My Return

I’m sitting in the middle of the Mexico City airport where my flight is laid over—completely out of it for the time being. It might be the fact that I woke up at 2:50 this morning to take a shuttle from a San Jose hostel to the airport, and haven’t slept since. It might be due to crying pretty consistently since parting ways with Hanna once her flight took off, or it might simply be that the weight of the fact that my time in Costa Rica has ended has finally descended upon me. In spite of being completely mentally absent I’ve somehow managed to make it out of Costa Rica, into Mexico, through customs (even though I’ll be in this country a grand total of 3 hours) and into the food court. However once in the food court I managed to miscalculate the exchange rate for pesos and ended up spending 8500 colones or, that’s right, 17 dollars on a super small portion of crappy food that—you guessed it—had meat hiding inside.

            But all in all, the journey so far has been pretty easy. Its been crazy traveling alone and having time to reflect on the last three months. It’s a little scary to me that its already starting to feel surreal, almost like a dream. I can only imagine it will feel even more that way when I’m back to my usual routine at home. I can only hope that it never stops feeling real for me. I can’t even tell you how many ways this experience has changed my life. I’ve learned SO much. More than any other quarter I’m positive, and most vitally I’ve learned so much about myself and what I’m interested in and what I want out of the world and how much I actually might be able to achieve. I’ve never been more inspired by teachers than by those I had in Monteverde. They weren’t just teachers, they were friends, and they cared SO much about igniting our interests and pushing our limits. My interest in biology and nature has been so revitalized thanks to them, and thanks to the beauty and diversity that Costa Rica boasts.

            Maybe most importantly were the friends I made: mis companeros through this entire experience. From the first two weeks where we were dropped on an island and then the middle of a dry forest without electricity or hot water or any civilization and had no choice but to learn about each other, its been an insane ride. I’m not sure I could ever find a better group of 26 people to enjoy this journey with. I was constantly surprised and inspired by every single person’s enthusiasm for life, enthusiasm for nature and their knowledge of both. I will never forget the hikes and field trips we shared together, finding frogs and fungi and insects and seeing joy in every discovery. Or the nights at Mata e’ Cana, rollin in with our huge group of gringos and taking over the dance floor, looking like idiots and making Ticos jealous. My biggest hope is that we stay in contact throughout the years. California is an incredible place and we are lucky enough to be able to bring back what we’ve learned to such an amazing and naturally diverse state. All the same I can’t express how much I’ll miss seeing everyone together every day. I’ll be thinking about you guys a lot when I get back.

            Coming back to the present, the past week has fallen right in line with the rest of my time here in terms of enjoyment. This was my third time to the Caribbean and I never cease to be amazed by this part of the world. Puerto Viejo, where we stayed is a party town to be sure, but now in the off-season its pretty mild. The town runs right along the crystal-blue water’s edge. Coconut trees line the shores and pretty much any view from any angle looks like a desktop that would come with your mac. Marvin, the girls, and I (along with Harrison and Mike a few days later) made some amazing snorkeling excursions down the coast. Two of the days we rented beach cruisers to take us a couple miles down the coast through some beautiful forest. Sometimes everything just seemed more like a Jack Johnson music video than real life. The snorkeling was some of the best I’ve ever seen. On Hanna’s and my last full day we made a 6 km trek through some seriously beautiful poison dart frog and eyelash viper-filled rain forest to a beach that had a tiny island only a couple hundred meters away. We were able to swim around the entire thing and all of us did. Different sides of the island were home to different species of fish, and the entire area was so rich in life. It was so incredible.  

     We tried taking advantage of as much beauty as we could...even getting up with the sunrise.

            The hostel itself was quite entertaining as well. We took up most of the rooms—I think we only really encountered one other couple the entire time we were there. Vista Verde is run by Olaf and his wife Katy (Cat-ee). They are extremely German and extremely adorable. If you are ever in Puero Viejo I highly recommend staying with them, their three-legged cat that we called Tripod, several dogs-including Hansel who is pretty much bald due to a skin disease, their collection of poison dart frogs, and several other rag-tag animals. They are very sweet and very accommodating, and most importantly their hostel has lots of hammocks. I’ve never been more attached to colorful pieces of fabric. Its possible I bought one or two to bring back…

            As for the journey back from the Coast, Hanna and I left on a 4 o’clock bus last night that took us 4 hours away to San Jose, then took a taxi across the city in which I thought once again that I was going to lose my life. I do not recommend taxis in San Jose. They drive on the wrong side of the road, blow through red lights, come perilously close to pedestrians and will give you a heart attack if you are used to gentle American driving. We stayed at Hostel Pangea, a “party hostel” that resembled a tacky abandoned MTV beach house but per usual managed to make some good times out of it.

            And now I am here, still in complete disbelief that I will b in Los Angeles in just a few hours. I am incredibly excited to see everyone, but still a little apprehensive about going back to “normal”. Frank has said several times over this program that you can prepare yourself for the culture shock coming into Costa Rica, but its much harder to prepare for the culture shock of returning to the U.S. I suppose only time will tell!

