High Tide

 This week seemed to harbor the worst luck the group has had so far. Sunday evening we had no water. The center had to buy a bunch of 20 gallon jugs of drinking water. This water was only for drinking for course which meant showers turned into a dip in the pool. Luckily this only lasted a few days and we had are water back. It was interesting to see how different day to day life was without one of the simplest necessities I’m use to having. It is hard to imagine that one billion people on our planet do not have access to adequate drinking water.

Early last week we went on a day trip to a local organic coffee farm. We got to see how the coffee is harvested and processed. The farm was pretty small and practiced agroforestry. It was pretty interesting to see how labor intensive coffee farming, especially organic farming was. We walked through part of the farm and I was shocked to see how steep it was.

Last weekend we went on a field trip to Santa Rosa where we camped in the (very hot) dry tropical forest. We got there Thursday around lunch and went on a hike after we set up camp. We saw a bunch of spider monkeys during our field lecture, which was quite distracting. Our tropical ecology professor just couldn’t compete with them. The next day we broke down our campsite and hiked nine miles to the coast. We planned to camp on the beach that night and hike back the next day. I didn’t make it very far on the trail before my back started hurting. Luckily there was a vehicle transporting our camping gear to the beach and I was able to get a (very bumpy) ride the rest of the way. After everyone else made it to the beach we were informed of the tsunami that had happened in Japan the night before. An 8.9 quake? Waves already hit Hawaii? I felt so helpless and out of the loop, I had no idea this had happened and no way of getting updates about it. We were then informed that the entire pacific coast of Central America was on alert and the beach we had just arrived at was closing due to the possibility of affects from the tsunami expected at 4pm. We were able to walk on the beach for about an hour before we had to hike all the way back to the original campsite. The beach was amazing and beautiful and I hated that we couldn’t fall asleep to the sound of waves that night. This beach is a very popular surfing destination, although we didn’t see anyone, but I’m not sure I would want to surf there, at least at my level, due to the high occurrence of riptides. This was also the location of the famous ‘witches rock’. It is a huge rock a little ways out from the beach. We attempted to walk to it but didn’t seem to make any progress in the short time we had. I wish I could have seen it closer, because even from as far away as we were, it was huge. And as beautiful as that beach was I would most definitely go back, when there isn’t tsunami after shock warnings preferably.

Yesterday I went to the chiropractor. This was much needed due to how much pain I was in. Not getting adjusted for almost two months when you are use to getting adjusted weekly is not fun. It was amazing though and totally worth it. I felt so much better and I was in such a better mood after that. Today some of the students wanted to make pizza for dinner in the cob oven that’s on campus. This was planned ahead of time and took all day. The oven needed time to heat up, dough needed to be made, sauce need to be made, pizzas needed toppings. It was a huge endeavor, but totally worth it. That pizza was so good. Forgetting the fact that it was the closest thing I’ve had to American food in two months, it was still very very good.  

Midterms Anyone?

That’s about all week five consisted of; midterm reviews, lots of studying, and midterms. In another month we will have finals and finish up our classes so we can start our directed research. On Friday we did host a dinner for all of our homestay families. It took all day to set up, but the outdoor classroom was transformed into a more or less banquet hall. We ate dinner and there was a DJ for the music. Some of the students did little performances for the families. There was a skit called “a day in the life of a gringo’ that involved a lot of (purposely) bad Spanish and it was pretty funny. We had a piñata for the kids that came. We let the youngest ones (2-4 years) go first without a blindfold, of course they did no damage, but everyone knows you let them go first to feel included. We than let this older girl go. She was standing in corner acting all shy and my friend (since I can’t speak Spanish) had to talk her into going. She said she would only go if we didn’t blindfold her. After she took stick, she just stood under the piñata for a minute and I wondered if she was really going to hit it. She then beat the thing so aggressively it only took four hits to knock it down. This was extremely frightening, because she seemed so shy and then so angry and egger to destroy the thing. I really didn’t know what to think of her.

We had our first weekend away this weekend, which is not a full weekend just getting Saturday and Sunday off as appose to just Sunday. All of the students went somewhere (mostly the beach), but I stayed at the center. I just wanted a day to myself to lie in a hammock by the pool reading my book. It was wonderful and I think I took at least six cat naps though out the day, being as hot as it was and how sleep deprived I was. Sunday I did homework and baked my mama’s cinnamon swirl bread. I had to put all three loafs in a large glass pan, because the kitchen doesn’t have bread pans. It took a little longer to bake, but turned out really good. And that’s about all I have to say about this week. Midterms were stressful, I think I did ok, but I haven’t gotten grades back yet, so we will see.