A Wildlife Array

Weekly update:
Well this week was filled with interesting wildlife, that’s for sure. Sunday night I found a scorpion in my room. It was just crawling across the floor with its claws out and tail at the ready. I was quite freaked out and was the only person in my room at the time. I thought quickly on my feet though and took the bag out of our trashcan and put the trashcan on top of it so I could go find a boy that wanted to get rid of it for me. As soon as I said the word, there were many volunteers. The scorpion was then put into the trashcan and kept until Tuesday to show to our Tropical Ecology professor. It was not kept in our room.

This week my pandilla group was farm/land care. This meant waking up an hour before breakfast at 6am to water the garden, take care of the chickens, and various other farm activities. I have to say I was not thrilled with the early hour. One day this week we spent all morning building hydro-beds for the garden as a community activity. I started by going down the road to get dirt and then unloading the dirt. I took photos of people mixing dirt, moving dirt, and digging holes. A lot can be done with dirt.

We had our first two Spanish classes this week. I was undoubtedly put into the level one class. My Spanish is in need of MUCH improvement. For the first Spanish class we went outside and sat under one of the mango trees. This was where I was bit on the legs/ankles several times by tiny black flies. The next couple of days they hurt so badly, my ankles swelled up and it hurt to walk. Now, almost a week later they are almost gone.

There were several hours of every class this week and luckily discretional time to write up my TE FEX report. My partner and I spent hours on it making sure it followed the guidelines to a T. I am very happy it’s over with, even though now we have our ECON FEX to work on and turn in Thursday (more about this bellow). Our second outreach was this week as well; students our age that are learning English in Atenas came to the center. Our SAM had several activities lined up for us to practice our Spanish and them to practice their English. It was fun meeting other people our age but, a little stressful since I don’t know that much Spanish.

Our third field trip was on Friday to Carara National Park. We had breakfast at 5:30am and got right onto the bus. We stopped at the Tarcoles River to receive two field lectures. We took a short boat trip to a beach-ish area. The trip consisted of seeing many crocodiles and various species of birds. As we approached the beach area we saw a huge crocodile laying on it close to the water. As we got closer it slipped back into the water, which was very muddy. The boat driver then pulled up to the beach, and I mean this literally as there was not even the inkling of a dock, where our professor then told us this was were we would be getting off to have our NRM field lecture. Yes, right next to where the crocodile had just been. This beach was littered with trash. The Tarcoles River Basin drains the whole central valley and is very polluted. I proceeded to take a seat on a piece of driftwood in the boiling sun to listen to the lecture. After this lecture was over we got back onto the boat only to ride a short way down and get off again. This time we went into the mangrove forest for our TE lecture. When this was finally over and we left the mosquito infested area, we took the bus to Carara National Park. We hiked around the transitional wet-to-dry forest and saw lots of wildlife. When we first walked onto the trail we felt a light mist and everyone thought it was starting to rain. Only after some students started basking in the cool mist were we informed that what we were actually feeling was cicada secretions. It made the rest of the muggy hike a little less enjoyable. I did get to see toucans, butterflies, lizards, a snake, and millions of leafcutter ants. It was very cool to see the ants marching in their cleared pathway for what seemed to be miles to them.

On Saturday we went on our fourth fieldtrip to Poas National Park. This is the most visited park in Costa Rica and one of top most visited in the world. We got to hike up to see the active crater and since we were there so early in the morning, in was very clear and the view was beautiful. My group then booked it up to the older crater, now looking more like a lake. It was very steep going up and down and it wore me out. Even with the professor practically running, we were 30 minutes late for lunch. After I ate lunch I started, or attempted rather, to conduct the ECON FEX my professor had earlier explained. He gave each student ten surveys about the park. Five were in English and five were in Spanish and he gave us an hour and a half to complete them. Now I would like to make this very clear; there are 28 students, each with ten surveys, all of us trying to complete them at the same time at the same place. I am aware that there are a lot of visitors at Poas but, it is a very small park. Most of the people I got the courage to ask had already done it, or didn’t want to. Americans. I couldn’t even build up the courage to ask someone in Spanish. Let’s just say I did not complete all ten of mine. I know a lot of others who did not get to ten either, but I felt helpless not even completing a single Spanish one.

I did get to bake cookies earlier in the week as well as banana bread muffins. I couldn’t bake anything today due to far too much homework. As I was writing this, I would say during the Spanish class part, I felt my first earthquake. It was quite real; I assure you and kind of freaked me out. I felt strong shaking and then it slowly died away. It didn’t last very long but, long enough to make me stop what I was doing and wonder if other people were feeling what I was feeling. A little frightening due to the signs posted everywhere that say: “In case of fire, earthquake, or other emergency, meet by the main gate.” No one in the common room even got up so, I guess it wasn’t that frightening. To wrap up on a wildlife note; I found a second tiny tick on myself; it was on my arm this time. I am starting to wonder were I get them due to the fact I was in long sleeves all day Friday and Saturday.