. So, if you've read this far and still want to read more when it comes, join my Google group (look to the right) to subscribe! This is just a way I've figured out to have you automatically emailed when I make a new post. Hopefully it will work the way I think it will. Otherwise, you could just bookmark this page and secretly stalk me (though this option is less preferable; I'd like to know my audience!).