The mountains of Monteverde

Last Day of School and Tie-Dye!!!

2009-06-04T14:23:00.000-07:00

11th grade/graduating class

Today was the last day of school. Not as big a deal here as in the states, half the high school kids didn't even come to school today. Their exams were last week so this week was so this week was mostly just cleaning classrooms, organizing things, and playing games. Three of the high school classrooms got painted, one of which was Anna's room (it is now blue, not yellow). Today was a half day for everyone and families were invited. There was an assembly and some of the younger classes sang songs and stuff. It was so cute.
In the afternoon the high school kids planned games for the younger classes to do (duck-duck-goose, capture the flag etc.). I, in all of my infinate wisdom, agreed to do one last tie-dye session in an attempt to get rid of the last of the dye. To catch up the rest of you, I started doing tie-dye with the students as a fundraiser during the Miniferria. I did two after school sessions, and an activity with one of the 1st/2nd grade classes. I think I had the most fun with the 1st/2nd graders. The teacher, Jean, had been talking about it for a couple days and the kids had already seen some of the other kids wearing them around. They loved it! I had such a great time and all the kids' shirts turned out wonderful. So yesterday I announced to all the escuela that if they wanted to make one, or another one, they could do it tomorrow afternoon. I was just trying to give the kids one last chance, plus there was a parent who came and really wanted to learn how to do them. Suddenly I had about 20 kids holding shirts, wanting to make one. Parents were watching, facinated. Both the parents and the kids were super excited to get a bright unique shirt. I had tought that only about 10 or 15 kids would want to do shirts. But I must have helped about 25 or 30 kids fold their shirts, many did two. We probably dyed 50 shirts just today! We finally ran out of yellow, which also meant no orange or green (probably why we ran out of it first). It was crazy! I was the person who knew how to do all the folding, so I pretty much folded all the shirts, and then let the kids go nuts with the dye. If I had been watching things might have lasted a little longer and there would have been less of a mess left for me to clean. The point: the kids had a great time! I stopped charging for the dye (I just wanted to get rid of it instead of throwing it away), so they only had to pay for a shirt if they didn't bring one. I glad we ordered too many t-shirts for one of the other fundraisers, it made it really easy for the kids to make a shirt.
In some of the pictures above you can see some of the kids wearing a tie-dye shirt already. They had so much fun, they wanted another one (or two)!!

After the insanity ended I cleaned up all the dye and went to my last official school function. There was a lunch at one of the restaurants called De Lucia's that was for all the school staff. Since I was still there, I was invited. The food was good and the company even better. Each one of the teachers who was leaving was called up to the front and one of the other teachers said something about him or her. Three of the teachers were leaving, plus Deb and I, the only interns left. Anna called me up and said some really nice things about me. I even said a quick something, thanking everyone for making this experince the best one I've ever had in my life. The following pictures are me with some of the most important people from the CEC.

Dolly (environmental ed.), me and Deb (Dolly's Intern)

The director's newest child. She was so cute and smily!

Jean (1st/2nd grade teacher) and me

Christina and I, secretary in the office. She knows everything, has three kids at the school and I made her about three tie-dye shirts.

Anna (my mentor) and Bethany (could be queen of the world!) Probably my two closest friends at the CEC.

Liliam (spanish as a second language teacher) and Milton (env. ed and grounds keeper)
(Liliam told me that the kids call me the rainbow girl...a dream come true!)

Director, Scott, his wife and their baby!

This experince has been fantastic. I have two more days here in Monteverde and I'm still not sure what I'm going to during those days. Sunday morning I am getting picked up at 8 am to go to San Jose, directly to the airport. My flight leaves at 2:45, in theory. I still can't belive that I leave in two days, and will be back home in three. I can't wait to be home, but I can't belive that I have to leave behind the life I've made here. I will be back to visit, no question about that, but I don't think I could ever live so far from my family on the long term.

I love you all! Thank you for all your help and support, I can't say it enough!

I'm officially graduated, I've had the most amazing 5 months of my life, made some fantastic friends, and I get to see my parents in three days. Life couldn't be any better than this.

Hugs!
K

Frijoles, grass cutting, walking sticks and PUPPIES!!

2009-06-01T15:36:00.000-07:00

Today, my last Sunday in Monteverde I woke up at a decent hour (aka, not sleeping until 1:00) and was able to do several things that, if I were in Oregon, might seem mundane, but here it was fun!

When you have a traditional Costa Rican meal (breakfast, lunch or dinner) there will be rice and beans on your plate, no doubt about it. My host mom cooks bean about twice a week which can be quite a process. First: you buy the bag of beans. Next you pour out all the beans onto a table and go though them to remove all the bad beans and rocks. Then you rinse the beans, then put them into a pressure cooker with water (about 5 fingers above the level of the beans) plus garlic, cilantro and a little bit of onion. Put lid on cooker, cook about 45 min, or more. Serve with just about everything!

While my host family and I were just chatting, but host brother pulled out the machete and a stick and went to cut the grass. Here lawn mowers are very rare and in most cases people just use a weed whacker (takes longer but gets closer to the ground). However when you work for a living and don’t own a tour company or hotel, a machete and a stick are what you get. Andres suggested that I try…of course Marlenne wanted to see me try too. Oye. They make it look easy, but believe me it isn’t. You’re bent over, cutting with the machete with one hand, the other hand sweeps the cut grass away with the stick. Makes my back hurt just thinking about it.

As I was sitting on my bed with my windows open, I looked to the plant that is right outside my window and saw bright green walking sticks! I have been here for 5 months, and so have the walking sticks most likely, and I only just noticed them. There was one big one and at least three small ones. Reminded me of the time my brother had walking sticks as pets. They reproduced and we ended up with baby walking sticks in the strangest places for a while.

Now the most exciting events of the day! The little dog that lives at my house, Winnie, had gotten very fat. I didn’t think anything of it until my host sister mentioned that she is probably pregnant. Then, thinking back to when she was in heat and her strange behavior over the past few weeks I realized she was right. I didn’t think she would have the puppies before I left though. Today her behavior was even stranger: sleeping all day, barking (much more than usual) at passing dogs or people, and having to go out to the bathroom a million times. Then at about 6:15 pm Marlenne calls me. “Venga, venga!” (come here, come here!). Winnie was having her puppies! Soon my host sister and her friend here running though the door! About an hour later there were three puppies. Winnie is a white French poodle inspired dog. One is all black, one is black with white feet and one that is probably brown with white feet. An hour later Marlenne called “Vea! Venga, venga. Otro perrito!” (Come look! Come here, come here! Another puppy!). Sure enough, another puppy. It is black with white feet and a little brown, I think. Long night for a dog. I had guessed four, but I have no idea if she can fall asleep now or if things will pick up again but four puppies seems about right for how big she was.

Pretty good day for a Sunday, especially when I didn’t even leave the house.

fyi: no more puppies as of Monday morning.

Hugs!
K

Last full weekend in Monteverde

2009-05-30T14:35:00.000-07:00

Today, Saturday, I woke up at a decent hour and went to the butterfly garden first thing in the morning. Since we are at the very beginning of the rainy season, the mornings are usually beautiful, it rains in the afternoon for a few hours and then again at night. If you are really unlucky it will rain from 11:30 all through the night (aka Wednesday). I wanted to try to get to the butterflies first thing in case it rained. Plus they are more active in the morning. The butterfly garden is actually four separate gardens with plants, environmental conditions and species from four different areas of Costa Rica. Having never been to a butterfly garden, I didn't know what to expect and when I walked into the first garden I was shocked. Flying around me were at least 100 butterflies, most prominent of them were the blue morphos. I just stood there (pretty sure my mouth was open too) for about 5 minutes. Within one minute though one of the butterflies lands on my shoulders! It was beautiful. The first garden was a lowland habitat, but strangely enough I saw some familiar species, including the blue morpho. Usually when morphos land, they close their wings because of the bright blue color that would attract predators. One of the reasons for the blue morphos brilliant color is that they only spend a couple weeks in the butterfuly stage and they need to mate before they die. The blue color is much more likely to attract a mate and when you are short on time you do what you can to make yourself wanted.

Me with an Owl butterfly on my backpackGiant swallow tail butterfly

Cantonephalie (probably spelled wrong) butterflyJulia butterflyPostman butterfly
Lucrea butterfly

The second garden was a mid-elevation habitat. Saw some really pretty ones! There were a couple that I couldn't catch with my camera, and then there was one species that they only had one butterfly of, it was hard to find.

Mexican silver spot
(undersides have silver scales on them and they shimmer when they fly)
Halloween butterfly

The third garden was a forest understory habitat garden. It was darker and a little more humid. Most of the species there are in the glass/clear/stained glass wing family.
It is very difficult to distinguish between the different species without looking at them under the microscope. I got a couple really good pictures though!

The last and largest garden was the cloud forest habitat. More blue morphos, more postman butterflies, and a couple I saw only a couple times and couldn't get photos of. It was wonderful. A blue morpho even landed on me! It was a wonderful place to spend two hours.

Cappuchino butterfly

The Blue Morpho!
Blue Morpho caterpillar
Monarch butterfly
The species that lives in the states migrates from Canada to Mexico to keep up with the warm weather and the food. This species doesn't migrate, it stays in Costa Rica the whole time.
Monarch caterpillar

After that, I walked down the hill and hit up the Serpentarium. Not too spectacular but fun to see the species. The one snake I really wanted to see, the eye-lash pit viper, was a bit of a let down. In all the pictures I have seen it has been bright yellow but the three I saw were green or greenand brown. I will have to do some research to see why the colors are different...could be something about where it is living, the food it is eating, the time of year or whether or not it is trying to mate. I'll look it up and let you know if you'd like.

After that, to complete the cycle, I went to the orchid garden. It was bigger than I thought and there were hundreds of orchids. Not all of them were in bloom, but with such a wide variety, you always see a good number of them with flowers. I don't have time to put up the pictures right now, plus my computer can't really hold any more photos right now, but I probably saw over 50 different species, and I'd only seen 4 before I went in there. Most of the species they have there are miniatures. and when they say miniature they mean really small! They have the smallest species of orchid in Costa Rica (maybe in the world) and the flower is less than one millimeter wide! They were fantastic! They even had five or six hybrids that they had created. It was facinating! Most of the orchids they had were epiphytes (live on something else but don't harm it) and I found out that over 80% of all orchids are epiphytic. So cool!

This isn't the smallest orchid. The "tree" it is on is only about 3/4 of an inch in diameter. The flowers are probably 5 mm across. The smallest is probably 2 mm across.

Octopus orchid!
Dracula orchid

Needless to say, it was a great Saturday.

Hugs!
K

La Fortuna - Possibly the last post

2009-05-28T16:29:00.000-07:00

My last adventure in Costa Rica was going to be to the Tortuguero, on the Caribbean coast. That plan didn’t work out because it would take too much time and money. Instead my friend and I went to La Fortuna to visit Volcan Arenal. My parents and my Aunt also visited there and I felt strange being the only one who hadn’t been there. We did two tours while we were there. One was the volcano tour where you go for a small hike in the forest around the volcano to learn a little about the ecosystem there. It is only 350 ft above sea level so it is really warm, but rains a lot making it humid and the ecosystem is a real rain forest. It was really interesting to see. It rains more in La Fortuna than it does in Monteverde, so of course we got to see some of the warm humid rain. Naturally, it rained while we were on the hike and didn’t stop raining until almost 7 pm. After the hike we went to a viewing point where you can (in theory) see the volcano and at night you can see lava! With all the rain and clouds, we couldn’t see much of the volcano, and that meant no lava. Oh well. I did get almost 50 mosquito bites though, exciting!

After the “lava viewing” we went to one of the hot springs resorts where we spent a couple hours swimming in the pools there. There were 25 pools and more than 7 different temperatures. Some were bars, some were just for soaking and one even had three water slides. It was a wonderful, relaxing trip!

The next day we went on a boat tour of Rio Frio in the Cano Negro area, very close to the Nicaragua It was a muddy river, but one of the top 10 locations in Costa Rica for bird watching. My parents did the same tour when they visited and saw over 20 species of birds. I saw only 15 or so but it was still a wonderful tour. Three hours on the river, searching for birds and other species was wonderful! We saw howler monkeys and caimans in addition to all the birds. Some of the trees on the banks of the river were fascinating. There were so many bromeliads on the branches of some of the trees that they looked like they were going to collapse under all the weight. It was really astounding. I caught some amazing photos of some of the birds we saw and hopefully they turn out ok when I crop them so you can see the birds better. border.

The next day and a half we spent the day in very low key activities and didn’t leave the air conditioned hotel room much because it was so darn hot outside. It was wonderful to catch up on sleep and just relax. It felt so good!

I’m going to miss Monteverde so much. I have learned so much here that I don’t think I could write it all down. The people I have met here (Jane, Stacey, Cait, Amy, Adrienne, Anna and the wonderful, fantastic Bethany!) are amazing and I hope to cherish the friendships so they last a very long time. I’ll miss my fantastic host family and all the support they have given me (whether they know it or not) during my time here. My life here wouldn’t be what it is without all the support I have gotten from all of you back home! The reading, writing comments or emails, praying for me or visiting have been invaluable and I can’t thank you enough. You have all made my 5 months away from home much easier. My time here has been fantastic and one of the best experiences of my life. I have learned so much about myself and what I want from my life in the future. The teaching experience I’ve gotten here are priceless and I have a good base of Spanish that I can build on once I’m back home and then I will have a skill to use in the future.

