Leaaaviinnn' on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again...

Tomorrow I end my six month jaunt in Costa Rica. Along with scrounging up some dinner, I still have to rearrange my luggage to find a way to fit everything in two suitcases. I'm considering leaving behind a host of things, from my bulky bookbag to my soaked, stinking sneakers. The only thing holding me back is I would rather donate the usable items, and I don't want to saddle the hostel with that!

A part of me is legitimately worried about coming home. I'm comfortable in Costa Rica now, I'm used to the country and all the things it does have (incredible fruit) and does not have (English language libraries). There's an awful little phenomenon known as reverse culture shock, that happens particularly to travelers returning from long trips. You've heard of culture shock, the disorientation you feel when you enter a foreign country. Reverse culture shock is the disorientation you feel when you return to your own country. It's particularly uncomfortable because not only do you feel disoriented, but you get a secondary discomfort when you recognize this feeling, that home has become strange to you.

Some things I will miss:

-incredible bananas. They just taste more banana-y here.

-unexpected wildlife, like the parrots that frequent the cities

-lots and lots of hummingbirds

-batidos, essentially smoothies with tropical fruit

-on that note, all the tropical fruit: guanabana, maracuya, cas, mamon chino, papaya, pineapple

-being able to get anywhere, cheaply, via bus

-owning exactly one pair of close-toed shoes

-yucca, expertly prepared by Rosa y Socorro

Some things I will not miss:

-lots and lots of rain

-the mosquitoes that come with lots and lots of rain

-perpetually damp sheets

-being tied to a bus schedule to get anywhere

-gallo pinto. For now, at least.

Interesting Article on Foreign Travel

This is from the Chronicle of the Horse, a publication that follows competitions and general goings-on in the horse world.  The author is currently following the Pan-American Games in Mexico and talks about her adaptations for working in foreign countries.

Managing Expectations

While I haven't been hung in red tape yet (knock on wood!), when I travel around Costa Rica on my own I usually expect something to go wrong, at some point.  I've missed buses, spent hours in a bank only to be told there's something wrong with my traveler's cheques (moral: don't EVER bring traveler's cheques!), and gotten completely lost.  But you slog through the lines and figure it out, and eventually get your money and find your bus.

Apologies for the lack of posts.  My bad.  Some recent goings-on:

  Another outreach with Tercera Edad

I really like hanging out with little old ladies.  And they're earring making machines!  I can't tell you how many itty bitty pieces of metal I torqued with my pliers.  I also made a some for myself though, so can't complain.  The little old ladies are so happy to listen to my broken Spanish.  They're also all in love with one of the students.  When we went to help with the recycling collection in town one of the old ladies stole him away.  An hour later we see him walking back towards us, carrying her groceries.

Shay with COOLER of arroz con pollo!

Homestays + Family Dinner

Students spent a weekend with local families, and the next week we invited all of the families for a big thank you dinner.  The preparations that went into this affair were incredible.  We had at least 3 tents rigged around the open air classroom to fit the maximum number of people.  We ordered more plates, hired a DJ, and cooked an insane amount of arroz con pollo.  I believe the cooks made a total of SEVEN tres leches cakes.

Gabriel Calderon with beans, pre-roasting

Coffee Farm Visit

We visited an organic coffee farm near Atenas and got a tour by the owner Don Gerardo and his son Gabriel.    Although they don't make as much profit as they would on a conventional farm, they are both incredibly happy with their decision to go organic.  Don Gerardo said that the difference in profit doesn't account for the value of your health, your freedom (from the constant chemical rigamarole), and your peace of mind.  

They've also found that the combination of organic and shade cultivation has actually decreased their pest outbreaks, compared to neighbors.  For those who don't know, coffee plants are actually happiest under shade, and can live up 15+ years.  Many farmers grow them in direct sun to force higher bean production, but this results in weaker plants with more volatile harvests due to the stress of sunlight.  Under shade, not only is the crop more consistent, the plants are also healthier and can respond better to diseases.  

