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.