Pura Vida 

The final weeks of EAP

Its hard to believe how much time has actually passed since I last posted. Harder still to believe just how much has happened in these past few weeks and where I am now. Where am I? sitting in a hammock at 6am surrounded by twinkly lights and coconuts carved to look like fish on the balcony of the hostel I’m staying at in Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. I can’t believe the program is over. Our group of 27 is now split up completely-with some of us starting travels around the rest of this country, some of us already back at home in the U.S., and some starting journeys throughout the rest of central and south America. I’m on the Carribean side with a group of 7 others: Madeline, Johanne and her brother Damien, Sarah, Marvin, Elizabeth and Hanna, and I’ll stay here for the next few days until I travel back to San Jose to hop on my plane to California. This morning we got up at 4:30 to watch the sunrise (Aimee you would have died). I’m going to try to briefly go through what the last few weeks have been like. Forgive me if I ramble on. I’m already pretty sentimental.

Homestay ended well. The Castillos were awesome and though they weren’t SUPER traditional Ticos (in fact they weren’t Ticos at atll—they’re Ecuadorian), we ended up getting along great. There were some serious initial frustrations on my part in the beginning, simply because I was struggling so hard to communicate. In having to suddenly participate in day-to-day Spanish conversations it suddenly felt as though I had never taken a Spanish class in my life. I would get extremely nervous any time I tried to speak, and ended up spending a lot of time sitting silent and awkward at the dinner table. But by about day 8 I sort of turned a corner and my confidence got a serious boost. I’m sure now that I’m not forced to do it everyday, my Spanish will deteriorate exponentially, but at least I can say that at one point, I was barely able to communicate. It also helped tremendously that there was another girl living with the family-also named Katie and from California. She’s awesome and an excellent Spanish speaker—needless to say I took advantage of her skills quite often. During all this I was spending 2 to 4 hours a day sitting in Bajo del Tigre—a trailhead in the Children’s Eternal Rainforest, observing and taking notes on my independent research species, the long-tailed manakins. They really are the cutest birds ever. I miss those guys now, they got me through a lot.

Once homestay ended 2 weeks later, I was back at the station with everyone, and I was ecstatic. I loved my homestay, but I also loved the freedoms of the station—being able to go out hiking whenever I wanted, constantly having snacks around and cooks making us delicious meals, company 24-7. However what I did not anticipate was the amount of work we had coming once we returned. Within our final two weeks at the station we were required to put together a final project first submission, complete 4 finals, an agroecology video project, an 8 minute power point presentation on our independent projects that we had to present at our symposium, and a final submission of our project ready to be published. I don’t think I’ve ever had a more sleepless two weeks. There were probably about 7 days in total in which I did not leave the library at the station except to eat and use the bathroom. It was one of the more intense academic experiences of my life, and in the meantime, we were all desperate to have fun in our final days together, so any time we had even the slightest break in our workload we headed out to the bars or tried to create some kind of festivities at the station—needless to say, it was sleepless.

Finishing everything felt incredible though. Our symposium was amazing. Seeing the fruits of everyone’s labor for the past month, and being able to share mine was pretty indescribable. And once we were done with the final submission the relief was enormous. I think one of my favorite nights of the entire program was the one right after I turned in my submission. Erick, our teacher that lived with us at the station decided that we should go surprise our other teacher Pati at a show she was playing at a place in town. It turned out to be at the beautiful house of a woman who opens up her kitchen to the town every Friday night, and makes her patio a restaurant, offering awesome food and wine to anyone who comes. Pati was playing guitar and singing on the patio surrounded by beautiful twinkling lights and tons of people we recognized from town, including more of our teachers. Pati is amazingly talented, and we were all just so happy and content to be there. I’ll never forget it

The last nights were filled with final talks from Frank about reentering the real world, getting our EAP shirts (which I designed!) and taking millions of photos in them, traveling back to San Jose and taking more goodbye pictures, a SERIOUS roast on all of us planned by the teachers and presented to us in Hotel Cacts on our final night, and then the strange goodbyes as people left one by one or group by group. I held it together almost until the very end. It still hasn’t really registered that I won’t see everyone every day anymore. We were literally always together (sometimes in complete isolation) for 3 months straight. I think once I’m back in the U.S. it will hit me a little harder, but for now I’m going to just try to enjoy the Caribbean sunshine with my remaining friends here and worry about all that later

The one thing I am REALLY looking forward to though is seeing my friends and family from home. It probably doesn’t seem like it from the blog but my time here hasn’t always been easy and thinking about you guys has gotten me through a lot.

Sorry for another long post. I’ll try to fit one more in before I leave on Monday. See you all soon!