El Sur

According to students (and most staff, although some miss Nicaragua), this is the best trip we've been on so far.  We visit a community of 10 families called El Sur de Turrubares, which is working on making their own ecotourism group.  Each year they get 150-200 visitors in a mix of volunteers, school groups, and "normal" tourists.  We started with a very muddy, slippery hike through Carara National Park that the students absolutely loved, even though at least 3 of them bit the dust (or clay in this case) on the trails.  After that we visited the trapiche (traditional sugar mill) again and gorged ourselves on different forms of raw sugar.  Definitely a good pick-me-up after a hard hike.

That night some of us left with Edgardo for a night hike around the area.  And by night hike I mean a walk down the road at 7 or so, once it was dark.  But we still saw quite a lot of very cool frogs, including glass frogs (below) and giant rain frogs that eat other frogs! 

Edgardo also pointed out this egg mass on leaf, hanging over the stream.  I actually know quite a bit about it, because the lab I worked in during college studied something very similar.  The frogs lay their eggs on a leaf, and the tadpoles hatch and grow within the egg mass.  Once they get big enough, they drop off into the water below.  As if that wasn't cool enough, it's been shown that at a certain point, the tadpoles can decide when to drop off!  It's best for them if they can stay on the leaf for as long as possible, to avoid predators.  However, there are two types of predators that like to eat eggs!  There are wasps, which will eat only a few eggs, and snakes which can eat the entire egg mass.  The tadpoles are ready for them though.  If they feel a wasp vibration on the leaf, the closest few tadpoles jump ship, but the others stay put because they "know" that it's just a wasp and probably won't come close.  If they feel a snake vibration, all of them will drop off to evade impending doom.  The coolest part is that they can distinguish "wasp vibration" from "snake vibration" from rainfall, from wind, etc.

Tomorrow night we leave for Panama and I may be more or less incommunicado for the week, although I'm holding out for good internet at the hotel.  We'll be staying in Panama City and visiting the canal, the Smithsonian Research Center, a national park, and various historical locations around the city.  I'm excited to see skyscrapers again!

A collection of cool wildlife and cool people

Anne, Achim's daughter at a INBioparque

Toucan!  At the coffee farm...instant distraction. 

Don Gerardo with his coffee plants

Cheeky monkeys tryin to steal our bananas!  Literally!  Although we did put them there on purpose to entice monkeys....

Some New Pictures

New Pictures!!
These are from pretty much the whole semester so far: Manu, Monteverde, Poas Volcano, Carara, Atenas, community outreaches, etc.

Some highlights:
-Monteverde. In total. It's a small (but growing) town in the mountains. The ecosystem up there is called "cloud forest" because it's so high up it gets a lot of precipitation from being IN the clouds. It's very surreal looking, all of the trees have tons of epiphytes (bromeliads, orchids) growing on every surface and it's almost dripping wet at all times. There's also swampy areas, and once you get up high enough you reach elfin forest, where all the trees are short from the wind exposure. Over the course of our stay we hiked the trails in Monteverde park twice, and one of the interns and I stayed an extra night with a professor and his family. We got to wander around the town of Monteverde and see a band of local scientists play in a bar. I get the sense that there's a really big scientific community in the town, I visited or heard of at least 4 research stations there.

Independence Day (Sept 15) in town. The parade was very similar, and yet very dissimilar to parades at home. You do have the marching bands, the baton twirlers, the floats, etc. But you also have girls with big skirts and guys doing rope tricks, and women in THREE INCH HEELS in a PARADE. The food was very similar. No hot dogs or burgers, but meat cooked over a grill, served on a skewer with a tortilla. Close enough (and delicious).

We've had a couple of outreaches with a local old folks group, called the Tercera Edad (Third Age). It's a bunch of active little old ladies and men who get together, usually at the church. Twice now we've done arts and crafts with them, and it's pretty fun. The little old ladies get pretty creative, and they're really happy to just talk to young people, even if we don't always understand them.

On our trip to Carara and the surrounding mangrove swamp, I saw some very cool wildlife: Boat-billed heron,, Roseate spoonbill, and big crocodiles (see album) and poison dart frogs.

I've also seen some white-faced capuchin monkeys around campus. They literally tried to steal our bananas the other day. Cheeky monkeys.