I will be home very early in the morning on the 8^th of June, about a week and a half away. I am looking forward to seeing my family (both real and chosen), my bunny, my own bed, cheddar cheese, sourdough bread, real hamburgers (aka Burgerville burgers) and Dr. Pepper. Once I get home, and although Oregon is one of the greenest states, I will miss the trees and the sounds of the birds that I see and hear daily. I’ll miss the slow pace of Costa Rica, getting 8 hours of sleep a night and the fact that not everyone has a cell phone that rules their life. Life here is so much slower and low key. I don’t have somewhere to go every night and things are so much easier to deal with. It will be an interesting switch back to life in Oregon.

Thanks again for everything!

Hugs,

More Family!

2009-05-21T13:33:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

For those of you who didn’t know, my Aunt Mary (my mom’s eldest sister) and her friend Natalie came to visit me here in Monteverde. Their plane had issues and so they got to Monteverde a day later than planned. We had a great time during the four days that they were here. They went to the reserve and saw quetzals and some wonderful plant life. We had dinner together at one of the little Sodas in town where the food is really good and authentic.

On Saturday I had a commitment at the school until about noon, so they spent the morning at the Ferria (like a farmers market with fresh fruit and veggies) and just relaxing. I was up at the school by 8:30 getting ready for the spring fundraiser for the school called the Miniferria, kind of like a carnival. I had organized a tie-dye event! I ordered a kit from the states, had it shipped to the new volunteers that were going to come to the school the week before the fair. We had a lot of school t-shirts (that were white) and they wouldn’t be able to use them next year so we lowered the price on them, charged about 2 dollars for the dye and the kids could dye a school uniform shirt! It was a hit! Kids were asking their parents for an extra couple dollars so they could have one of the coolest shirts ever! This had not ever been done here and it was so much fun!! One student made three tie-dyed t-shirts! We had so much fun. The director and some of the teachers were really happy to see the students having so much fun!

At about noon, Aunt Mary and Natalie got to the school and they each made a t-shirt (supporting the school!) and then we had a small lunch of fresh mango, avocado and some yummy food from the Ferria. It was wonderful. After lunch we headed into the forest around the school. We hiked up to the kiosk, past some wonderful trees and plants and saw a very pretty view from the top. It was a little hazy so the view wasn’t the most spectacular but it was wonderful. On our way down we found the little aguacatillas (mini avocados) that the quetzals love to eat and often nest in the trees. I’d never seen them before so it was fun to peel one and see the inside. It was a very fun hike.

Then we took a cab up the hill to the women’s cooperative, CASEM, where there are lots of handmade crafts made by local women: embroidery, wood carving, jewelry and even some clothes. Then we walked a little ways to the Argentinean café and art gallery. They have the most amazing food, at a decent price too. We watched the clouds as the sun went down and enjoyed good food, coffee and company. Finishing our meal with a couple handcrafted Argentinean chocolates, we called a cab and went back “home”.

Sunday morning we got picked up at 8 am for our tour at the Selvatura Sky Bridges. It is a 3 km walk and there are 8 suspension bridges through the tops of the trees in the forest. It was so beautiful! My parents would have loved it, except my mom may not have been able to get across the bridges. They had a tendency to swing when you walked across them. We heard quetzals, bell birds and the heavenly sound of the black-faced solitaire. We only saw the black-faced solitaire, but I couldn’t find the bell bird that, I swear, was in a tree right above us at one point. We found some plants I had never seen and then there was this fascinating phenomenon we saw twice on our walk. There was a line of fuzzy white caterpillers moving together, with barely any space between each one. We thought they were connected at first but they were just really close together. It was amazing!

After our calm and laid back walk through the forest we went “home” to rinse out our tie-dye. They all turned out so cool! After a simple lunch of cheese, crackers, apple, fresh mango and avocado we walked to my house where I introduced them to my wonderful host mother Marlenne. My Aunt had taken photographs of my great grandmother’s crochet art and had them printed up as a gift. Marlenne loves to crochet and she is VERY creative and makes things, usually, by pictures alone and has been working out of the same crochet magazine for some time (given by how worn it is). She was entranced and her friend that was over at the time was also impressed. Along with the pictures she brought blue, yellow and multi-colored thread for her to use. It was wonderful! She has already made something with it! It was wonderful!

It was a fantastic weekend! I had a great time showing my “family” around my new home town. I was exhausted for school on Monday, but it was totally worth it. Monday afternoon they left to go to La Fortuna for a couple days. The weather was glorious all weekend and then a couple hours before they left the skies opened up and poured for an hour or so. It was so pretty and sounded gorgeous. I’m just glad it happened after all our weekend fun!

Hugs to all!

Two weeks ago: Adventure to Chirrio Mountain

2009-05-19T17:12:00.000-07:00

My parents visited a couple weeks ago and we had an absolutely fantastic time for almost 5 days! We saw sloths, quetzals, and some amazing plants in the forests. We did zip lines (hooray for mom!!) and lots of walking. They got to meet my host family and some of my friends that I have made here, plus my Dad had a blast helping out in the chemistry classes here at school. I hated saying good-bye, but they had a great visit and it was wonderful to share this with them!

This last weekend Anna and I took the 9 11th graders to Chirripo Mountain in the more southern part of Costa Rica. Chirripo Mountain is the tallest point in Costa Rica, with a cloud forest but in a different mountain range. Monteverde is in the Tileran mountain range and Chirripo is in the Talamanca mountain range. The class had been fundraising for the past 4 months to try to raise the $500 it would cost for us all to stay there for 3 nights, food for 11 people (6 of them growing boys) and the donation to the reserve we were going to be working with. Each of us had to pay $40 for our transportation, which in the grand scope of things was practically nothing for how far we went and what we did.
The date of the trip was perfect because here May first is “Workers Day” and there is no school or work for most people. That way the students only missed one day of school, Thursday. At 5:30 am we met our car and began our adventure. In private transportation, it takes 4 hours to get from Monteverde to San Jose, from there you go up the mountains and through the pass (reaching 10,000 ft at the highest) and down to San Isidro. There we bought $180 worth of groceries, hoping it would last us the 3 days we were staying, and then began to climb Chirripo itself. The road was winding and relatively narrow and once we entered the official National Park the road was rather rough. Almost as bad as the road up the hill to Monteverde, made worse by the pouring rain and steep drop-off to our right. After stopping three times to ask if we were still headed in the right direction toward Casa Mariposa (our lodging) we finally got to this little house looking thing on one of the steepest parts of the hill. Anna went inside to ask if we were in the right place and sure enough, this was our stop.

From the front door. Two rooms on both the right and the left.

Wonderful kitchen

Down the stairs to the river was a little waterfall with chairs and flowers

This modest little house was heaven on earth! With high ceilings, comfortable beds, literately in the middle of the forest, at 5,000 feet, it was a perfect place to spend three days away from school and work, even with 9 high school kids. There was a small kitchen where we could cook our meals, windows open to the forest to allow easy viewing and hearing of birds and other animals, and a sitting area where it was wonderful to read, play games or chat. How the boys dressed to go on our hike in the forest. An interesting first impression.

We unpacked our stuff into almost all the rooms in the place, the 6 boys together in a bunk room, then three other rooms for us girls and I got a room to myself! A REAL QUEEN size bed all to myself!!! I was in heaven. All the food got stored in my room, so the boys couldn’t just help themselves any ‘ol time. After settling in the manager from the Cloudbridge reserve, Eric, came down to meet us and we went for an orientation walk/hike in the reserve. He showed us the three simple buildings in the reserve and then we hiked up to the waterfall, with about three different views. Daniel (one of our crazier boys) jumped into the 12 C water for a bit of entertainment and then we hiked up to the upper viewpoint and saw the labyrinth that one of the owners had made. It was really pretty up there.
Returning to the house by about 6:15, the sun was setting and the boys set about cooking dinner in the kitchen, which was defiantly a sight to see. A couple of the boys took it upon themselves to cook some beef and chicken, with some good spices and Lizano salsa. A huge green salad and some potatoes cooked with garlic (although they got a little carried away with the butter and oil so they were pretty interesting). For the most part it was really good!
Getting stuck with all the dishes that the boys used in the kitchen wasn’t too fun, especially when one of them burned almost 2 inches of rice to the bottom of the pan. Most of us tried to get to bed early because the next day was going to be a full one!
Up at 7:15 to make breakfast (gallo pinto (rice and beans), eggs and cereal), get dressed and pack up a lunch, we walked up to the reserve to begin a day of hiking and surveying plants and insects. Split into two groups we headed into the reserve for some of the most intense hiking I have ever done. As we went up and down and up and up and up and then down, down, down, we looked for insects for the graduate student doing research with insects. I had a blast. I tried to catch one of the dragonflies, but they were too smart for me (I did catch a picture though!).

I did catch a couple really pretty butterflies and this fuzzy red fly-like insect. I had so much fun! Although I was completely exhausted by the time we finally got back to the lab and kitchen buildings to eat lunch. Although I usually don’t eat tuna with only mayo (no mustard or pickles) but that was one of the best sandwiches I have ever had! I was starving!Haven't identified this one yet, but it sure is beautiful.

Luna, the reserve coordinator's dog. SO sweet!

We chatted about the different things we saw and trails we blazed, drank water and just lazed about for an hour or so. Then we went to the lab house where we used their limited supply of insect and plant books (some had been compiled by past researchers there) to identify the plants and insects that we had found. It was so much fun! I found myself wishing I had the text books I had used when I took my insect biology course. They only had field guides and some were only for North American insects…Costa Rica is a little too far south for that book. We did our best, I just had fun playing around and everything! The students didn’t think it was such a cool thing, but I had a blast.
We finished around three and walked back to our little home. We took turns in the shower and then we had the afternoon to relax. I took a nap in my big comfy bed. At about 6 I was awoken by one of the students serenading me with a very obnoxious version of “You Are My Sunshine”, accompanied by his interesting guitar playing. Needless to say I was a little out of sorts when I finally woke up.
The boys once again made dinner, but this time with them cleaning the pots and pans that they used. We had two varieties of pasta with another large green salad. After dinner we just had time to relax and go to bed early because the day had been long and exhausting for most of us. I think the kids stayed up talking, but Anna and I went to bed at a very decent hour.
In exchange for giving us our last night at the hotel for half price (so we could afford to stay for 3 nights, 4 days) we were enlisted to help the owners, Jill and John, with the little fair happening in town on Saturday. The community of the nearest town, San Luis de Rivas, was only about 300 people and most of them were very conscious of the fact that they lived in a National Park area and everything they do has the possibility of affecting the environment. Jill had been working on several projects for the event. She had talked to a company that makes a lot of soaps that don’t have ammonias or other chemicals that damage the environment. There was a basket of bottles of concentrated soaps from that company for clothes, dishes and hand that they were raffling it off at the fair. A graduate student who was living in the area and doing research had prepared several water samples with different contaminants that might be found in the water there and had measured the level of phosphates, nitrogen, ammonias and other chemicals for the community to see how certain substances affect the water quality. She had samples that had been tainted by soaps, ammonias, sediments and so forth. Also some recycled products were being sold. Jill has perfected the art of making plastic fabric, which she makes reusable shopping bags out of. She takes used plastic bags (garbage bags, bread bags, shopping bags, pretty much any kind of plastic bag), sandwiching about 5 layers of them between sheets and ironing them, melting them into one very strong piece of “plastic fabric” that can be sewn together and used in many different applications. She taught us how to do it before we left. Here in Monteverde we use plasticized cardboard cartons (everything here comes in these), a little electric tape and a small square of Velcro to make little wallets that are unique, sturdy, recycled and just plain fun! They were a big hit there. The whole thing was fascinating and the community responded really well to everything. It showed that they really did care about what happened to the land that they lived on.
Unfortunately we had to leave the next day. Our time there had been fun, relaxing and informative. The drive back was long but uneventful for the most part. I had a wonderful time on the trip though. I saw another cloud forest, I saw new plants and new plants, I saw such a wonderful opportunity for me, and the students. I had so much fun!!
I apologize for the tardiness of this blog, but between school work, substituting and taking Spanish classes 5 days a week at the language institute I don’t have very much free time. Hope all is well at home and I miss everyone! I’ll be seeing you all in three weeks or so. I return to Oregon on June 8th.

Hugs!!
K

Simple update

2009-05-08T14:10:00.000-07:00

Just to let everyone know that things are well with me here! This week has been especially busy since I have begun taking spanish classes as the institute here AND some school drama left me to teach science solo this week.

I'll try to update everyone with my adventures of last weekend, but know that all is well and I miss you all!!

Hugs,
K

¡Panamá!