Penas Blancas

Its been a week since I made it out of the cloud forest valley alive. It has definitely been one of the highlights of my entire trip so far. Last Sunday half of the group hoisted our backpacking packs into taxi vans that dropped us off at the entrance to the Monteverde Cloudforest, while the other half began their homestays in houses throughout Montevderde, or in a little fishing village four hours away called Cuajiniquil. It was really strange saying goodbye. After having been thrown together for six weeks without a single day of separation, we suddenly wouldn’t all be together again for almost a month. For the Penas group, we would be backpacking 16 km into the reserve into an area closed to the public to stay in a small cabin manned by Eladio Cruz. Eladio was a familiar face as he had hosted us in Guanacaste and cooked for us every night there. Words don’t really describe the coolness of Eladio Cruz. He is an old, shy, solely Spanish-speaking, renowned Tico naturalist, who knows the cloud forests here like no one else. Numerous species of flora and fauna have been named after him, either because he had a hand in discovering them or because one of his cool biologist companions did.

But it took us ten miles to get to Eladio’s mystical cabin in the middle of the rainforest. For the most part it was all down hill, as we were traveling into a valley, but I was in rainboots so it wasn’t necessarily easier, and I slid down many a moss-covered slope or wet rocky ravine. I spent the better part of my travels debating with both my fellow travelers and myself whether or not the boots were worth it. When it came to crossing flooded streams I was clearly the winner over the hiking boot enthusiasts, but by the time we reached the cabin my feet were so torn up my choice was definitely put into question. I was part of the first cluster to make it to the cabin, and I can safely say we were all exhausted by the time we reached the bright green cabin. It didn’t help that most of us had gone out the night before, wanting to celebrate before we all separated. I think everyone questioned that decision at least once by the time we reached Eladio.

I was thinking about writing up a post before I left about all the things that could possibly kill me while I was in Penas, but in retrospect its probably for the best that I didn’t do so until now, from the safety of my room in Monteverde…or else I’m pretty sure Mom or Emily would have tried to book me a plane back to California. Our main adversaries on the trip were:

 1. The fer de lance…the most venomous snakes in Costa Rica (2 of which I encountered on night hikes),

2. The eyelash pit viper (several of which I encountered)

 3. Pretty much any other snakes

4. A rickety bridge we had to cross over a river that could support only one person at a time.

5. My personal favorite: the “assassin bug” or “kissing bug”, a large nocturnal insect which is notorious for biting people’s lips in the middle of the night and transmitting the Chagas disease by defecating on the wound. The Chagas is transmitted into your bloodstream and eats away at the tissues in your heart causing you to die of cardiac arrest about twenty years after you are bitten. NICE. (Luckily no encounters with the Assassin bug, as I was COMPLETELY obsessive compulsive with the mosquito net I slept under. I did however wake up from one or two nightmares completely convinced I had been bitten and was going to die immediately from some intensified version of the disease. )

But the unforgettable experiences far outweighed the risks of the trip. Even just the cabin itself was amazing. We had no electricity-so no lights or hot water, and the place was crawling with insects, but the PORCH made just about everything worth it. I don’t think I will ever find another porch like this. The bird watching I did just sitting down on the floor of that porch was some of the best I’ve done in Costa Rica. The forest it looked out to was just so incredibly beautiful. It also gave us a safe viewing spot for the insane rainstorms that hit toward the end of the trip.

The night hikes blew my mind. Things I never imagined I would actually see in real life were commonplace in Penas at night.

The Tabanid flies. Though these little blood sucking demons not only covered me in bites during the day, but decided to fall by the hundreds onto our candle-lit dinner table at night, I can’t help but look at them in retrospect as humorous. I will never forget the night they were so bad that literally the entire table covered their heads with sweatshirt hoods or rain jackets and just yelled constantly as one by one flies bounced off our heads and into our soup. Most of us were completely hysterical before dinner was even over.

The rain: I really don’t know if I’ll ever see rain like this again. The first night it started I sat straight up in bed thinking that a tree had fallen on the cabin, but when the noise didn’t subside, I realized that it was in fact rain POUNDING on the tin roof. Doors started slamming with the wind (this is at 3am mind you) and several of us got up to watch…which really wasn’t necessary since the rain would continue on just as hard throughout the morning and about half the day. Since a hot shower was nonexistent anyway, some decided just to take advantage of nature’s amenities…

The trip back was quite a different trek than the one going into the valley. It rained almost the entire hike, and most of it was uphill. I didn’t fall as many times (probably because I had more sleep) but my feet were KILLING me by the time I reached the end. I was with the first group that made it back again but our level of exhaustion was ten times that of when we reached Eladio’s. When we made it to the information sign the five of us hugged and screamed. It reminded me a lot of (Paden you can probably guess) arriving at the ferry after our insane day of hiking on the last day of wilderness orientation. Not as many miles but I think this trek was equally difficult, and the excitement at seeing the end just as rewarding.