Finally, last Sunday I went with a professor and his family to a German festival in San Jose. We drank German beer, ate German brats, and listened to traditional German music. The first two were incredible, the last was horrible. I was also mistaken for German quite a few times. I usually didn't realize the person was speaking German for a few sentences. I just thought they had a really bad Spanish accent or something.

Manu Field Trip

First off happy birthday to Mama Llama, who's all alone in Downingtown today!

This past weekend we took the students to a field station in Guapiles, Costa Rica. We stayed in the field station they used for a semester, which consists basically of cabins. Pictures are on their way, once I can find the time (and Internet) to edit and upload them.

We started the trip with a hike in Braulio Carrillo National Park, which was established in 1978 after the government put a highway through a rainforest. Environmental groups pitched a fit and got the park made. So now they have a national park with a big highway running right down the middle. There's actually a fair amount of "discussion" over what kind of effect this has on the flora and fauna. In ecology, when an ecosystem is broken into pieces (for instance, by agriculture or a highway) it's called fragmentation. Particularly in forests, having more "edges" can drastically change the characteristics of the area. Certain species like to be on the edge and others don't. For example, some birds think an edge means the end of the forest and won't cross it, even though there's another forest 100ft away. Some tree seedlings need shade to grow well and if their seeds land between fragments, they won't survive. This has big consequences for how animals move around and how their populations are regulated. Instead of having one large population with lots of genetic diversity (like a city), you end up with small populations that are very genetically similar (think towns up in the Appalachians...).

The day after Braulio Carrillo, we went to El Zota, an organic farm, for a tour. While there we helped them make up this soup of microorganisms for their compost pile. Microorganisms help decompose compost faster, and can be used in various other ways around the farm (enhancing fertilizers, cutting down on animal smells). El Zota focuses on cattle, both for dairy and meat production, but they also had pigs, goats, chickens, and an extensive garden. Everything is grown organically, and they maintain a portion of their farm as forest. We got a hike through the forest as well and ended up seeing strawberry poison dart frogs,, a spider monkey, and howler monkeys. I've officially seen all four species of monkeys found in Costa Rica! (Spider, Howler, Squirrel, and White-faced Capuchin in case you were wondering.)

The last day of the trip we visited the Dole Banana Plantation, and were given a tour by a very rehearsed, slippery guide. As another intern put it: "I liked the tour so much it made me suspicious." Some tidbits:
-they actually still use MULES!
-the bananas have to be covered to avoid damage, so all the trees look like they have blue plastic garbage bags hanging from them
-what we think of as a bunch is actually called a hand, and there can be dozens of hands (=over a hundred bananas) on one stalk
-there is no such thing as a banana tree, only banana plants
-banana plants frequently fall over, so all have to be secured by twine to keep them upright
-it's really hard to get bananas to reproduce, so all seedlings are generated in a lab.

Gallivanting

This weekend Nadav (new intern) and I took off for the capital, San Jose. I would like it to be known (coughcoughMom) that we walked throughout the city, couch surfed, and clubbed and came back in one piece, with all of our personal belongings.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with couch surfing, it's a website that connects travelers with locals who are interested in hosting them. Anyone can sign up for it, and people write reviews of their hosts/travelers to maintain a kind of oversight. Hosts aren't supposed to charge, but it's considered good couch surfing manners to help your host out by making dinner or giving them a bottle of wine or something. Treating your host like a hotel is also strongly discouraged- couch surfing is more about cultural exchange than finding a free night's sleep.

In this case we stayed with a 24 year old computer programmer that Nadav had stayed with last weekend. We met at the bus stop, took the bus to his apartment, cooked dinner together, and went out with our host and his friends to Vertigo, a night club in San Jose. He was super welcoming and even though we were a little last minute he fit us in with his friends and their plans. We talked a fair amount in the evening and he cheerfully corrected our Spanish. After the club we slept on his futon, then took the bus into downtown in the morning.