2009-04-22T17:11:00.000-07:00

What an adventure! So there were two reasons behind me going to Panamá. Number one and the most important one was that my best friend in the entire world, Adri, was going to meet me in Panama City. She lives in Bogota Colombia and we hadn’t seen each other in 4 years! Neither one of us had been to Panama and it seemed like a great way to start our dreams of traveling the world together. Plus I had to leave Costa Rica for a couple days in order to renew my tourist visa.

So how do you get to Panamá City? Fly? I don’t have $450 to spare so I took the cheap way: $50 for a two way bus ticket to Panamá City. The worst part? It is a 15 hour bus ride, not including the time it takes to go through the boarder crossings. Now, I’ve done the 14 hour plane ride to India but this was just painful. Not to mention getting from Monteverde to San Jose is a 5 hour bus ride. So on Saturday, I spent over 20 hours on a bus. But when I got off the bus, there was my gorgeous hugging me! It was wonderful to see her!

I got off the bus a little early, at 4 in the morning, at Rio Hato. A beach town where we stayed the night with a friend of a friend who lives in a condo really close to the beach. Adri and I spend 3 hours just talking, but then we fell asleep for a few hours. At noon we woke up, had French toast and then went to the beach. It was so much fun to just spend a day on the beach. There was a open air beach bar that had shaded seats and amazing cooking that we just relaxed, listened to music and spent time with our new friends. They did the most amazing barbeque with chicken, beef, sausage and veggies. Oh my goodness it tasted good! I was just a fantastic relaxing day.

The next morning Richard, a driver paid for by one of Adri’s friends, picked us up and we went to Panamá City. The city is huge! Lots of traffic, noise and smells. I usually have a pretty good sense of direction but there was no way for me to remember where I was going once we left the place we were staying. Adri’s connections had gotten us a room at a woman’s apartment that included breakfast. It was on the 4^th floor of a building in the city with a view of some of the city. The room was so nice! A real mattress, real pillows, a ceiling fan, a mirror that is bigger than just my face and a nice bathroom for the two of us. It was wonderful!

After dropping off our stuff at the apartment, we went to see the Canal de Panamá. There are three major locks that you can visit and the biggest one, in the city, is the Mineflores Locks. For $8, there is a museum and a couple informative videos that you can watch in addition to some really good viewing spots. Here are some fun facts about the canal:

Construction of the canal began in 1881 by French pioneers. A lot of the workers died from yellow fever and malaria.
Eventually construction of the canal was taken over by American contractors.
The canal was dug by thousands of people and machines that removed enough soil from the isthmus between North and South America to circle the world about 4 times.
There were special ships that had digging scoops on the bottom of them that allowed them to work much faster.
The canal was completed in 1914, and the first ship to sail from one end to the other was the SS Ancon.
It takes 8 hours for a ship to get from one end to the other.

Then we went to the observation deck and watched a couple gates close as water fill the next compartment as the ships moved though. Not too spectacular to watch, but a fantastic feat of engineering when you really think about it.

The canal is once again under construction to add two more sets of locks on either end that will allow more ships to go through, as well as ships almost twice as big as the current ships the canal allows. They are also using a new water reservation system that will allow the water to be reused, instead of just being used for the passing of one ship. The construction is proposed to be finished in 2014.

For the evening we just stayed at home talking. Girl talk with my best friend! For the first time in 4 years, we finally had time to just talk about our lives and experiences. It was so fantastic. Like a void within me that had been empty for much too long was filled. There was an emptiness that was complete when with Adri that had been there for so long I hadn’t realized it.

The next day we woke up, had a wonderful breakfast, and were picked up at 10 to go to the Bahá’í Temple. This was really important for Adri because she is Bahá’í and I really wanted to see it. I think religions are fascinating and the temple sounded like a wonderful place to visit. The temple is on a hill above the city and it was a gorgeous view. The temple itself looks a little like an egg, rounded and white, but the inside is beautiful. Every part of the architecture had a meaning. The design of the building was by an English architect and was chosen from several designs submitted for the temple. The architecture was influenced by designs from Asia, Africa, North and South America, and Europe. The Bahá’í faith is built on ideals from Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist faiths. It is a wonderful religion to learn about. I am fascinated with it! On the roof of the temple is a 9 sided star and in the center, on Panama wood, in gold, is a beautiful phrase, written in Arabic. There are 9 open air entrances to the temple and the inside is simple and peaceful. Pictures were not allowed, but it was so beautiful!

We walked around the temple enjoying the little gardens, the trees and the fantastic view! We returned to the craziness and traffic of the city to go to the ruins of Old Panama. The ruins are what is left of the main buildings of the city. The most spectacular one is the church tower that was on the edge of the main square and a cobbled street was actually unearthed a while ago. The ruins were mostly main buildings, not houses. The homes of that time were much simpler and wouldn’t have survived very long.

After walking some of the ruins, and getting slightly sun burned, we went to dinner at a Colombian Restaurant (Adri is Colombian for those of you who don’t know). I got the “traditional” spread with about 6 different types of meat, beans, rice and all kinds of good stuff. The plate was bigger than my head!!! It was so good, and then took about 2/3 of it home. After eating we went “home” and Adri picked up her stuff and I dropped her off at the airport. It was so hard to say good bye, not knowing when I would see her again but it isn’t likely to be soon.

The next day I slept in and hired a taxi for a couple hours to try to find some authentic Panamanian art and gifts. It was fun and I got some amazing stuff at really good prices. There are the Moras that is a native art form some where in between quilting and other types of needle work. Look it up online, they are hard to describe. They are usually animals or native designs with bright colors. There were also these carvings from Tagua nut, called the ivory nut sometimes. It is kind of related to the coconut and they are carved and painted animal shapes. There were some that were just stunning! It was really fun to see the local art!

I spent the rest of the day sleeping and just relaxing until I had to go to the bus station. When I got to the bus station the time had changed from 8 pm to 9 pm, so for an hour or so I wandered around the mall/bus station. It was incredible. From the bus station, people can take a bus to all parts of Panama, plus Costa Rica and Nicaragua. It was unbelievable, the lines wove all over the place and it was insane!!

When I finally got on the bus at 9, we drove until we got to the border at about 5 am. However, the border office doesn’t open until 6, so we waited an hour, then walked to the Costa Rica border where we had to wait in line there and then wait for them to check our bags. The whole thing took about 3 hours. Then it is back on the bus. We got to San Jose at about 2:15 pm. I hopped in the closest taxi and went to the bus station to try to catch the 2:30 bus to Monteverde. I get there and there are no more buses until Saturday morning, due to Good Friday. So I paid too much money to get to Monteverde in a taxi. I really didn’t want to spend the next two days in San Jose. Half way there, the taxi I was in had to call another one because his engine was over heating.

Needless to say, it was an adventure to get home. I was then sick for two days, but the trip to Panama was pretty great for the most part. I just never want to see another bus!!

Sorry it took so long, but my parents were visiting!

Hugs all!!

Kathryn

Being a Tourist in Monteverde!

2009-03-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

So, I have been here almost three months and I have done very little of the “tourist” things that Monteverde and the Cloud Forest have to offer. Last week however was “touristy”. There were no classes on Friday the 20th so my friend, who works in a tour info office, arranged for us to go Canyoning: repelling down 6 waterfalls and getting wet from head to toe! It was really fun, but by the last waterfall I was cold and ready to get into dry clothes. I didn’t bring a waterproof case or plastic bag for my camera I don’t have any pictures of the beautiful waterfalls and forest we were in. I have a few bruises that still haven’t gone away but it was worth it. Those are the kinds of things you don’t see just hiking, plus it was in a part of the forest that isn’t accessible to just anyone and the trees were just beautiful.
Then on Saturday my friend set up a canopy tour for my friend Macy and I. All the other interns had gone out of town for their last adventure in Costa Rica before many of them left. Some went to Tortuguero (Carribian coast with beautiful nature sites, famous for turtles, hence the name), La Fortuna (to see Volcan Arenal), or to Montesuma (beach with some beautiful sites). Macy and I had stayed behind for money reasons, plus I had done a lot of traveling and wanted to stay “home”. So we joined forces and went on the most amazing tour of the primary forest! Extremo Canopy Tours gives you an amazing thrill, a good hike, and an absolutely outstanding view of the primary forests of Monteverde. You go in a circle as you go from platform to platform in the trees flying along the zip lines and doing your best to absorb everything you see as you go past. In this tour there are 14 zip lines. Some are short but you go really fast and some are really long that take you over valleys. The views are spectacular!! Macy and I had such a blast together.

We met another couple of people that were in Costa Rica long term, and visited Monteverde for the weekend. We traded cameras so that we could try to get pictures of each other on the zip lines. While we were waiting for one of the zip lines we watched a couple of Howler monkeys climb in the trees and one of them got onto a branch right above the zip line and I went right under him. They were not talking but it was cool to see them in the trees of such a beautiful forest.
Then as we were hiking between two of the platforms Macy and I saw a Blue Morpho Butterfly! OMG!! They are the unofficial symbol of Costa Rica. A lot of touristy stuff you see has the Morpho on it. However it is endangered and not seen that often in its natural habitat. You can buy mounted Morphos but as beautiful as their almost metallic coloring is, I don’t know if they were caught legally or if I’d even be able to leave the country with it. I knew I would see one in the butterfly gardens or insect museums but I didn’t think I would have time to see one in nature! So I have seen a sloth and a blue Morpho…now I just have to see a quetzal and I can go home happy!! Some of you may be familiar with the independent film called “The Blue Butterfly”. It is a wonderful family movie that follows a young boy and his mother as they journey through the forests of Costa Rica in search of the Blue Morpho Butterfly which is rumored to have healing powers if caught. The boy is in a wheelchair and it is based on a true story. It was filmed in a rain forest in Costa Rica!!

Thank you so much for keeping up with my blogging!

This Friday I head off to my next adventure: Taking a 15 hour bus to Panama City to meet my best friend!! I’ll try to update before I leave, but if not, don’t be worried if you don’t hear from me for more than a week as I won’t be taking my computer with me. We will have a little more than 48 hours together and I don’t want to waste ANY of it on the computer!

Hugs to all!!

K

School Updates

2009-03-18T15:45:00.001-07:00

I haven’t talked about school in a little while:

In case you didn’t know, and I know it is a little late for that but I thought I might as well tell you what classes my friends are teaching or helping in.

Stacey – colegio math (high school math)
Amy – 1st and 2nd and art
Caitlin – designed and teaches a brand new music program and 4th grade
Jane – Education Ambiental (environmental ed with Milton)
Allison – 1st and 2nd
Charlotte – ESL with Teresa
Robert – ESL/Spanish (I think)
David – 1st and 2nd
Hollyn – 4th grade
Macey – Kinder/prepa and special education
Ruth – 6th and drama

I don’t think I’m forgetting anyone. We are all spread out and we usually only see each other before and after school, unless our lunch or prep periods ate the same.

In some of the classes, I help out by answering questions, making sure the kids are taking notes and helping Anna try to keep some of the classes in order. The 8th grade.octavo grado, are one of the hardest classes to deal with sometimes. More than half of the 23 of them are boys and they are all pretty friendly with each other, making classroom management pretty difficult. Anna is doing really well, considering this is her first year teaching and this school is hard to teach at due to the way the school is organized. Classroom management is the biggest struggle here and I think part of it is cultural. There is also a very widespread issue with confidence in the material. I can’t count how many times students have asked me during a test “Is this right?”. And then there is the pouting and whining that drives me crazy sometimes. The minute you mention homework there is an outbreak in whining and “Oh, Anna!” or “Noooooh”. It is probably the hardest thing for me to deal with. My parents didn’t put up with whining much (although I was pretty good at it) and I find that I have very little tolerance for it now. I think it is cultural though. As a kid there is some indulgence whenever possible and I don’t know if it is on purpose or if it is just part of how life is here. Amy and I were talking about it one day. The indulgence could be part of trying to get the children to have as much childhood as possible, because life as an adult is so much harder here. I don’t know how some of the families do it. There are often three or more kids in a family and often both parents work, and the kids are alone or another Aunt, Uncle or Grandparent takes care of them. I’m still trying to figure it out. That is the best part about living here for so long. I am getting a really good feel for the culture, no matter how touristy this town may be.
I am really enjoying teaching. I do a lot of research to get the information that I need in order to teach the class. They ask so many questions!! I have been learning the finer art of google searching. I managed to come across three or four different lectures (in word and power point form) about the circulatory system. Some of it is much more in depth than I need for this class, but I am enjoying learning it. I probably wouldn’t be having as much fun if I was required to learn it, but I am having a lot of fun.
For the past couple months, the 11th grade class has been helping out on a research project designed by a woman named Patricia Townsend. She is finishing her doctorate at University of Washington and she wanted to begin another project that we can continue to do on our own, so the school can measure the progress of the reforestation efforts they have been doing for the past 15 years. There is very little hard data about the reforestation here at the school and most the information about when trees were planted and so forth is in the head of our land manger, Milton. So there are 10 plots measured off in the pasture area. 5 of them have a lot of inga trees (a common tree planted by the school) and the other 5 are mostly the invasive grasses. In each plot there are 2 meter by meter subplots where we count species diversity, number of tree seedling, percent cover of native verses non-native plants, and percent herbaceous or leaf litter cover. Then each tree in each plot is measured for height, canopy width (how far spread out the branches are in two directions) and branch width at average chest height. It is a little tedious but kind of fun. We have been out there in horrible rain, wind and also when it was gorgeous and we napped among the grasses. It has been fun. There are two grad students that have been helping with taking data. As students, we take data and it is compared to the data they collected and a margin of error is determined that can be used in future data taking. Eric was here for a month and did bird surveys. He was up and in the field looking for birds by 5:30 AM. He was really fun. Then there is Michael. He is a riot to be in the field with. A great sense of humor makes even the most mundane data taking much more interesting. We are almost done with all the data taking which is good because the 11th grade has to prepare for the Ministerio Exams they take in May. They take one in each subject and it is more important than the SATs. These can actually affect what kind of jobs they can get or any kind of education they want to do beyond high school.
Today Anna is in San Jose picking up her sister who will be here for an undetermined amount of time, exponentially increasing the amount of stress Anna has. Her mom just decided to send her to Costa Rica for the vacation from school, and Anna didn’t know about it until the day before yesterday. So I get to substitute, which means a little money in my pocket, also an entire day to try to deal with all the kids. Last time I substituted, just for a half day, it was really hectic and I just needed ice cream and chocolate by the end of the day. Today has gone pretty well. Granted I didn’t have to lecture or anything, which could have been more difficult, but they didn’t get out of hand or disrespectful. I took the 8th grade on a walk; there was no point in trying to contain them within the walls of the classroom. I would have gone crazy!
With the 8th graders we went for a hike, part of the reason they were so cooperative. There is this hallowed out strangler fig that technically belongs to The Original Canopy Tour company but it is really awesome! The tree it strangled had died out, so you could climb up the middle of it! Rope steps made climbing easier and safer and the gaps between the vines allowed for a spectacular view of the forest. There was also a rope that you could swing out over the hill on. Being with a group of 8th graders, I had to watch carefully and enforce some rules, but I think they had fun. I even swung on it. You get this wonderful flying feeling and then you are in the trees! Just don’t let go of the rope! One of these days I’ll go on a tour and go on the real zip lines and stuff. I’ve heard that it is pretty fantastic! Specifically the one I want to go on, I don’t think I’d be able to get my parents to go…especially since my mom is a little nervous about heights and one of the zip lines is a a kilometer long! Maybe that’s what I’ll do this weekend while everyone else is off doing their own adventures (I don ‘t have the money or I’d go with them).