Regreso del Bosque Nubioso y Vivo con Mi Familia Nueva

So its around 6:30 am and I'm sitting in my brnad new bed in my very own brand new bedroom in my brand new home in the house of the Castillo Moreira family. Its amazing to have a little space for myself but also a little strange and sad after living with a big group of people for so long. I met my family yesterday after returning from the cloud forest via an epic rainy uphill 10 mile hike (I'll get to that later). I was able to take a quick shower at the institute, get dressed and was then shipped off to my family's house after a few goodbyes. To be honest I was terrified. This has been the part of this EAP experience that I've had by far the most anxiety about, mostly because my spanish is awful, and because I'm awkward enough meeting new people when we speak the same language. When the van pulled away, it was literally the first time I'd been alone, without at least one of the same 30 people I've been used to seeing every day, and it was a weird, weird feeling, but it subsided a little when I met my parents. Marianela and Tarcicio are artists and have their own gallery down the street from their BEAUTIFUL home. Marianela only speaks Spanish and Tarcicio speaks a tiny bit of English-enough to help me out sometimes- but prefers Spanish at all times. They are very sweet and welcoming. Upon inviting me in, I was offered some amazing pineapple tea, sat down and began my first very awkward conversation/charades show with my new parents. For some reason, even after 3 weeks of Spanish classes, it was nearly impossible for me to string together a real sentence. It might have been a combination of nerves and exhaustion, but I still felt pretty stupid. My brother and two sisters filtered in from school and were all very sweet. Huayra is fourteen, Ipsilan is twelve, and Gudari is ten. I've done an excellent job of butchering all of their names so far but they've been extremely patient with me. All three of them speak English, and Huayra definitely prefers it, which is a little bit of a relief, but Tarcicio prefers that everyone speak Spanish to help me learn-which is also good. After introductions and some more attempts at conversation, I was able to unpack and settle into my new room for a little while. My room is probably the most amazing part of this set up. I have two giant windows that look out over the family's garden and can see into Monteverde. The sunsets are incredible and sitting at my desk for a time period of about thirty minutes I saw an emerald toucanet and three bird species I'd never even seen before. After settling in, I went downstairs and watched TeleTico with my brother and sisters for a while. I don't understand Wizards of Waverly Place in English so watching it dubbed in Spanish was even more interesting. We then had dinner, which was amazing-with more great tea, potatoes, rice, and a kind of vegetable stew, and coconut bread. I've loved the food on this whole trip, but this change of dinner staples was a welcome one. Dinner conversation was much less awkward and afterwards I played chess for about an hour with Ipsi and Gudari. Both of them are much better than I am, and after being completely shown up by the giggling chessmasters I went to bed. I'm very excited to get to know the family better. Since being back, I've chatted with a few of my friends about their homestays and they're all having amazing times. I'm still missing everyone a little, and curious about how everyone from the Penas group's first night went. Hopefully I'll be able to post pictures soon. I dont have access to a camera usb cord right now but I should be able to get one from someone...eventually. Today the goal is to get in some more preliminary research on the manakins and to spend some more time with my family. I dont have quite enough energy or time right now to write about Penas (I can hear my family awake downstairs) but I will try to devote my next post to it because it was an incredible, incredible trip. Its good to be on my own but its giving me more time to miss everyone -from home as well as here. Love you all

For those who wanted to see some artwork (Mom*)

from when I thought I would be studying bees for my independent project...

Esta Lloviendo!

IT'S FINALLY RAINING!

I haven't actually talked about the weather here very much as of yet but since we've been in this "rainforest"- or actually "cloud forest" we have had yet to see any rain, and very little clouds. Today thunder roared as we sat in our first few lectures and we were suddenly instructed to unplug any electronics we have because of the lightening. Towards the end of our sexual selection lecture, the rain was hitting the windows so hard, Pati had to yell to be heard over the noise. I can't wait to walk to spanish today and experience my first tropical downpour firsthand. The cloud forest is finally living up to its name.

Sunrise over the cloud forest

Last night fore Jared's birthday a group of us headed up the trail to the continental divide (My third time up there). Its a gnarly almost completely uphill hike in the daytime, and in the middle of the night with only headlamps to guide us it was quite the trek. Another one of the stray dogs joined us and decided to make the entire journey up. Half the group called him Nathaniel and the other group called him Cheeto-either way he did an excellent job of running up and down our line of hikers, either tripping us or scaring the crap out of us by suddenly leaping out of the dark. But he was so cute and genuinely excited about being part of our pack that I really couldnt be annoyed by him. By the time we reached the peak, and had sneaked past the house of the T.V. towers-guy, I was drenched in sweat and completely exhausted. We set up a little sleeping circle and talked for a few hours. Cheeto-Nathaniel slept right along side. In the morning I woke up to Nick setting up his camera to capture the sunrise and was lucky enough to be awake and looking out over the forest-covered mountains as it made its way into the sky. It was indescribably beautiful. We were all cold and wet from the morning mists but I felt amazing. We headed back down the mountain around 6 am and were back in time for breakfast and class. The clouds today are low over the hills around the station, and Erick says that it means rain could finally be on the way. I can't wait for the change of weather and the rainy season to start. Hope everyone is doing well. Pura Vida

I have my project!!

It is official! My proposal is turned in! And after much debate and inner-turmoil my final 2 week independent research project will not be on bees, or coffee plantations, as I originally thought. It will be on long-tailed manakins!!

 These little guys!