The rest of the day Nadav and I kind of wandered around San Jose and went to the Museo Nacional, which had a lot of Pre-Colombian artifacts. It was also in an old fortress, which was pretty cool. It was pretty chill, just eating when we wanted to eat and stopping where we wanted to stop. Even though we didn't have specific plans it was nice to get out of the center for a while and see the rest of Costa Rica. I think we're going to try to do something like that most weekends, the only problem is limited time. We have to work Saturdays for at least part of the day, and then occasionally we have to be on call for Sundays. But between all three interns and the SAM, I think at least some of us should be able to travel around most weekends. It got really boring hanging around Atenas every weekend during the summer session.

Tomorrow's a pretty big day for the center. Rainforest Alliance comes in the morning to assess the campus for certification. If we get the certification, I think we'll be the only Rainforest Alliance certified study abroad center, and we'll be living up to our "Center for Sustainable Development Studies" name. Later in the day, the students get here! I'm sure we'll be running around all day trying to accommodate everyone.

I'm curious what the semester students will be like. We got a little bit of a profile on them from their applications, so I know there's a lot of really active people in the group. It'll be nice to have them for a longer period of time, I feel like with the summer session I didn't get to know a lot of the students that well, especially if they weren't in Carlos's DR group.

I also realized today that I thought my ~3 months in Mexico lasted forever, but I've already been in Costa Rica 2 months and sometimes I feel like I just got here! Other times it feels like home, particularly when I'm coming back from a trip.

Vacation Update

Vacation Pictures

General Cool Pictures

Bocas del Toro is a relatively small town on Panama's Caribbean coastline. You can tell it used to be nothing more than a typical Caribbean island and has now turned into the "new" typical Caribbean island, complete with bars, dive shops and vendors. It still managed to be pretty charming with colorful houses and most touristy areas limited to the main few streets. I'd say the majority of housing options were hostels (compared to hotels), and I don't think any of the buildings in town even had a third floor.

I stayed at a spanish school/hostel populated by Europeans and you were more likely to hear German than English, although almost everyone spoke English as well. Surprisingly there were quite a few people in their thirties who had been at the school for a month or were planning on staying for weeks. I expected everyone to be college students on break.

I definitely enjoyed the people at the school, but it was a bit difficult to be there on my own, since most of them spent at least half the day in class. I ended up doing a few tours on my own, and went to the beach with a pair of Argentine girls who were also staying at the hostel.

I took a short tour through the Smithsonian research station on the island, which was interesting. The facility is pretty new and obviously very nice. We got to hold some starfish, sea urchins and sea cucumbers and ended up seeing some interesting birds in their swamp. Northern Jacana and Boat-billed Heron and a male Passerini Tanager were the coolest. We also saw a few caimans in the pond.

Playa de Estrellas was probably the highlight of the week. Ines, Paz (the Argentines) and I took a local bus to the other side of the island, Bocas del Drago, got off the bus and walked about 30 minutes along the deserted shoreline. You see a hand-painted sign that says Please Do Not Touch the Stars and in the water you can see at least 10 starfish. The ocean was maybe 1-2ft deep for a good 20ft off the coast, and there were seagrass beds and bright starfish. I got to borrow snorkelling gear and further offshore was some soft coral. I ended up seeing a cuttlefish and a snapper fry that kept trying to eat me.

The return trip was a bit annoying, particularly when I got held up a bit at the border and only just caught the bus on the other side. When I finally got back to the center there were two IT guys from headquarters hanging around. We had dinner and on Sunday went to Manuel Antonio National Park, which is woods with pathways to the beaches. The wildlife sighting was unbelievable, easy spots everywhere. We saw three different types of monkeys (white-faced capuchin, squirrel and howler), raccoons, tame white-tailed deer, and a sloth on the way back. The beach was pretty as well.

A fuller account of Finca la Flor! Stay tuned for photos, I didn't bring my camera connector cord with me to Panama. By the way, Mom, I'm safe and sound in my hostel and the town is super super safe.

So Finca la Flor is an organic farm that also hosts groups for vacations. The farm part isn't too large, just enough to help support themselves and sell excess food. There are maybe 3-5 people who work year round for the farm, and usually a handful of volunteers. I worked with a French Canadian man and a Swiss woman, and the farm is owned by a German woman. I definitely improved my Spanish, since I didn't speak English all week.