Thanks again for listening to me.

Hugs!
K

Playa Tamarindo

2009-03-18T15:36:00.000-07:00

This last weekend Jane, Stacey, Amy and I all went to Tamarindo. It is on the peninsula of Costa Rica and in some guide books it is called “Tamagringo”. Several years ago a movie was filmed there and since then it has only gotten more and more touristy. It was pretty amazing to see just how touristy it was. There was a driving range, and Costa Rica doesn’t play golf, a Pizza Hut, TCBY, Subway and so many fancy, overpriced shops that I couldn’t even count! We didn’t do any shopping though, we spent almost the entire time on the beach!

Tamarindo beach isn’t the prettiest thing, but on Friday, when we arrived, we just had to be on the beach. Of course, once we checked into the hostel and gotten our suits on, we had to put on our sunscreen. Amy and I are the most fair skinned of the four and as we were lathering on our SPF 85 and 70 Jane says, “I can’t believe I brought the sunscreen twins to the beach!”. Classic Jane, but so true. So once we finally got to the beach it was wonderful to get into the water. The beach itself wasn’t that pretty because it was Tamarindo beach lined with resorts and a lot of people there.

Saturday we got up, had cereal for breakfast and were on the beach by 10 am. We walked down Tamarindo and got on a little boat, for a dollar, and crossed the estuary to get to Playa Grande (everything sounds so much better in Spanish, because this translates to Big beach...how dull). This beach was quieter and FILLED with some of the most beautiful shells. I must have spent an hour just picking up shells to give as gifts and make into jewelry! The water was wonderful and the four of us had a great time riding the waves. For lunch we went to Subway (which, believe it or not was better here than in the states) and then to our hostel to change and relax for a while where I discovered that I had burned the sides of my legs pretty badly and putting on pants was quite an ordeal. Then we went back to the beach for the sunset. We took pictures and a couple offered to take a group picture for us, so we have a couple group shots on at least one of the cameras there. We walked south down Playa Tamarindo to a part the juts out into the water. It was probably the most amazing place to watch the sun set ever. We climbed up the rocks and were able to take some awesome pictures and then just sit together and watch the sun go down. After that we went to a cool bar for happy hour: 2 for 1! After trying to go out and not finding anything worth while, we got gelato which was very overpriced but good. Not everyone was happy with their order, but in the end we got it all worked out.

Sunday Jane woke us up at 8 again (We didn’t come to the beach to sleep! Besides, you can sleep on the beach!) We asked the owner of the hostel how much a taxi to Playa Avallana should cost, so we wouldn’t get ripped off by the first one we asked (Jane is really good at bartering). She actually had a friend who drove a van and so for $10 each we got a ride to an absolutely gorgeous beach! And the best part: there was shade!! I was able to lay in the shade, still wearing my t-shirt, sunscreen and covered by a towel where I was burned, but was very comfortable! The water there was by far the best. The waves were better at Madera, but this water was so clear and so blue that I could have stayed there forever! When I was up to my chest, I could still see my feet! Unbelievable! Jane and Amy went for a walk, but neither one of them had a watch so they didn’t get back until 3:15, and the car was supposed to pick us up at 3…he was a little grumpy on the ride home. Oops.

We went to back to our hostel to shower and get dressed for a wonderful last evening on the beach. Fist stop was the bar on the beach for happy hour and to watch the sunset. It was beautiful! Since it was our last night we had a little fun. I was tipsy after one drink and Jane was still fine after 2. Amy was the cutest though. She was giggly and having a lot of fun. Jane and I took it upon ourselves to educate our younger friend about what to do and what not to do when it comes to drinking. Probably not the best time to do it because she wouldn’t remember all the details the next morning, but she was happy to hear it. Jane and I learned some of this the hard way so we were happy to help Amy avoid some of those less than fun events. As the sun began to set, we took our drinks and went to the beach side section of the bar and took some more pictures. In some of them the colors didn’t turn out well, but all of us look good.

Then we went to this roof-top Italian restaurant that we had gotten coupons for the day before. It was really nice and Jane did most of the talking, seeing as she was the most competent one at the time. We ordered the spaghetti, the pesto and the cheese pizza. It was all SO tastey! Real Italian food is a little hard to come by here and it is one of my favorites. The pesto was outstanding though. Some of the best I’ve ever had. Amy was so cute at dinner. She loves French, and takes every opportunity she can get to practice and is worried she is losing it because of how much she is using Spanish (I tell her that is silly, and when she goes to France she will pick it right back up). The funny part is that at the table next to us four French women were having a conversation and Amy was so out of it she couldn’t comprehend what they were saying. It was adorable!

Ok, so the whole reason Jane planned the trip to “Tamagringo” was because her best friend, Toban, was going to be there for Spring Break, starting Sunday night. So after dinner we wandered around trying to find the hotel he was staying at El Escondito (the hidden). When we found it, he wasn’t there. Jane and Stacey decided to wait and see if they came back but Amy and I went home to go to sleep.

The next morning we heard the story about trying to find Toban. Jane and Stacey had been waiting at his place when the owner came out and told them that Toban and his girlfriend, Alexis, had gone to our hostel to find us. So Jane and Stacey go back to our hostel only to find that Toban and Alexis had already been there and left. So they went back to El Escondito to wait for them. After waiting, they decided to leave them a message in rocks they headed home and just so happened to meet up with them. So after about 45 minutes of missing each other they finally got to see each other.

When Jane, once again, woke us up at 8 am, Amy and I got the story and then we headed to their cabin for breakfast. After some FANTASTIC eggs that Toban made, we walked to Tamarindo, and then crossed the estuary to Playa Madera. It was another gorgeous day and despite my sunburn I had a lot of fun. I spend about an hour just looking for the coolest shells I could find (and I found some really pretty ones) and then went into the water to ride the waves with everyone. The waves were better than they had been when we were there last and we almost got “run over” by a couple of surfers. Fortunately they were good enough to know how to control their boards in order to avoid us, but it was interesting.

Subway for lunch one last time and then back to our hostel to rinse off and ride home. I napped for a little in the car and about half-way we stopped at Burger King where for 300 colones (about 50 cents) I got a soft serve ice cream cone. It was so good! About an hour from Monteverde I woke up to Disney songs…specifically A Whole New World from Aladdin. So for an hour we had a Disney Marathon! I even sang Poor Unfortunate Souls (from The Little Mermaid) for them and they were a little creeped out by how well I knew the song (but hey, it has been my favorite since I was a kid, why shouldn’t I know it well?).

Needless to say, my weekend was wonderful, despite the sunburning. It was perfect to get away from Monteverde, where the weather was rather dismal, to a beautiful beach with some of the closest friends I have had in a long time.

Sorry this took so long to put up, and likely the pictures will take even longer since things here are a little insane, but know that I am well, school is good and I am going to miss my new friends like crazy when they leave…the first one leaves on March 25^th and the rest are soon to follow. I have never had this many close friends at one time. Due to the fact that we all chose to come here and we were all far from home, we became fast friends. I will miss them so much.

Don’t forget to comment if you like a picture or something…I feel like I’m writing to myself sometimes.

Thanks!

Hugs,

Nicaragua Part 2

2009-03-10T16:52:00.000-07:00

Let’s go back to Nicaragua -

After the amazing day at Masalla on Wednesday, we returned to town and had dinner and went out for a drink and some relaxing time as a group. I didn’t have anything but it was fun to just be out with the girls. We tried to find a place to go dancing, but in San Juan del Sur, there wasn’t much to do on a Wednesday night. When we got back to the house things got a little crazy, and not in a good way. I don’t think this is the place to discuss such things, but know that we are all safe and everything got figured out by the time we left. Some of us would rather forget the events of that evening, but it was an important learning experience for some of us.

Thursday classes were ok, even on very little sleep. For the afternoon our host, Doña Rosa, had organized a trip to Grenada. Grenada is a small colonial-like town about 3 hours from San Juan del Sur that is known for its beautiful churches and the history. Grenada was the “capitol” of Nicaragua during a time when a man had declared himself president of Nicaragua under a puppet government and made Grenada the capitol. It didn’t last long but that is part of the strange history of Grenada. The streets were narrow but lined with continuous buildings, each shop or house painted a different color. It reminded me of a small town I went to when I was in Colombia, full of color and culture. There were food vendors selling apples (from the states!), local snacks and foods, mango verde (green mango, actually really good) and any number of other things. I walked around with Jane, Amy, Stacey, Caitlin, and Maritza (the woman who cooked for us) and her daughter. We waked through the town taking pictures and observing the difference in culture from Costa Rica, even the difference from San Juan del Sur. While loving all the colors we saw as we walked, we went into a couple churches.

Church in the main square

Center park with tour carriages lining the street

Cool barber shop, most all say that they are unisex.

The one near the central square was very beautiful, recently remodeled and repaired, but I didn’t take pictures inside, out of respect. Then we walked down the road a bit and went into another church:

Essentially: Kill the patriot Orteguismo. During one of their revolutions this was spray painted on the side of the church.

Beautiful carving at the top of the columns in the church.

Up the winding staircase to the tower.

It was in the middle of trying to do some repairs and one of the ways they funded that, was charging a dollar for tourists to climb the bell tower. It was one of the best dollars I have ever spent! The view from the top was phenomenal! We saw the bells, some older looking than others, and we could see so much of the city from there. Grenada sits on the edge of Lake Nicaragua, which we could also see:

In the other direction we could see green hills and we also had a fantastic view of other parts of the church’s architecture.

The pendulum of the clock at the top of the tower. We could feel it ticking!

We could see the town square and all the buildings:

It was breathtaking. After we climbed down, after taking a million pictures, we walked past a little café that sold iced coffee drinks and some amazing food. We enjoyed being out of the sun for a little while and cooled down with some fantastic milkshakes and other bebidas (drinks).

Maritza and her daughter, Jane, Stacey, Amy and Caitlin

Maritza wearing my sunglasses, she looked hot!

After a snack we continued our walk though town. We went down a very beautiful street. There were balcony gardens and so many colors! It was wonderful. Walking through the main square again, seeing the fountain and the statue of mother Mary surrounded by palm trees and little vendors:

Mother Mary bathing her children. My favorite is the one below:

We continued down the path that went to the lake:

Here there were no cars just some really cute cafés and higher end stores. I didn’t do any shopping, but we bought some mango verde and snacked while we walked.

Going back to the car we encountered several people begging for food or money. It was really different from Costa Rica. Granted I live in Monteverde, where there is a lot of tourism and not too much obvious poverty. But Nicaragua is poorer than Costa Rica by a long way, due to many revolutions and puppet governments that have left the country in turmoil. In Grenada, however, it was very obvious. They would come right up to you and ask for money or food. When we were getting in the car, they were right there. I had some food left from my snack and gave it to them but it still didn’t feel like I was helping. It is hard when the poverty is right in front of you. There are some memories that I will never forget. Some from the things I saw in India, some from Costa Rica and some from Nicaragua. Not all are negative, but they are all things that will influence me in the future.