I was pretty set on the bee project that I told a couple of you about, but I decided that my heart did not lie in pinning insects...in fact I really hated it. So I'm doing birds. And I'll spend the next couple weeks out in the rainforest watching these guys do amazing things. I am finally REALLY stoked on this project!!

Vivo en Monteverde

So a huge apology for not writing for so long. I've been living at the Estacion Biologica de Monteverde for eighteen days now, and its been a whirlwind. My time here is coming to an end too quickly and I'm trying as hard as I can to just slow it down and stay in every moment. Right now I'm stretched out on the lawn behind the station underneath some bromeliad-covered trees, catching some of the last late afternoon sun while Hanna and Jessica lie beside me. Today was the first day of preliminary observations for our final independent projects. I'm pretty stressed out about it but I'm trying to just stay on top of things and not let it negatively affect my time here. At the moment my project is really up in the air, and a lot of people have theirs nailed down...but like I said I'm trying not to let it stress me out...too much.

Life here has been busy to say the least but also just incredible. I will never forget the crazy ride coming up to Monteverde. The bus hauled us up a ridiculously windy mountain road through forest like nothing we'd seen yet. At some point we switched into smaller cars because the bus could not make it up the rest of the mountain. Once we got to the station, it took about 30 seconds for me to fall completely in love with the place. We have dorm rooms throughout the building, with one extra set of dorms on a little hill behind the station. The main downstairs area is a giant dining room with one big long table that we all sit at for our three meals a day (when we dont take them to the lawn outside). Upstairs there are a few offices, labs, an insect room, and our one large classroom, lined with windows that look out onto the mountainous cloud forest. This is where we have our tropical ecology, tropical diversity, and agro-ecology lectures, along with group research projects and workshops 6 days a week. The absolute best part of the station though, is that it is literally feet away from the trailheads of a variety of paths that go straight into rain forest. I make sure to get time in the forest every single day, whether its for class, waking up early to go birdwatching with friends, or just going to climb the giant strangler fig tree that stretches out over our nearby waterfall. Essentially I'm in heaven.

The few times where we've had completely free days have been spent exploring the greater part of Monteverde. I've made two hikes to the continental divide-a mountaintop with an incredible view where a strange man who lives TV towers sells his handmade jewelry. We've also made it to a gigantic waterfall in San Luis-a rural town nearby and several other forest adventures. Many of these are accompanied by at least one local stray dog. Monteverde is full of them-but they're very well behaved, for the most part pretty clean, and will follow us across the forest all day if they can. We've made a variety of dog friends across town, and any day is made brighter by a familiar furry face. 

At night there are a few other things to do. Santa Elena-the nearest "downtown" to the station has two bars: Mata e' Cano and Bar Amigos. So far I've only been to the former. Its pretty small, and therefore perfect to role into with a group of twenty-seven gringo college students. The couple times we've all gone out have been a blast. It basically turns into an all EAP dance party. And even when there's just a few of us its been fun. There are also a couple really good restaurants that we've been able to sneak away to. Last weekend there was also a festival of the bulls in town-this provided us with several nights of watching locals get tossed around by wild bulls, and some sorry gringo attempts at salsa dancing...

All of the teachers continue to be amazing. In our agro-ecology class with Pati, we've taken field trips every week to coffee plantations, organic farms, a quaker cheese factory, and a heart-wrenching and disturbingly typical pig farm. Our ecology and diversity classes are a little more typical-but not really all that much. We stay in the classroom but Frank is especially eccentric when teaching, and its all stuff that EVERYONE's interested in, which still blows my mind. Three days a week we all walk a little more than a mile down the mountain from the station to the Monteverde Institute for our Spanish classes. In fact we walk over a mile to get pretty much anywhere. It's pretty refreshing, and sometimes insanely tiring...and I'll definitely never complain about the distances I have to walk in Santa Cruz again. 

In summary I love living here. As excited as I am to join my host family, its going to be hard to leave this little set up. 

Send me positive vibes regarding my project. I'm really stuck. I'll try to write more. Love you all!

Guanacaste

After Isla Violines, I don't think any of us really believed that what we would see next could be any more incredible than what we had been living for the past 6 days. I didn't anyway. On the 8 hour drive from the Oso Peninsula to the northwestern-most coast of Costa Rica, for most of us the need to sleep outweighed the anticipation of seeing our new destination. To anyone looking in it probably would have appeared that our sheepish Tico bus driver was on his way to go dump the bodies of 27 american college students he'd just dealt with. It wasn't that we hadn't TRIED to sleep on the island, it just was never quite as easy as you wanted it to be. The climate was so humid and the air so heavy that a sleeping bag was never an option for me. I chose instead to be eaten alive by the bugs that inexplicably got into mine and Sarah's tent, and more than once the night rainstorms created a giant pool of warm rainwater directly under my sleeping pad. It was a small price to pay for the time we had there, but nonetheless every one of us was exhausted.

