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!