After we left Grenada, we went to Masaya (sounds like messiah):

It is one of the largest collection of locally made arts and goods. It was a little like the Portland Saturday Market. We had a couple hours to look around. There was a lot of repetition. Many people doing the same crafts, but there was so much color and it was fun to look around. As I turned a corner I saw a vendor selling hammocks and hammock chairs, and they had them in, of all things, RAINBOW!! So, for $12, I have the most amazing rainbow hammock chair that will one day hang in my living room...or on the front porch of my house in Portland for the summer : ). I thought it would fit diagonally in one of my suitcases, but nope...I'll just have to carry it on, or send it home with my parents when they come in April (tee hee). There was all kinds of things there. shirts, native designed dresses in all colors (I would have bought one, but it would have looked like a Mumu on me, very unflattering). There were many types of cigars, some with Obama on them, cute carvings and paintings too. There was even some unusual art form of inflating and preserving or tanning frogs and posing them in some interesting and sometimes questionable poses:

After an hour, my feet hurt so much and I went back to the car to lay down. Plus most of the vendors were packing up and the sun was setting. It was very fun to see, plus a good way to buy some gifts for friends and family...hint hint.

On our way home we stopped at a little place where we could stretch our legs and eat dinner. After that we got back in the car for a couple more hours to get back to San Juan del Sur. We were all in a van that had seats for about 18 people but there were about 21 of us in the van, so it was a little crowded.

Friday class was fun again. I began to learn the future tense, especially the “I’m going to go…” and so on. In the afternoon we went to the beach for one last swim in the ocean. However, the water was FILLED with dying jellyfish. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t sting you, but they were EVERYWHERE!! I got in the water anyway, because it was our last day, but it was eventually too much. Back at the main house where we ate our meals, our hostess had planned a little party for us all. Some of the teachers performed a traditional Nicaraguan Dance for us, and then there was dancing with a fun game of musical chairs.

Our host Doña Rosa

My teacher and I

Maritza's daughter, such a sweet girl

Jane and I in our complementary colors!

They provided some drinks and we were all enjoying talking and enjoying the last night of our vacation. Some of us wanted to see the sunset over the beach one last time, and Jane wanted ice cream, so we walked to town to get some ice cream and watch the sunset. The ice cream place on the beach was selling the equivalent of fudgecicles for 3 cordobas, which is about 15 cents! They were so good! Sitting on the steps leading to the beach, watching the sun go down behind the horizon with tons of boats floating on the water was beautiful. A couple days before there had been a monstrous cruise ship in the bay and I had refused to watch the sunset, but that night it was perfect.

Macey was less than pleased that I was taking the picture, but everyone else doesn't mind.

Our last sunset in Nicaragua

Back at the house, we had some great food and freshened up to go out and try to find some place to go dancing! First, however, we had to get Jane more ice cream. Those fudgecicles were SO good!! While we were there, we ran into some other Canadians and they introduced us to a guy who used to work at the hotel they were staying at. His name was Michael and he spoke English really well! So while Jane was getting her ice cream fix (she finally stopped at 8 fudgecicles) the four of us, Amy, Stacey, Jane and I, sat and talked with him. We had plans to meet with our other friends at another bar that usually has dancing, so he walked with us to the bar. Eventually we went back to Iguana’s, the bar we had been at a couple nights before. It was kind of crowded but eventually they put on some music we could dance to and we had a ball! They even played some music I knew! Michael and Amy and I danced together and when I got too hot, just went to the ocean and walked on the sand. It was an amazing night!! Michael and I stayed out talking late into the night and we learned a TON about each other. He just graduated from high school and got accepted to a University in Managua (the capital) and he is going to study French so he can be a translator! He is the first person I have met here that has the desire to get a higher education, and that he is in the process of doing it is also amazing. His first day of classes was yesterday! It was a fantastic night and a glorious way to end a vacation!

So Nicaragua was pretty amazing. Madera is the most amazing beach I have ever been to and I met some fantastic people! There are parts that I wish hadn’t happened but overall, it was a great vacation! I’ll try to post all the pictures soon. Keep in touch!

Still working on up loading pictures, but hopefully these will suit for now.

Hugs!

Nicaragua Pictures - Part III

2009-03-10T14:46:00.000-07:00

This is Wednesday, back to Playa Madera. It was SO beautiful! We were able to stay until sunset too!

This brings us up to Wednesday night, what I wrote a couple weeks ago. See the next blog for the rest of the week's events!

Hugs!

K

2009-03-05T13:58:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of pictures! The internet is being insane and very slow. This picture is mostly for my mom. The colors and the name of the place was just PERFECT for her! El Gato Negro, a bookstore and coffee house with different cat statues all over the place. It was like being home!

I am going to the beach this weekend, so I won't be back to the internet until Tuesday. Thanks for everything!

Hugs,
K

Nicaragua Pictures - Part II

2009-03-03T13:30:00.000-08:00

Trying to take my own picture at Playa Madera.

Cool tree on the drive to the beach...it was still growing!

Playa Masalla. Much more chill than Madera, but the waves weren't as fun.

Allison and Charlotte

Amy

Me, Stacey, and Amy having coke slushies. They were so cold when they were sealed that once the seal was broken they became slushy! It was really good!

That's all for now. I left my charger cord at school!

Hugs!

K

Nicaragua Pictures - Part I

2009-03-02T13:39:00.000-08:00

Crossing the border into Nicaragua!

Waiting in line for the Nicaraguan border crossing to stamp our passports.

The truck that picked us up from the border crossing!

In the truck!

View from the truck, passing Lake Nicaragua. You can kind of see the island in the middle.
Stacey and Amy
Jane and CaitlinGigantic wind mills! Way cool!
The beach! Not the prettiest, but the first beach we saw!
Caitlin, keeping dry from the crazy freak rain with her beer!Hollyn, Macy, Amy and Jane doing cartwheels!

The following are from our first big beach trip to Madera:

The cutest picture of Amy I have ever seen!! The thing about these beaches is that the wind was always blowing! Whenever anyone lay on the beach, they got covered in sand!
The crab I caught. She was so pretty!
Sea Anemones in Costa Rica!

Catching the wave just right!! One of my favorite things to do!

Well, that is all for now. This is only through Monday at the beach. Tomorrow hopefully you can see the amazing sunset I got on Wednesday at Madera.

Hugs!
K

Coming to you from Nicaragua!

2009-02-25T17:31:00.000-08:00

I can't post any pictures, but I have to explain my week so far...it has been outstanding! But let me start from the beginning...

Last week ended with, well, an explosion. It was the worst week I had had so far and hope it is the worst week for the rest of my trip. I had a rough week with personal relations and then to top it all off, I find out that I didn't get into graduate school. The reasons are not important right now, especially since I am trying not to think about it, but it hit me pretty hard.

So by the time Sunday morning, at 6 am, I was ready for some fun. A week away from the crazy weather and hills of Monteverde was exactly what I needed. The ride to the boarder was fine, I slept through most of it. The journey through the Costa Rica exiting and the Nicaragua entering was uneventful and, according to some of the well traveled members of our group, the most unorganized boarder they had ever seen. The truck that picked us up was totally perfect. It was a truck with bench seats in the back and no top...I'll post pictures when I can, but for now use your imagination. When we get into the truck and are ready to leave, the sky opens up and pours buckets on us, who are in shorts and tanktops. It lasts for 15 minutes or so and then the sky is clear and gorgeous again. (And I thought western Oregon had crazy weather!)

For the rest of the story, remember that I am 1. a redhead, 2. burn like toast, and 3. there isn't enough sunscreen in the world to change these facts!

I had lathered myself with sunscreen (SPF 70!) while we were waiting in line at the Nicaragua boarder crossing and then an hour later we spent 90 minutes in the coverless truck. The sights were amazing and, again, the pictures will be up asap. However, I managed to get sunburned on the top of my sholders. So cool, whatever, I'm used to it. We get to the house that 8 of us were staying at, where some of the classes where going to be and where we would eat meals. It is a tight squeeze for Macy, Hollyn, Stacey and I to fit into the room, but we make it work. Dona Rosa, our host and the owner of the Spanish School House of San Juan del Sur, was wonderful in welcoming us and making sure we were all comfortable. After lunch, we headed to the beach.

The beach of San Juan del Sur proper isn't all that amazing because it is a working port and there are a ton of tourists, aided by the fact that there are several cruise ships that dock here, uck! We made the most of it and since it was a beach we didn't care. There wasn't any shade however. I was a bit worried, since it was day 1 and I was already red. I decided that wearing a t-shirt on the beach is the way to go, so most of my picutres I am in a t-shirt.

The first night was hot, made slightly better by the oscilating fan in our room. At 7:30, we had a great breakfast and met our teachers. Most of us were one-on-one, some were with one other person. I lucked out and got a teacher to myself. Her name is Julia and she is the best. She is knowledgable, patient and has a sense of humor! I suprised her a bit with how "much" I knew, but we reviewed some important stuff and I was excited for the next day.

After lunch, a trip to Playa Madera (Madera Beach) was included in our costs. A half hour later we were at one of the most amazing beaches I had ever seen!! I lathered up, put on my t-shirt and headed for the biggest waves I have ever seen. Aparently, Madera is one of the top 5 surfing spots in Nicaragua, so the waves were amazing! I learned to boogie board and just had the time of my life riding the waves and then finding some small tidepools and playing with the crabs hidden in the cracks during low tide...again, see future pictures.

It was wonderful, but when 4:30 came, we had to leave. As I am getting out of my bathing suit and trying to wring out the sand and salt, I notice I am more burned than before, despite my sunscreen and t-shirt wearing...oye. That night was interesting but good for the most part.

Class Tuesday was learing the past tense...we knocked that out! It will take a bit to get used to it, it is hard to learn a new tense when all I have known for 5 years is present tense...hard to make room for new conjugations but I am doing ok. It was awesome. During break I walked through town a bit and bought a rainbow braclet (big suprise) and a green Nicaragua t-shirt, to try to avoid the burning though a t-shirt thing again. That afternoon, most of us chose to pay for a taxi to take us to a different beach than the day before, Playa Masalla, that supposedly has even fewer people.

Fewer people, yes, but not less wind, which is what the sunbathers were looking for. The sand was also larger, which made the wind more painful. It was a beautiful beach, but our taxi drivers were being lame and we had to get leave by 4:30 again. As I was showering, I noticed that I had gotten bit by a san fea or something, beneath my t-shirt AND my one-peice bathing suit!! Awesome.

Class today was even better. We learned some of those weird verbs in the past tense and I have homework to practice with them, as well as learning the basic parts of the body. I walked around town again during break and found the most amazing bookstore/cafe, but I'll make you wait until the pictures to see why...it was just perfect!

The afternoon activity was a boat trip with fishing, which I opted out of to go with a group back to Playa Madera for as long as possible! Dona Rosa arranged a friend to drive us and so it was reliable, less expensive, faster and he was awesome and was willing to wait for us until 6 pm, so we could watch the sunset.

I rented a boogie board, but didn't end up using it much. I found that if you find the wave at exacly the right moment, and jump with the wave, you feel like you are flying...in the water! It is the most amazing feeling ever! Even the occasional salt water up the nose didn't detract from the fantasticness of the waves! As I was in the water, I feel "algae" around my right ankle, so I go to shake it off, and it starts to sting. Of all the places and all the times, I choose now to get stung by a jellyfish! When I finally chose to head in, I saw a lot of them on the sand, so I guess it wasn't too big a suprise, but it still hurt.

On the pervious trip a small group went for a walk around a couple of the rocky corners down the beach and found a fantastic little bar that makes the best rum and cokes, so we packed up and headed down the beach. We were going over at high tide, so it was tricky in a couple spots, but when we got there it was worth it in so many ways!

The bar was small, had simple chairs, a couple hammocks and Bob Marley playing. They fixed us the best rum and cokes ever and we hit the waves, before the run hit us. Oh, my , goodness. The waves were just as big, but the way they came around the corners made really interesting waves to ride. As the waves crashed past us, the wind blew the spray back into our faces and we could see the rainbows they made perfectly. I wish I had a waterproof camera! It was outstanding! As the sun began to set we were relaxing on the sand, enjoying the most amazing view and converstaions ever. I started my new book, while sitting in the shade of the thatched roof and watched as the sun began to set behind the rocks. Oh my goodness it was magical!

By 5:30 be packed up our stuff, paid our tabs and began to walk back to the main part of the beach, so we could leave righ after sunset. As we walked, with one eye over our shoulder to watch the sun, the waves lapped at the sand, the surfers waited for the percect wave and we watched the hundreds of little hermit crabs moving into the nooks of the rocks, or burrowing into the sand in preparation of night. As we approached them, we could see the shells rock a little, then stop moving as the crab hit inside in preparation of our passing. It was so cool! As we walked, I stopped to take pictures of the setting sun and the waves. Going around the last corner, I stepped on some rock that had a bit of algae on it and slipped/fell, bending my toes under my foot and twisting my ankle a bit. I barely noticed. Once on the other side of the beach again, we took a million pictures and all the ones with me in then turned out horrible, because the sunset colors bring out how red/orange I am right now...not very flattering. Almost everyone else looks gorgeous though. The pictures of just the sunset turned out perfect though. I guess that is all that really matters, right. :)

When we got home, I stepped out of the car and almost fell on my face, my foot hurt so bad! I limped up the stairs and took of my sandy sandles to find a rather substantial gash on the outside of my foot that I had gotten when I slipped. Taking a shower was interesting.

