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.