We would start around 8 in the morning, usually doing something with planting or preparing ground for planting. We'd have to till the ground (with hoes), add some compost and mix it into the soil, and either plant seeds or replant seedlings. I'd never heard of some of the things we planted, or ate. We also spent some time repairing infrastructure around the farm, using bamboo to make beds or steps on the hills. It was pretty hilly so the beds were all terraced, which is pretty cool.

We also worked with their goats a little. They had them in this stable that was on stilts, so all the goat poop (theoretically) would fall through the slats to the ground. The goats were like penthouse residents. Once a day we'd let them out for the Running of the Goats into their field. Then we'd clean their stalls (basically poking poop through the slats with sticks) and get them back in their stalls later in the day. This was harder, since each goat had an assigned stall so they wouldn't bully each other. So there would be 10 goats milling around and you'd have to sort them by grabbing their horns and trying to convince them to go to their own stall, which was not always easy.

The food was pretty amazing, it was all vegetarian and the majority of it came from the farm itself. The cooks really knew what to do with it too. We had a lot of really fantastic soups, and one night they made a really good Italian style pizza.

I wish I'd stayed longer, and I may go back during other breaks.

Vacaciones

A quick update! I ended up spening the last week volunteering at Finca La Flor, an organic farm near Cartago. Pardon typos and lack of apostrophes, Im using an internet cafe keyboard and I forget how to do them. Finca la Flor is really gorgeous and a pretty cool place. We spent most of every day planting, weeding, and preparing the beds for planting. Its pretty tough work, and at the moment Im exhausted. Ive got another night at the Finca, then Im spending the night in San Jose and heading to Bocas del Toro Panama for a week. Ill give a more detailed post (complete with pictures) next week, when I dont have a bus to catch!

In which not much happens...

Dad has been begging me to post for a week now, but frankly I have nothing much to post! The past week was fairly boring since we didn't go anywhere. The students were busy writing up their research reports and the interns (myself and Daniela) took inventories and tried to stay busy (sometimes easier said than done).

The students all left yesterday morning and we had a staff party last night. So far, every Costa Rican party I've been to (total: 3) has included chicharrones, which are different than those made in Mexico or So Cal. Here chicharrones is pork slow cooked over a fire, as opposed to essentially roasted scrapple in Mexico. Each party has also included karaoke and dancing, although the karaoke may be attributed to Sergio (econ professor) who was a key player in both parties. My latin dancing skills are still shameful, but improving. Edgardo (ecology prof) and the guards took pity on me and tried to teach me. Edgardo would try to spin us and I'd miss his hands as he came around and it was generally hilarious.

I believe Mom has been working herself into a knot because I still haven't finalized my plans for my vacation time. I'm waiting on an answer from an acquaintance of Gerardo (center director) about macaw research, but I'm afraid if I don't hear soon I'll have to find something else to do. So for now I'm looking at some organic farms that do kind of a work program. The problem is finding something on short notice. Of course, I'm welcome to stay at the center but that would be fairly boring for three weeks. I also have to leave the country for a few days to renew my visa, which SFS will pay for. I think I'll let them pay for me to go to Bocas del Toro, Panama which is a set of islands on the Caribbean coast of Panama.

A Very Delayed Update

So, blogging is harder to keep up with this time around. I've been to 4 different parks (Tirimbina, Volcan Arenal, Carara, Bosque de Ninos) in the past three weeks and now I'm planning my 3 weeks of vacation. I believe I need to leave the country for a bit to keep my visa fresh for the next semester, but I have to time it right so my 90 days don't run out too early.

I just spent the last four days in Bosque de Ninos, which is a forest that was preserved using money collected by children. It's up in the mountains and was colder than we expected. It was gorgeous though. There were two different types of forest at the campsite. On the one side there was a non-native, planted pine forest. The trees were literally in rows, and there wasn't a ton of vegetation. The other side of the camp had native cloud forest with tons of different species.

I spent my couple of days helping students look for mushrooms for their research projects. We would mark out a 20 x 50m plot and walk around looking for mushrooms. We usually came back with 80+ after maybe an hour and a half of searching. Especially in the native area, they were just everywhere if you looked close enough.