Dinner was perfect and I am now sitting here, telling you all this because:

Despite the sunburn, the sunburn though the t-shirt, the sand fleas, the jellyfish and the falling on rocks...this is the best vacation I have ever had in my life. The ocean is revitalizing me, I am learning TONS and I am with the best group of friends I have had in a very long time. I know that the next year may not go as I had hoped, or planned, it but I do know that this internship is the best experinece I have ever had and that the ocean will always be in my blood. No jellyfish can take away from that.

Thank you for your prayer and thoughts. Don't stop, but know that they are reaching me this far south. I love you all and can't wait to share the rest of this adventure with you.

Hugs!!

K

Weekly update - hopefully this won't be the pattern...

2009-02-13T11:10:00.000-08:00

One of the better things that came out of last week's insane weather. It was so beautiful! Can you see the faint second one?

This week has been very eventful! I am truly sorry for not blogging often, but since I am teaching, my internet time is prioritized by the research I need to do for the questions that the 9th graders ask in class (which is sometimes A LOT).
Monday and Tuesday, the 7th and 8th graders were working on their volcano projects. Monday they were building them and Tuesday was the competition. We had some of the teachers and interns come to judge the volcanoes on how realistic it was, its uniqueness, and how good of an explanation the group members were able to give about the reaction between vinegar (acetic acid) and baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). Some of them were really good! After all the students volcanoes were judged, the scores were tabulated and the winners announced. There was first, second and third place, and each got a certain number of extra credit points. Then, Anna and I set off a little “volcano” of our own. Bring out the diet coke and Mentos!! Some of the kids had seen it, but a fair majority didn’t know what would happen! It was so cool! So I dumped the Mentos and RAN! My friend Jane got a good picture of the diet coke going off, with me running away. Then I gave a brief explanation of the science of the reaction. For those of you who don’t know, it is NOT a chemical reaction, it is purely the mixture of the sugar on the Mentos and the carbonation and flavoring in the coke. The surface of the Mentos make a difference, which is why the really smooth candies (Skittles or M&Ms wouldn’t work purely on the type of covering they have). It was pretty fun!

Some of the students' volcanoes:

Dumping the Mentos and running!

Explaining the science behind the reaction.

Wednesday, I started teaching the 9th graders again (they reviewed on Monday for their test on Tuesday). They are still doing pretty well with me, except that the questions get shouted out at random points in the lecture and it gets a little crazy sometimes. I am just happy that they are engaged in the subject and enjoying having me teach them. We have now finished the skeletal system and types of tissues and today we start the muscular system. They seem pretty excited about it, but after they learn all the names of the muscles they have to know they may not be as enthusiastic.
In the afternoon, during the "elective" course, we had a couple of friends of our environmental education teacher were in town. They helped us understand the basics of interpretation and how to make nature guides and trial signs that are helpful, informative, and interesting. They had set up a few wildlife traps in the forest that were designed to catch reptiles and see the foot prints of some of the mammals in the area. We saw some pretty cool tracks, plus a Mot-Mot in a tree. It was beautiful! Their tail feathers are so unique and they are almost a bluish green metallic color.
Thursday was a pretty normal day until the evening. School was fine, students did well and the weather was pretty nice. I went to the café to work on my internet searching, which turned out to be pretty successful (I found the image I was looking for after trying three or four different types of searches, and the internet being difficult). At about 6 I called my friend that I made on the bus, who lives in San Jose, and he said he was planning on being in Monteverde on Monday, so we could hang out! Yay!! Then I took a shower and got a little dressed up to go out with friends.
There is a little bar/club like thingy in Cerro Plano (up the hill from Santa Elena, where I live, but before Monteverde proper) called Moon Shiva that has Latin night on Thursdays. I met with some friends (Charlotte, Macy, Catlin, and Hollyn) at Catlin’s house and just chatted and had fun. Then we all piled into a taxi (they don’t charge per person, so it can get pretty cheap) and went to Moon Shiva. It was pretty crowded but for some reason I was totally fine! Usually in crowded places with low-ish ceilings I get really uncomfortable, but this time I was completely fine! There were several people there I knew, which helps, and we danced for about 3 hours! A couple guys asked me to dance, but I am still pretty horrible at it, but it was still fun! In addition to the 5 of us from Caitlin’s house, Jane and Stacey were there as well as four or five of the younger teachers from the school. It was so much fun!! I stayed out the latest I have since I got here (only midnight)! I am a little tired today, but completely fine considering how much fine I had!
Tomorrow is the school’s biggest fundraiser, the Carrara/Caminata. It is a 5k walk or 9k run that you pay to participate and it is a fundraiser for the school! The entire town knows about it (for the most part) and today the entire school is walking down the hill into Santa Elena carrying signs and playing drums to let everyone know. It is apparently a pretty big deal. After the race there are some games and activities for the students and other kids who come. Things start pretty early, I have to be AT the school by 6:45, uck, but things finish around 1, so I can go home and take a nap. Then in the evening, we are all going out for a nice-ish dinner to celebrate Charlotte’s birthday, #22.

So for the most part, a good week, despite its craziness. One more week and a good number of us are off the Nicaragua for 6 days of Spanish lessons and the beach!

Thanks for your patience!

Hugs,
K

I'll try to put more up on Monday!

Last week and San Jose

2009-02-09T14:47:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of blogging this week. Monday and Tuesday were pretty relaxed, but then things got really crazy. I started teaching on Thursday, human anatomy, so I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday planning lessons and trying to find images that work well for teaching the material. The school doesn’t have enough biology textbooks for me to use them in class (one per table, there are 6 tables…sad huh) so I have spent a lot of time trying to find images on-line that I can use with a projector and the white board. For the most part, that works out pretty well.

I really enjoy teaching the students. Fortunately, this subject is interesting to them so I get a lot of questions (can you break your ears? What is osteoporosis? What was the appendix used for, why can it be removed? How many bones are in the body?...) which keeps me busy in the afternoons trying to find the answers. I did human anatomy in 9^th grade, and took one semester of vertebrate physiology last year, but that was only the nervous system and excretory system. So for the most part, I am learning right along with them. Anna has some very ambitious goals for them, which means I have to try to give them as much information as possible, without confusing them too much with unnecessary details. They are sponges for information, whether or not they will retain the details for a test in another question.

So that has occupied most of my time. This weekend I made the trip to San Jose to pick up some stuff that a friend in the states brought with him (Thank you Esteban!!!). His stepmom picked me up from the Multiplaza in Escazu (outside of San Jose) and they were very hospitable to me and so nice. I stayed the night at their house, a very unique and comfortable place, and slept in a REAL bed! The next day they helped me get to the Multiplaza, where a bought TCBY, a webcam and new white board markers for the classroom, and then they called a friend who is a taxi driver to take me to the bus station and make sure I got the right ticket. I am very grateful for their hospitality and kindness for all they did for me. I was able to get a few “luxuries” from home (peanut butter, green tea, long-johns, and some familiar scents) as well as all the stuff I got for the classroom: dissection kits (10), magnets, multimeters, digital scales (4), one hot plate, magnifying classes, posters, thermometers, and flasks. (Thank you so much to my church family for helping me bring all this stuff for the school!) I had a great trip.

I think the best part was the bus to San Jose. I sat next to a guy from Costa Rica, who had been working for a coffee company in Monteverde for a little while. We chatted and got to know each other and it was amazing. I think he is studying engineering and business in his home city, can’t remember then name right now. We exchanged emails so hopefully we can get to know each other more through email. It was definitely a unique “cultural” experience that I am not likely to forget for a long time.

This week at school

2009-01-31T15:34:00.000-08:00

The kitty at my house. His name is Misingo (I think that is how you spell it). He is so precious!

Scorpion that was found and Daniel was playing with it. It isn't poisonous, just irritated.

A ridiculously huge walking stick!

Awesome flowers on campus. They are all so colorful and pretty. Thank goodness my camera does good close up shots. Besides animals and the ocean, I think they are my favorite things to photograph.

Well, things have been a bit rough for me this week. Things will be getting better though, I hope, and if all continues to go well, I will begin teaching on Wednesday to the 9th grade about human anatomy. Needless to say, I am doing some brushing up of my own! I'm nervous, but excited too. From what I hear, these are some of the hardest students to win over, the young ladies in particular are very judgmental. I should go. I have papers to grade and lessons to plan.

Missing you all!

Hugs!

K

The Moteverde Reserve

2009-01-29T13:26:00.000-08:00

The most enormous fern ever! It was as tall as a tree and the fronds are as long as I am tall. These are from prehistoric times! Too fun.

Wicked cool flowers that I finally got good pictures of. They are obviously pollinated by humming birds, because of the long shape of the flower. I love the way they look.

This little guy is called a pizote. He is a mix between a badger and a raccoon. They are the scavengers of Costa Rica and get a little annoying at times but he was really cute. They walk with their tails straight in the air.

One of the more amazing stranger figs I have ever seen. The figs begin life as a seed deposited by birds on trees, and they grow down from there. These vines obviously had an interesting trip down. The path was then cut underneath the different legs of the tree. The original tree is probably dead, or close to it. I just thought it was beautiful!

One of the fantastic strangler figs at the reserve. I love the details all the vines make on the trees.

Waterfall we hiked to. One of the six or seven trails at the reserve.

This is a local artist who does glass sculptures right there at the reserve. We watched him make a little poison dart frog, and it was amazing the way he could heat the glass and then essentially draw the toes out with the heated glass. It was really cool to watch.

This was a fantastic place.

Hugs!!

K

The beach!

2009-01-26T13:25:00.000-08:00

Holy cow the beach here is amazing!!

Before I continue that, a few updates:

My host mom is named Marlene, but it is pronounced Marlenny. Sorry for the confusion.

The weather here is a little psycho. In the morning it is usually cloudy and a little rainy and windy, the afternoons usually warm up a bit, usually not exceeding 80 or 85 F (I think, my thermostat is a little confused up here). Once the sun goes down it gets pretty chilly and the wind really picks up. At night the wind usually whips around the house, over the roof and past the windows, making whistling noises and you feel like you should wake up in Oz! The windy season usually only lasts for a month or so, because the winds are switching. Sometimes when you look at the sky, the clouds are going the opposite direction that you are feeling the wind.

Ok, now to the beach.

I will upload as many pictures as I can, but I am very tired and very sunburned, so I will try my best. We went to Playa Samara (Samara Beach). It was absolutely fantastic. Since there were eight of us going, we were able to pay for a private car to take us. So instead of having to take three different buses and seven hours, it was a comfy car with friends that only took about five. The hotel we stayed at, RBO, was small and out of the way, but very close to the beach and really practical. Amy, Ruth and I shared a room which turned out to be an interesting grouping, as you will find out soon.

The first night we got there, we changed and showered after a half day at school and a rather warm car ride. In attempting to find somewhere to eat that was cheap, we found that the hotel/hostel served food. So at a very large picnic table, we all ordered food (most of us got the pasta) and enjoyed the cool breeze and the company of each other. We laughed and chatted as we got to know each other better.

(Me, Amy, Stacey and Jane, and note how white I am)

(Stacey's papas fritas (french fries) came with toothpicks in them)

After dinner we walked down “main street” and onto the beach. [Now, for those of you who don’t know, I have been swimming in tropical waters once, but have not spent much time on a tropical beach.] It has also been a long time since I have been to the Oregon beach. Hearing the waves calling me, I quickly abandoned my shoes and felt the fine sand between my toes and ran toward the water. Samara is a small beach town with some local artists selling things and some small hotel/hostel places, but there are very few bright lights. So not only was I on a tropical Pacific Ocean beach, but it was a cool night, the warm water lapping at my feet and above me, the long arm of the Milky Way. Oh My Goodness! There were so many stars! It was incredible!! There are NO words for how amazing it was to stand there! I saw four shooting stars that night and I was in love with how warm the water was!

After a decent sleep in a queen bed, shared with Amy (fortunately I didn’t kick her or try to steal all the blankets) we woke up at nine, had breakfast downstairs on the open patio (pancakes!), and by ten thirty we were swimming in the water! Amy and I are both very fair skinned, but she doesn’t have the red head curse. We lathered up with sunscreen before we even left our room, but alas, it wasn’t enough.

The water was outstanding!! By Oregon ocean temps, it was practically hot! I was in heaven. I saw a couple fish swimming by and chased after them like a five year old yelling “Fishies, Fishies!”. My friends thought I was a little silly, but they care all the same.

(Allison and Charlotte sunning)

(REAL palm trees!)