We arrived in Guanacaste, in a town that was as near to our destination as the buses could get, and were then translocated into a few very Indiana Jones-like open-air trucks, and the back of one beat up white van-(guess which one I was in). Its pretty lame to keep comparing things to disneyland rides but I dont know what else to compare that rocky ride into the forest to besides the indiana jones ride. The dirt road was practically made of potholes and we were jostled and thrown the whole way there, laughing and trying to orient ourselves to our new temporary home. We arrived at the campsite on the property of a new Tico naturalist acquaintance we made that night, Mauricio-who also happens to be an incredible cook. We set up our tents as fast as we could so as to beat the sunset, marveling at the lack of humidity, and the serious decrease in "no-see-ums"-the stealthliest of the biting bugs in Violines.
  
The seasonal dry forest of northwestern Costa Rica, at first appeared to be frighteningly reminiscent of a forest you might find in southern California. The air there is hot and dry, the ground dusty and rocky, and the amount of "tropical-looking"trees and plants are at a minimum this time of year. Unlike the rest of the tropics in Costa Rica, the dry forest has a dry season of 6 months and a rainy season of 6 months. A few months from now the area in which we camped will be incredibly lush, tropical, and extremely wet, but during our stay it was dry as a bone. However any associations I had with this place and California quickly subsided at approximately 5:20 the next morning. I was violently woken up by what sounded like a large animal being tortured directly above my tent. Sarah and i ripped open the tent door-a very similar reaction to everyone else in the little tent village. We all looked and beheld the screamer, a large male howler monkey with his family of about eight other howlers and a single white spider monkey. They gawked at us as much as we did at them, and then continued to howl at the top of their lungs. This would be our alarm clock for the next six days.

Schoolwise, the program was laid out very similarly to Isla Violines. We had several workshops and orientation walks through the forest, and one major group project. The wildlife was incredible. We had some amazing insect lessons that got me more into bugs than I've ever been. I think anyone who's scared of bees should come see the iridescent orchid bees of the dry forest. They're too beautiful to be scary.

There are a few key things I will never forget about the dry forest.
1. The wildlife: mainly the birds and the bats. Every day brought amazing bird watching, and holding a little Jamaican fruit bat in my gloved hand was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had with a wild animal.
2. The watering holes. About a 10 minute walk from our camp was a stream that connected a series of freshwater pools. They were small and filled with biting fish but we ran to them every chance we got.
3. Sitting on Mauricio's kitchen porch for dinner every night. Mauricio really is an incredible cook, and catered ridiculously well to vegetarians. Mauricio's porch was the only lit area in the park and every evening we would sit in circles on the floor and eat and talk and play card games or banana grams for hours. One night we even wrote a song our trip and performed it with Pati-which turned out interesting
4. Snorkeling. One of the best trips of my life to the nearby beach town of Cuajiniquil. I saw eagle rays, several eels, a sea horse. It was unreal.
5. Stargazing. One of my favorite evenings of this entire trip so far came on our second night in Guanacaste. A group of about fifteen of us made a long hike in the  middle of the night up to a viewpoint with a giant plastic tarp and just laid out under some of most amazing stars I've ever seen. We saw countless shooting stars, talked, and somehow got into telling as many riddles as we could think of for hours. I felt really close to everyone that night. I just kept thinking about how amazing it was to be away from everything superficial, artificial, alcoholic, etc. with all these people I hadn't known 10 days earlier.
Guanacaste was when I really started to realize just how stongly I feel that I am meant to be here right now. I love Costa Rica

Back in Civilization!

Sorry its taken me a while to update this. I've been back in the realm of internet and cell phone service for 4 days now, but the thought of logging down everything thats happened to me over the past couple weeks just seemed way too overwhelming in my tired, unmotivated state. Giving you every little detail would be pretty obnoxious so I'm going to try to sum it all up as best I can. In fact I think I'll just break it into a few parts. Sorry if it get's a little tedious. These have been some of the best 2 weeks of my life.

Isla Violines

So on our last morning in San Jose we woke up with the stars still out to load up a huge (pretty luxurious) bus with all of the bags we would need for the field trip. The other half of our stuff, including our computers, went straight to the institute, which we wouldn't see for another 2 weeks. The bus ride was long, but it was a good way for us all to get to know each other a little better. Our first stop along the way was a bridge over the Rio Tarcoles. It's a famous tourist spot because it has an incredibly beautiful view, and because directly below the bridge, a huge group of crocodiles spend every day basking in the morning sun. This was the first time I felt like I was somewhere truly exotic. Wild spoonbills and scarlet macaws flew overhead as we snapped a million photos of each crocodile. Suddenly the excitement of what we would be witnessing over the next few weeks just filled me up. We made a few more stops after that one, at a park that held some of Costa Rica's mysterious stone spheres, and at an African oil palm plantation. Dad, the spheres made me think of you a lot. They don't know very much about the indigenous peoples of Costa Rica, but they believe these perfect stone spheres, ranging from the size of a tennis ball to the size of a car were somehow created and utilized by a group called the Diquis. Its one of those cases where the technology to make such an object seems to be far too advanced from the time period they come from.
Our final destination (by bus) was a small beach town called Sierpe on the Oso peninsula, where we grabbed a quick lunch at restaurant owned by a women who's daughters would be coming with us to cook for us for the next part of our stay, and whose sons would be our boat drivers (Pretty much every person we encounter in Costa Rica is related to at least 3 other people we have met or will meet in Costa Rica) 
Finally we loaded all our stuff into two boats driven by two new Tico friends, Chato and Mario, and took off on an incredibly beautiful boat ride through one of the world's largest mangrove forests. More macaws, tiger herons, parrots, kingfishers all flew overhead. It was like a real life Jungle Cruise. When we finally saw what would be our home for the next week I think all of our jaws dropped. A beautiful and completely isolated tropical island welcomed us to its shores. We each stepped out of the boats into the bath-warm water and just kept laughing and yelling about how incredible it was that this was school. 