The wildlife count is pretty high at this point. Of course there's tons of iguanas around, and there's some wrens that live on campus. I've seen two different types of toucans, three species of snakes (2 of them venomous), white faced monkeys, howler monkeys, bullet ants (giants, named bullet ants because that's what it feels like when they bite), hummingbirds, giant social spiders, katydids, tree frogs, toads, the list goes on. I've got my heart set on a sloth before the year is up, and I'd love to see a tapir but apparently they're super shy.

I uploaded some more pictures to the last album. The one from the last post now has pictures from Carara Park and an outreach we did with school kids. This album has pictures from Tirimbina park and Arenal volcano and the associated park, waterfall, and hot springs. I've also been messing around with my camera and made this album for just some pretty pictures that don't necessarily have anything to do with anything.

Update on the bedmaking

We've sighted (and killed) a chinche, although happily it wasn't in anyone's bed. Imagine that at about an inch long, and carrying the threat of Chagas' disease, which from what I hear is pretty nasty. I don't really care about the scorpion thing anymore lol.

Students arrived yesterday and so far today we've taken them on tours through both the center and Atenas. Atenas is like a 10 min drive from the center and has like 6 main roads, so it's pretty easy to navigate. There's a central plaza/park, a market, and a church that are the main markers. It's becoming apparent to me that my AmEx card won't work like, anywhere. It's all Visa and MasterCard.

I need to come up with some kind of project to work on while I'm at the center. One of the last interns was writing a paper with Sergio, and Daniela is helping with the Rainforest Alliance Certification that the center's working on. It's also hard right now because a) I don't know much about what everyone's working on, and b) we'll be going on field trips like every couple of days. Maybe for now my project will be improving my Spanish lol.

I've actually started running in the mornings with Daniela and Jess (the student affairs manager). I'm still awful and have to walk periodically, but we've been doing about 3 miles a day. This morning we got going at 6am because we needed to be on time to breakfast. It's also MUCH cooler then, so you're not dying by the end.

Sooo, I kind of love the people here. My Spanish is still in need of some work, but I'm more comfortable using it. It's better to stumble around trying to talk than to sit quietly. Especially everyone at the center is used to it. And it's funny, some people I can understand perfectly and some people I can't understand anything they say. I've been talking to one of the guards, Melvin, a lot. He gets kind of lonely in the guard house and he's always looking for someone to talk to. His accent is a little difficult for me, but he's really patient. Evelyn, the cleaning lady, is also really sweet and encouraging. It's funny, I don't know the professors very well at all yet because they've been on vacation for the past couple of days. Everyone clears out during days off. It also seems to be really easy to travel around Costa Rica, which helps. I read somewhere that the whole country is about the size of West Virginia.

The wildlife is pretty cool, there's iguanas EVERYWHERE and Gerardo (center director) hates them. They break into the greenhouse and eat the lettuce and seedlings, and they pee all over everything. If you hear something funny scrabbling on the roof, you can be about 95% sure it's an iguana. There's also tons of smaller lizards and geckos around. There's one that lives near the dish washing area that's probably the size of a AAA battery. Last night Daniela pointed out a GIANT toad near the pool, it was like the size of a kitten (ok, maybe a very young kitten). We also apparently get capuchin monkeys around the kitchen, but I haven't seen them yet.

Pictures!

These should work for everyone, let me know if you can't see them!

Center

I think I'm going to be wandering around Atenas on Sunday, so I'll try to get some pictures of that too.

A couple of things I didn't expect:
-my hair appears to LOVE it here. I don't understand, it always protested so vehemently to humidity. It was great in Mexico too, I guess it just wants me to go abroad all the time.
-it pays to be neat and clean. Scorpions like piles of clothes...so I feel like the time it takes to make my bed is worth it.
-the food is MUCH better than the travel blogs say.
-plaintains (platanos) are awesome. Ok, I did kind of expect that.
-my spanish skills depend on who's talking. I understand Yendry perfectly, but can barely catch the gist of the cooks.
-lizards everywhere, from itty bitty ones to iguanas that destroy the lettuce beds.
-people with the same name as me (more or less). The name Katy is pretty common, and pronounced kah-tay. As a result, I'm Katy to half the people here.
-two words: MANGO TREES. Everywhere. The season's almost over, but there's still a couple hanging around (haha).