After 45 minutes in the water, I couldn’t take the salt anymore so I got out, spread my towel in the shade and read my book, with the sound of the palm trees and waves in the background. Ruth had neglected her sunscreen at first and so 15 minutes after getting out of the water her back was already red. We took care of that, but some of the damage had already been done. By the end of the day, I had slept for about 30 minutes in the shade, been swimming three more times and watched a squirrel like animal break into a coconut, and spill the milk all over the sand beneath the tree. Amy and I were feeling the sun more than the other people so we headed back to the hotel around four to take cold showers. That felt almost as fantastic as the ocean. We then discovered how badly we had each been burned. Amy had sunbathed for an hour or so, but the equatorial sun was stronger than she had thought and she got pretty scorched. After our cold showers, and aloe vera for both we went back to the beach for the sunset and to find dinner somewhere.

At dinner: Amy, Jane and Stacey

(Stacey and I, note how burned my shoulders are)

(beautiful sunset)

The beach we were on didn’t face full West, so the sunset wasn’t the most amazing, but the colors were pretty to look at as the sun set behind the hill. Jane, Amy, Stacey and I went to find dinner and stopped at a little place to have empanadas, a tortilla filled with cheese, chicken, or beef and folded over and fried a little. They were pretty good! We all met back at the beach for a cool evening of watching the stars, listening to the waves and some other shenanigans that shall remain unsaid. Jane, Amy, Stacey and I were not down for such activities so we went for a walk down the beach, barefoot and feeling the cool sand and breezes on our sunburned skin.

That night Amy, Ruth and I slept ok, but we were three of the worst burned. We were the room of lobsters. Sunday morning we prepared for a less intense day at the beach. We began with a simple breakfast of tortillas, banana and some peanut butter! The peanut butter was very expensive but it tasted SO good!! There were two pastures across from the hotel and yesterday morning we had seen them all move from one to the other, without direction or anything. This morning we put the banana peels on a burn pile in the pasture and one of the larger females moved toward us and scarfed them up! We then put the rest there and watched the cow lick them up.

(Allison and the cow)

(Jane and the cow)

We covered up and didn’t swim as much. It was a lot windier, so we all ended up with sand everywhere! I took a two hour nap (how wonderful!) and watched as coconuts fell from the trees because of the wind. I was sitting under a palm that didn’t have any coconuts yet. Our driver got to the hotel by about 4 so we went back, rinsed off, packed up the last of our stuff and headed home.

The drive was a little rough on the sunburned skin but the stop we made at the halfway point was wonderful. There was a place that was selling postres (desserts) and I got some chocolate cake and a little piece of cherry cheesecake. Then in the trees near the store, were at least 5 scarlet macaws! They live in the warm weather places, so I didn’t think I would see one at all, but there they were! Granted it was dark, so the complete splendor of their colors wasn’t there, but you could see how big they were. I tried to get a couple pictures, but the flash wasn’t strong enough, which was fine, I didn’t want to blind them. I did get one that you can kind of see the red tail. It was very cool.

When I finally walked home from where the car dropped us, it was eight o’clock and I was ready for a cool shower and bed.

It was a fantastic weekend and one where I learned that me and sun and water don’t mix at all, unless a full body suit is involved. As much pain as I am in right now, it was mostly worth it. I had never seen such a beautiful beach and the water was fantastic. I think I still prefer my cold, windy Oregon beach, but this was a great opportunity and a perfect escape from the misty, cloudy and cool mountains of Monteverde.

Pictures- Farm continued

2009-01-21T14:45:00.000-08:00

My humble little house

The talking bird. Says Hola and calls out to the grandfather as he rides home from the farm. So funny!

Sara and Winnie (the indoor dog)

The hills, from the farm. I live in those hills.

Sara and me, Danny took the picture.

The cutest little flowers!!

Marlene's picture at the house she grew up in. So beautiful!

The river we rode our horses to. Very "happy" little place.

I know you have already seen this picture, but in this one I am smiling. She licked me, it was so strange and so sweet!

Danny, showing off.

In the river. It is a little disconcerting, even thought I know the horse wasn't going to fall over or anything.

I had a good time! Hopefully we'll get to go again soon. It looks like this weekend I am going to the beach, so I'll keep you up to date.

Hugs!

K

Inauguration day!

2009-01-20T14:53:00.000-08:00

Even here in Costa Rica people are celebrating. During the speech, the class we had brought one of the televisions into the classroom and tried to petition us to watch it instead of learning biology. Unfortunately, class work has priority over tv, but in the left over minutes at the end of the period we did watch part of it. It was dubbed over in spanish so I could only hear pieces of his strong voice, but it was enough. There are parties throughout the town, some in spanish, some in english. When I asked the students why they cared so much about the inauguration of an AMERICAN presidnet, they said "It is history, we are part of history!" So even in another country, they feel the change, they feel the potential with this new man as the head of our nation. And honestly, I feel it too.

K

On the Farm-pictures

2009-01-19T14:28:00.000-08:00

Sara's horse loved the water. She got soaked from the knees down!

One of the calfs. It was so precious. It was a little freaked out about being near me, but once s/he calmed down it was so sweet!

The female boxer playing with the puppy. It was so precious!

Ridiculously cool flower

Pretty orchid

The national flower of Costa Rica: La Guaria. Also the name/region of the town where the farm was.

Precious pet rabbit!

Mommy and her puppy! So cute!!

The coolest chicken I have ever seen!

Weird chicken turkey things. Very loud call.

Sunset over the hills of Monteverde. 5:36 pm. How gorgeous is that!

The Ranaro exibit (aka the frog pond). A "red eyed" tree frog. How perfect is that picture! It was the only one that turned out well.

Rufus frog, the red eyes are so it can see at night.

Green and black poison dart frog. You can kind of see it, but the tour was at night (because most of the species are nocturnal) and this was taken through glass, by the light of a flashlight.

Primary forest picture. This was the path we came up. You can barely see it! It was fantastic!

Amy, the ever excentric Jane and Stacey. We all went for ice cream after school on Friday. Oh so yummy!

I'll try to put up the rest of the farm pictures tomorrow.

TTFN,

K

2009-01-19T14:27:00.000-08:00

A few things that are different here in Costa Rica, some are specific to Monteverde:

Light switches are parallel to the floor, not perpendicular

There is always a pot of rice and a pot of beans on the stove or counter!

Walking is the local sport, however riding in the car is also a physical activity

Toilet paper, once used, doesn’t go in the toilet. I think this is because the plumbing here isn’t as organized as it is in the states, took some getting used to!

You don’t see any sedans here. Mostly dirt bikes, four wheelers, and jeeps and the like.

The showers are electrically heated, so instead of turning it on as strong as you can to get the most heat, you barely turn it on to get the warm water.

Big dogs don’t “belong” in the house and a lot of dogs are not chained up, but someone does take care of them from time to time.

Cat fights are an every day occurrence and even if your cat gets hurt, it isn’t cause for worry. (I have a tough time with this one, especially since “our” cat got pretty badly mauled a couple days ago.

I'll likely add more as I notice them, but these are the most obvious right now.

K

January 17th, 2009

2009-01-19T13:49:00.000-08:00

A Day on the Farm

The drive to the grandfather’s farm was about an hour, however, if the roads were paved it would probably only taken half an hour. It was in a valley between some of the “hills” here. Slightly warmer, the vegetation was a little different with some of the more tropical looking trees. At the house, there were about 5 dogs: a german shepherd, a boxer, a smallish scruffy dog (that helped with the recruitment of the horses and cows in the fields), a dachshund and her puppy. There were several chickens and two birds that were gray with white spots, not quite sure what species they are. There is a pet parrot that lives in one of the trees in the yard and talks as well as fans itself with leaves from the trees. If you go down into the valley a little more the working farm begins. There is a lot of land with at least 20 cows and 5 or 6 horses.

When we first got to the house, we stopped in to say hi, but then headed to the actual farm where Danny ran into the field and hopped onto a horse and corralled the rest into the stable. Then the grandfather showed up, gathering the cows into the corral. Sara and I stayed out of the way and watched the gents lasso a couple cows as they could get sprayed for ticks (one of the few insects I DON'T like). Then the three of us got on horses, I was the only one on a saddle, and headed down the hill into a valley where a river runs through it. It was so peaceful and wonderful! The only complaint I had was that the horse I was riding was new and still needed a little bit of training so we had some disagreements, but other than that he was beautiful!

We went back to the stable and gave the horse back to the grandfather, so he could ride home and have a way to get to the farm the next morning, and the three of us went to the wide spot in the river. It was so pretty! I put my feet in the water and it was heavenly! I had brought a change of pants with me, but they were at the house. The water was too amazing to say no, so jeans and all I got in the water! Danny and Sara thought it was so cold, but to my and my standards being the rivers and ocean of western Oregon, this was perfect! Their goosebumps made me laugh! We finally clambered back into the car to go home for lunch.

The day was really fun! Hopefully we can go back, a couple times, and do more riding. We hadn 't given them much notice so there were no extra saddles in the stable, causing Danny to ride a rather bony backed horse, bare-back. I really like this family.

Hugs,

Pictures from this week, and Primary forest!

2009-01-16T14:48:00.000-08:00

The first few pictures are of the primary forest. Above 6500 ft, this was the land that wasn't cleared for pasture lands. These trees are taller, thicker, greener and all around more jungly. It was fantastic! I was a little insane up there, a little too excited to be there. The students we were with, the seven 11th graders, thought I was a little psycho. They were thinking "It is just another forest!" But what they don't understand it that it ISN'T like any other forest. They are SO lucky to be there! What a marvelous place to study ecology! I'm in love with this forest!

Cool angle on some wicked cool moss.

The teacher I am working with, Anna, posing in the deep greenery of the primary forest. Isn't it outstandingly green and thick!! It was another world up there!

Millipede!!! I love bugs!!

The "river" from a couple of days ago. It is very peaceful and the sounds were perfect to calm the craziness of life sometimes!

More later!!

K

January 15, 2009

2009-01-16T14:41:00.000-08:00

In the 9th grade class, we are doing a plant dissection and I was out in the forest picking some new ferns for tomorrow when I got a little too into the process. I found three possibly four different species of ferns. It may not be too exciting to the rest of you, but I thought it was really cool. I made rubbings and sketched them. Each of their spore designs was different, a couple I had never even thought about in relationship to a fern. It might make it more possible to identify the species but despite that, I thought it fascinating.
I am making process in some of the classes. The 7th and 8th grade is doing chemistry and I am re-learning right along with them. They seem to be the most willing to accept me as an authority figure. 9th grade, plant physiology, is also getting used to me. 10th grade however, is less than receptive to me. Anna said that it took her a long time to “win them over” so in the “short” five months I will be here, I doubt that we will connect much. I will probably only teach the 7th, 8th and 9th grades then…but not until they are more used to me and I have gotten all the kids’ names down. Today we has several kids come in during lunch because they had questions about what we were covering (ionic compounds and reactions between them). One of the students had been absent for a couple of days and so she was a little behind. Together we were able to work out what an ion is, how it is formed, oxidation numbers, and forming ionic compounds. We were able to work through the problems that had been assigned during the past couple of classes and by the time she left, she had done half of the problems, the last few done on her own. I don’t know why, but it was SO gratifying to help her and have her understand the information. I guess this really is my calling! I have had doubts. I won’t go into that here, but this is really wonderful for me.
My passion has always been obvious: THE OCEAN. However, the plan to go into teaching was much more subtle. I was doubtful for a while and when I took this internship I didn’t know if it would solidify my plan or make me re-think it all. Now I have a strong feeling that I am doing the right thing. That being here is a great gift and I will learn so much here that when I return to do my studies, I will be much more confident and hopefully be worth quite a bit as a teacher.

I couldn’t have done all this without your support though. Thank you.

Post for January 14th, 2009

2009-01-16T14:39:00.000-08:00

Today has been a little hectic, with a small respite near the end of the day. On Wednesdays, in the afternoon, the 7^th, 8^th, 10^th and 11^th grades get to choose a class. There was the creation of a CEC newspaper, a theatre one, a trail sign making one, home electronics, organic gardening and a field guide for young children with Anna (and me). Each class session we will begin with a nature walk and journal. Today we walked to the “river”. At least that is what the kids here call it. It is little more than a creek (I’ll try to post pictures). However it was the most glorious place ever. It is likely to become one of my favorite places ever. We each did a nature journal, and for those of you who know me, I jumped at that chance! The goal is to try to observe nature, plants, animals, insects etc, which we can then use to make a guide to the Cloud Forest aimed at younger children. I rediscovered the art of leaf rubbings. Some of the plants here have fantastic venation, perfect for rubbings! I thought you might like to hear some of the things I wrote while sitting on a large rock in the middle of the happy creek:

“A bubbling stream and falling water sound in my ears. The gentle rustle of the leaves as the wind rushes through the trees. Life couldn’t be much better than this.”

“Vines creep up the trunks of the other trees, trying to reach the top in hopes of a glimpse of pure sunlight, un-impeded by the attempts of other greenery.”

One of the assignments for the students was to think about what animal from the Cloud Forest they would be. This is what I chose:

“I would probably be a Emerald Toucanet, with bright colors and a strong outer presence. However, on the inside I am just soft and lovey. I fly though the glorious trees, with the clean air beneath my wings and I am free. The forest is my home and I treasure it in my heart.”