On this beach on Isla Violines, right where the sand meets the forest, begins the property of Don Miguel, our host for the six days we were there. I could write an entire post on Don Miguel and I probably should someday. Don Miguel is 48 years old, though he's got a weathered look about him that makes him seem much older. He is the island caretaker and lives in his house there alone, unless being visited by a school group which I'm not actually sure happens more than once a year. There is one other man who lives on the opposite side of the island, but we had very little interaction with him. As far as we were concerned Don Miguel was the king of this island. On the first night of our stay, as we sat in the dining area getting an orientation from Frank, Don Miguel walked shyly inside with a young boa constrictor he had just caught that we were all able to hold. He then proceeded within the next 20 minutes or so to catch cane toads, a box turtle, and several huge insects for us to pass around. One of the amazing things about this group is that everyone wants to see everything, and hold it, and ask questions about it. No on is afraid of snakes, or bugs, or anything. Sometimes it feels like being around 26 versions of myself. Throughout the rest of the trip, Don Miguel would accompany us on hikes with his machete, allowing us to go anywhere we wanted. He would cut down coconuts for us, go crocodile catching, and exploring with us in the middle of the night, all with a very shy and quiet demeanor, and without a word of English.
We spent almost every day exploring the trails along the island, with several 'orientation walks' and workshops. We had one day where we climbed through the mangrove forests and got to forage for small bivalves called pienguas, we had several amazing tree frog and poison dart frog encounters, traveled across the ocean with Chato and Mario to another island, Isla de Canas to go snorkeling, went bird watching every morning, all in the name of school. 
I think my favorite thing about the island though was getting to know everyone from the trip so well. The only electricity we had came from a generator that only ran for a couple hours at night (longer if Costa Rica was playing soccer that night). We had to wash our own clothes by hand, play card games by headlamp light, and lived in a little tent village right at the edge of the sand. Every morning and evening we all had to line up on either side of Chato and Mario's boat and push it with all our strength either into or out of the water, rolling it over tough bamboo poles that we would have to keep hauling back in front of the boat to keep it moving. We had no choice but to learn all about one another, and bond through our struggles and amazement at our living situation. It was hard to leave. But as sad as it was saying goodbye to Don Miguel we were all anxious to see what was next on this trip. 

Adios San Jose!

Hello! its hard to believe my few days in San Jose are already coming to an end. Even in this short little period, I've gotten somewhat attached to the living arrangement at Hotel Cacts. I'm rooming with three girls: Elizabeth, Lizzie, and Johanne, and our beds (two of them double-sized) are crammed awkwardly into a very tiny living space so that basically 3/4ths of the room is covered with mattress or sheets. In order to get to my bed I must crawl across Johanne's and Lizzie's (which inexplicably has dinosaur bed sheets). The rest of the space is pretty much occupied by our luggage. The other EAP-ers are all similarly accommodated throughout the hotel. We pretty much have run of the place, although there are a few other families, who never seem very happy when they run into us around the hotel. 

We've had several orientations/lectures over the past few days regarding everything from the upcoming field trip, to preventing snake attacks, to local fruit culture. I'm already totally crazy about the teachers. My favorite assignment so far has been for Pati's fruit lecture. The morning we arrived, we were all assigned an exotic fruit that we were to buy at the central market or in local fruit stands and give a presentation on its natural history and uses. I was luckier than most, and was assigned Papaya, which is plentiful pretty much everywhere you turn in San Jose. I accompanied a large group however to the central market just to experience a little local flavor. The San Jose Central Market is similar to central markets I've been to in Mexico and the Bahamas, except there are far less American tourists. We bobbed and weaved our way through packed aisles of merchants selling souvenirs, food and clothing, getting some irritated glances whenever we slowed or regrouped to try to find the coveted fruit stand. I've heard the Ticos are the friendliest people in the Americas, but I think a group of wandering, giggling English-speaking twenty-somethings from the United States can annoy just about any self-respecting local. We did finally find the fruit stand. A lot of the produce I had never even seen before. We all had to make the purchases completely in Spanish. Needless to say, many of us did not get our change. This afternoon/evening was spent cutting and preparing all of our fruits (with Pati’s help) for our presentations. As each person presented, the class feasted on some of the freshest, sweetest, most amazing fruit I’ve every consumed. My favorite was a giant spiny berry about the size of your head, nicknamed “nature’s ice cream”. I can’t remember the real name of it now, but it was incredible. My papaya was also a hit. I am hoping to consume food like this every day of my stay here from this point on.