Costa Rica!

Well, I made it to Costa Rica in one piece, as did my luggage. Actually, that's a lie. There was a box that broke into multiple pieces, but that's not important. I was met at the airport by another intern Mark and Yendry (pronounced JEN-dree, not sure what her job is yet). Atenas is a little over half an hour's drive NW of San Jose. Turns out, Mark and Amara (Student Affairs Manager) are leaving soon and tonight was their going away party. I was warned that it would probably be a little weird, since my first introduction to everyone would be at a party. There's so many people at this center, I need like a cheat sheet. Unlike Mexico it looks like almost everyone brought their family to live here, and the default language is Spanish. Last night I realized my Spanish needs a lot of work! Everyone was really really nice, even when I couldn't understand them lol. It's obvious that everyone here is really close.

I'll update on what the center looks like once I get some pictures.

Reflection: One Year Later

I was thinking recently that it's been about a year since I left Mexico. I remember I cried as my plane left the ground at Mexico City. My friend Dylan and I went as far as DFW airport together and we both teared up when we parted on the SkyTrain, because it meant that it was all over.

We were warned about reverse culture shock, and some of the frustrations we'd encounter. Our friends and family lived so many months without us, and they certainly weren't sitting twiddling their thumbs waiting for news. Most people would ask "how was Mexico" and you'd think how in the world can I sum up four months of my life in a foreign country in a few words? And there were things about American culture that we'd temporarily forgotten about. Like the neighbors' Turf Wars and the existence of an entire wall of breakfast cereal when you've been used to three.

I've realized that 2010 was extraordinarily good to me. I spent three months abroad experiencing a new culture, came home and went almost directly to Pymatuning to (finally) do my own experiment for the first time, acquired a new niece, and moved in with some great roommates.

Apparently I've changed some over the past year. Studying abroad made me more outgoing and confident. For some reason studying abroad had been something I'd thought would be nice but would never actually happen. It came as a bit of a shock when I realized I was two days away from leaving the country for three months.

I did a lot of things that I would have been terrified of- I'm thinking specifically of a hike across a mountainous island on loose rock with steep hills. I managed to get directions from a security guard in the Guadalajara airport with my rusty Spanish.

Over the summer, I learned to really push myself and expect more out of myself. Big kudos here to my mentor Dr Rickey Cothran, who leads by example and is never worried.



Around New Years I was worried that there was no way 2011 could live up to 2010. Five months in, I think it might. I pushed through my last semester of college (and sometimes I really had to push!) to finish my thesis and graduate. Breaking my back was less than enjoyable, but it followed news that I would be spending the next year in Costa Rica.

**Correction**

A correction: I will NOT be spending the summer in Louisiana. I will be spending part of the summer and the next (a full year) in Costa Rica!! I got an internship offer from the School for Field Studies (the same organization I studied abroad with). I'll be doing a combination of research, TAing and logistics.

Not less than three days after hearing back from SFS, I fell off a horse and broke a vertebra. I'm fine, but have to be in a brace for 8 weeks. So I called SFS and had to push back my start date by a month. I'll now be starting in early July to give me time to get all the certifications I need. Luckily, it'll also let me get everything ready and perfect my stick driving skills!

Next Adventure: Mississippi River

I've decided I'm going to keep up with this blogging thing, since I'll probably be spending the next year or so in the field(s). I spent last summer at the Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology in northwestern PA doing research on aquatic ecology.

I decided that post-graduation I wanted to take a year to work before going to grad school. I originally planned to save some money, but then I realized I want to make sure that I'm doing what I want to be doing. I was a little worried that I just wanted to go into ecology because that's what I've done for the past two and a half years.

Today I accepted a summer job working with Fish & Wildlife at some refuges on the Mississippi River. Specifically, I'll be living near St Catherine Creek, which is outside of Natchez, MS. I'll be doing bird surveys, bat monitoring, wood duck assessments and banding, and invasives control. I'm hoping I'll get a feel for resource management, and for Fish & Wildlife.