The rest of our time in San Jose has been spent wandering around the town. We went to a museum on Costa Rican currency and the history of gold in the country, which helped me to get caught up on a little of Costa Rica’s background that I’ve been feeling awful about knowing nothing of. We’ve eaten at a few colorful, local restaurants, including a surprisingly good Lebonese place near our hotel. Our wanderings have included some close encounters with very friendly pigeons, one ATM-eaten debit card, lots of me having no idea where I am, lots of me getting sunburned, and most importantly, learning to base all directions around the area’s geographically central Pizza Hut.

While I’ve liked the experience of San Jose, I cannot wait to get out of here and start on the first real leg of our journey. Starting tomorrow at 4:30 am we’re packing into vans and taking off up the coast to Isla Violines where we’re seeing crocodiles and camping on the beach. After a few days there, snorkeling and taking night hikes, we’re bussing to Murcielago to partake in more adventurous activities. I won’t have any access to computers or phones for the next few weeks so I’ll be journaling to fill you all in later. Reading the itinerary gets me more excited than I can tell you. I’ll be thinking of all you guys and wishing you were here to experience this with me. I love you. Talk to you in a few weeks. La pura vida!

Welcome to the Rich Coast!

Currently sitting in the rooftop restaurant area of my hotel in San Jose, Costa Rica, surrounded by a few of my new EAP classmates. Its 11:07 here and we're the stragglers, up with our computers open, blogging and working on our first assignments under the warm night sky. I don't know if I have a word yet to describe my experience here so far. Somewhere in between completely intimidating and fascinating. Its still way too new, although its hard to believe its only the first day. My arrival into this country seems like it must have been further back than 24 hours.

I met up with my three traveling "companeros", as my dad called them, at LAX yesterday afternoon. We sat in the terminal and between the four of us tried to recall as much as we could about what we would be doing from the emails and guides we had received from our schools. I made a quick stop at the I <3 LA store to pick up some last minute gifts for the host family I'll have at the end of my trip and we took off. The entire trip between LAX to our layover in Mexico City, to our arrival in San Jose is all kind of a blur. I  apparently stood out as an obvious American and no one let me get past "hola!" before they switched over to English. Slightly disappointing. My goal by the time I get back is to speak only in Spanish to every airport employee I come in contact with, whether they like it or not.

Once we arrived in Costa Rica we had the stressful task of finding a legitimate taxi that wouldn't kidnap us and drive us to some dark sketchy ally and sell us into slavery...at least that what the printed instructions made it sound like would happen. In fact there was one solitary taxi waiting outside the airport (we were the last flight in) and one bewildered but determined taxi driver, who somehow crammed 4 girls, and about 8 giant duffel bags into a small sedan. Riding in a Costa Rican cab in the middle of the night is an experience. Our driver blasted American music as he sped at 100 kmph, not stopping at stop signs, cutting off large trucks, and driving in the wrong lane pretty much any time there wasn't an oncoming car. We could not stop laughing, but he got us there in about half the time our instructions said he would.

We checked into Hotel Cacts, which looks pretty humble on the outside but is actually quite beautiful once the manager, Miguel lets you in the gates. It is all open air, with tropical plants dripping off of every  imitation-adobe surface. Barking geckos pop out and scramble around the walls and make their little squeak-toy sounds starting around 6 pm.

 I think I'll fill you in more on San Jose tomorrow, since I am now the second to last person up. Goodnight friends! I'm thinking about you all pretty much constantly

Study Break

Why did I have to find this so close to finals...

I just discovered scribbler!

The discovery that there are online doodle pads is a dangerous one for me...

life. goal.

Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

And so I enter (official) Adulthood

So this weekend I got to celebrate my twenty first birthday in the best way I could possibly imagine. My amazing high school friends from back home in Los Angeles made a treacherous 6 hour (longer for some) journey through all kinds of crazy weather to join me and my Santa Cruz friends for the weekend. They can have no idea how happy they made me. We went adventuring through San Francisco all Saturday and a lot of things didn't go quite as planned, but everything always seems to end up okay when I'm with these guys. More than okay in this case. I even got a surprise appearance from the boyfriend who had been out of town! I'm so blessed to have such wonderful people in my life. I felt a lot of love this weekend, and what more can anyone ask for their birthday? 

First post!

So welcome to the post that has popped my blog cherry! Its not very exciting so far but its a starting point so we'll see where I go from here. I wanted to post this photo by Andy Goldsworthy that my plant physiology professor showed my class today because first of all: its pretty. And second of all it kind of encompasses everything I'm really interested in: science, nature, and art. This guy goes out into places of natural beauty and rearranges small details to create some amazing little scenes. And I love it. Its different than anything I would ever think to do art-wise but I love its sort of tribute to nature, without being cliche.