It was fantastic to be able to just sit there for half an hour and absorb the spirit of the forest. Letting it become part of me, feeling myself become part of the forest. I have a feeling I will grow to love this place, and when I go home, I may feel like part of me is being left behind.

Hugs,

2009-01-13T13:56:00.000-08:00

The base of one of the outstanding strangler figs. The land was cleared a long time ago to be used as pasture for dairy farming. The rest of the forest is only about 15 years old. The stranglers however are much much older. They were not cut down. They were a poor source of resources, so it wasn't worth the cost of harvest, plus they are the only plant that fruits all year, making it a critical member in the temperate rain forests here.

All the way to the top!

Coffee pot, ala Costa Rica. A fabric bag essentially that the grounds are placed into and the hot water poured over the top. Marlene has the cute teapot form one you see here. I might just give coffee another chance...

Hugs to all!

K

Post for January 12th

2009-01-13T13:45:00.000-08:00

I have finally met everyone in my host family. Until yesterday I believed there was Marlene, her daughters Mileidy, Johanna and Andres. Now I know that there is a son, Danny, in between Mileidy and Johanna. And it is his girlfriend that I see around here sometimes. I made a fool out of myself though, but now the tension is broken. We are all friends. Life here is simple but nice. Mileidy’s birthday is during my stay here so we will have a fiesta. Apparently they like to barbeque and have all the family over. I’m excited to experience a family event.

Since I have gotten here, I have shared my pictures with my family and they really enjoy seeing my family and friends. I also brought some of my jewelry and tie dye I did as well as a cross-stitch project. She is convinced I am and artist. We are getting to know each other more and I really want to be able to give her something she would really appreciate. The dog, Winnie, is such a baby and as much a member of the family as the children. She is babied and loved and I am beginning to warm to the idea of small dogs.

Today I got my first chance to work one on one with some of the students and it was very fulfilling. I was able to answer her questions and she felt more comfortable with the subject. During my time here I will be teaching an entire unit to three of the five classes. I journeyed home today with three textbooks, one of which was larger than my Biochemistry book from College! The chemistry book is 10 years old and has a mistake right on the cover. I suppose they are lucky to have ANY books at all, even outdated ones. On my way home I ran into some visitors from Texas who asked me if I was taking classes here. I mentioned the school and how lucky these students were to study and learn in such a spectacular location with amazing resources at their disposal.

I am planning on purchasing a version of Harry Potter, in Spanish of course, to be able to see some of the verb conjugations that I don’t know. Of course it will be slow reading, but hopefully my familiarity with the book and its story will help me learn it better. My Spanish classes have been moved to Wednesdays after school, instead of Fridays which is nice because it allows me more time during the day if I wish to travel somewhere. There are some places that are defiantly weekend trips, like to the Volcano, that are musts before I leave. The places like the local insect jungles and so on are things I can do after school if I want, or to just have a nice relaxed weekend.

Through the school, I can be reimbursed for up to two vacations, two nights at $10 or less, which might come in handy if I chose to go to San Jose or if someone is coming to visit and I go to meet them. Granted it is only two for the entire semester and while most of the interns here are only staying until March or April, I am the only one here for the full 5 months. I have to make it all last a little longer.

As requested here are more descriptions of the glory I am experiencing here. The trees are greener than any emerald ever discovered. The sounds are unknown and intriguing, making every walk to school a new experience. When I walk between classes or glance out the windows of the classroom and see the mists wafting over the hills and through trees that have been in existence longer than most of the people on earth. Each view is new to me and takes my breath away every time. My heart calls for home and things familiar to me but I am working to embrace this outstanding experience. My experiences here will be with me forever and I can only try to remain open to the challenges. Thank you ALL for the support and love I feel. It gives me strength, which makes facing each day in this new world a little easier to embrace and learn from.

Pictures III

2009-01-12T13:32:00.000-08:00

I love this flower!! It has red, orange AND yellow, all in one flower!!

My little room of peace.

The stunning full moon from Friday night!Me on my horse Nicoleti. Very sweet, but constantly wanted to stop and eat.

The man on the far left is the man who escorted us on horse, Milton, Stacey, Amy, Ruth, Allison, David (foreground), Robert, and Jane.

Me, Jane, Ruth and Milton in the pool!

The river rushing through the rocks. It was loud but perfect!

river rushing by us while we soaked

Look to the upper right, that is the pool. Then you see the river rushing past it. The sounds were astounding! Nature was singing!

Down in the valley!!

David, Jane, Allison, and Stacey aboard their steeds.

PUPPIES!!!! He was SOOOOOO cute!

View from the back of the horse, heading down into the valley

Me, Stacey and Robert in the car to the horseback riding

In the back, L to R, Allison, David, and Ruth. In the front Stacey and the ever so lovely Jane.

One of the orchids that are on the school grounds.

Science, puppies, and horses, oh my!!

2009-01-10T15:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Friday, was an adventure filled day.

School was fun. Some interns are still trying to get into the swing of classes, one is already teaching! I’m glad that I am not teaching yet, I’m still learning the names of all the students and I haven’t had time to do any planning yet. In the 7^th and 8^th grade classes we just started working with chemical bonds. In 9^th grade we are working on plant physiology, 10^th grade is working on photosynthesis and 11^th grade is finishing Ecology. I learning a lot and hopefully I will begin to feel more comfortable with the idea of teaching an entire unit to three different classes, one of the goals my mentor teacher set for me. I am still amazed at the students and how they live in such an amazing place. During the 9^th grade class we went for a walk, to look for the plant phyla we went over in class that day. I am amazed, still, at the resources in this place. Granted there are many that they don’t have access too, and that limits them in some ways, but the resources they DO have are so amazing and in some ways invaluable to learning certain subjects. Each student sketched a bryophyte (mosses and lichens), a fern, and a monocot and dicot (both in the Angiosperm category, the flowering plants). I think the students really liked it, not to mention it was a great way for the students to learn the subject.

After school we got picked up to go to the property of a friend of Milton’s, the man who is the life of the grounds at the school. He knows all the trails so well he could draw them out by memory. He is a wonderful person! At the farm/ranch/property of his friend’s there was a house that was nice and two puppies!! If you know me well at all, these were the highlight of my day (at that time). One was possibly a terrier of some kind, the other was small and fuzzy. It was love at first sight! However, that didn’t hold me too long, once I saw the horses that were waiting for us. They were all so beautiful! I chose one that was a gray color. He was really nice, his name was Nicoleti. Once we got onto the horses it was a 25 minute ride down, down, down into the valley between some of the “hills”. I am amazed at how well designed the joints of the horses legs are. They were walking on unpredictable rocks, down a steep hill and they barely hesitated. Watching the horse’s feet in front of me made me wince sometimes, but I am sure they were ok, otherwise they wouldn’t do it.

Once we got down the hill, we walked down a small path to a human-made pool where the water from the only volcanic heated hot springs in Costa Rica. The water was pretty close to bath water temperature. The water was fresh and clear and it didn’t have the sulfuric smell, because it was so far from the source of the springs. The best part was that this pool had been placed next to a raging river. As the water came down the hill it rushed over rocks and through the valley that had been formed by this river over many years. The forest trees and vines surrounded us on all sides and it was the perfect place to relax after my first week here.

If any of you decide to come visit me, the offer is open to the friends and family of the school, not to just any tourists. There is also a butterfly garden, a frog pond/garden, the insect world, the bat jungle, the Serpentario (snakes and fun reptiles), the orchid garden and of course, the Monteverde Reserve itself. The school grounds are beautiful and there are trails to hike there as well and the cheese factory near the top of the hill makes amazing ice cream!

For all of you who are keeping an eye on the news right now, the earthquake in Costa Rica was pretty awful, but here in Monteverde we didn’t feel anything. Unfortunately it was felt all the way up to Nicaragua and El Salvador. The devastation seen on the news is awful and I can only pray for families to be restored and for those who lost family, that they may find peace.

Thank you all for your love!

Pictures II

2009-01-10T12:15:00.001-08:00

View outside my classroom

Bird of paradise flower

Strangler fig, a very important part of the Monteverde ecosystem. A fascinating thing to see!

View of classroom from the kiosk, one of the higher points of the school property

View from the kiosk!

Another strangler fig

The science classroom!

I really wish I had more time to put up pictures, but the internet was being very difficult today. Hope to post more on Monday, most places are closed tomorrow.

Hugs!

K

My first day with actual science

2009-01-08T15:45:00.001-08:00

Today we actually got to do some science!! It was so much fun to be able to work with the students and get to know each of them. This place is so amazing. We all went on a walk yesterday afternoon, up to the kiosk that was installed by volunteers last year. It is quite a walk!! Tomorrow several of us are going to take a trip, on horseback, to some natural hot springs and a gorgeous waterfall. I'll post more pictures on Saturday of everything!

Hugs and love to all, thanks for your support!!

K

Post for the day January 7th

2009-01-08T15:44:00.001-08:00

The times in my life when I doubted the existence of a higher being, I now know that there is one. No one could see this amazing place, this phenomenal school and these fantastic people without thinking that. The semester starts off with peace circle, where the lower classes and the higher classes gather in a circle before school starts and have at least 30 seconds of silence for peace in our world. It is pretty impressive to get 70 some high school kids to be silent for the entire time.
It is a buggy day too…while I was standing at the sink brushing my teeth, I felt a creepy crawly feeling in my left pant leg, and at first I thought I was just being crazy. As a reflex, I shook my leg and a cockroach about 1.5 inches long fell out of my pants. FUN! Then outside the class room I saw a beetle as big as my thumb and when I picked it up it started squeaking at me. It was very impressive. Then in the afternoon homeroom class, a cockroach about 2 inches long was crawling across the floor and the kids were about to squish it when I picked it up and carried it outside. One of the 7th grade girls was practically scarred for life…she wasn’t too impressed with the fact that I just picked up a bug bigger than one of my fingers.
The first day:
Wow. The students have each class for 45 minutes and there is one science class for each grade. The 7th and 8th grade students are doing chemistry, 9th and 10th are doing biology stuff and the 11th graders (there are only 6 of them) are working on research projects and learning how to write scientific papers. Each class has its challenges. The 10th grade has a lot of boys, some of which like to talk a lot. Anna definitely has her hands full, especially considering she has only been here for 6 months, but she is great at it. Most of the kids respect her and knows that she is still learning.
I wish I had more experience, but after this, there shouldn’t be too much I haven’t been exposed to. I will be doing Spanish classes here on Friday afternoons with the Spanish as a second language teacher. I could understand a fair amount of what she was asking me, but I had no idea how to respond in Spanish. I just hope I learn enough. It seems like a silly thing to worry about, considering where I am and for how long, but I hope I am not expecting too much out of this experience.
A little about where I am living. I am living in a small house in Cementario, a small section of Santa Elena, which is down the hill from Monteverde proper. Essentially, as you go up the hill, once the paved road ends, you are officially in Monteverde. My bedroom is small but I have two windows. The roof is the “wavey” metal roofing you see on some barns. When the wind is really blowing (like it is right now) you think the roof is going to come off! The walls are simple and not insulated so when the dog down the street starts barking at 2 am, then the dog across the street barks, and then the small dog in my house barks at them…it is interesting some nights.
I am very tired today so I will likely post this tomorrow, hopefully with pictures too. I am so glad I can share this with you all!

K

Pictures

2009-01-08T13:31:00.000-08:00

One of our amazing mountains from my plane as if flies over Oregon!

What I chose to have for breakfast at the hostel, pinto gaio. A very traditional meal for Ticos.

My bed in the hostel.

Stacey, from Winnepeg Canada. She helped organize our transportation between San Jose and Monteverde. Very fun girl!

Allison, from U of O and Amy, from Seattle Washington. Both are working with younger children and are great people.

After our lunch and mini party with Bethany, we walked up to the cheese factory where I saw this on the shelf...yes, it is exactly what is sounds. Chocolate cheese.

My host Mom does these. BY PICTURE or in her own mind. She loves to crochet, she has several magazines, but they are all in English and she works from the pictures and some diagrams! Amazing! She is really talented. The work is so delicate and precise.

This is the greenhouse at the school, in the distance you can see the small plastic containers and juice and milk cartons that are being reused to grow seedlings in the greenhouse. Milton, the person who is ingenious with plants. It is beautiful.

One of the paintings on the wall of the science classroom I am working in.

Of the many murals around the school the only building I have seen a rainbow on was on the side of the building I am working in. What are the chances?!

The ESL classroom.

The high school buildings for civics, history and english. The science building is beyond here.

Kinder and Prepa building from the bottom of the property.

From the main office. The roof belongs to the Kinder and Prepa classes, on the lower edge of the property. The day was so clear, it was amazing. You can see all the way down the hills, all the way to the pacific coast!

Orientation and Tour

2009-01-06T14:34:00.000-08:00

If any of you think we have big hills in the states, you ain't seen nothin' till you have climbed "the hill" that leads up to the school. Yesterday I only walked past it, but it turns out I couldn't even see all of the road, so it was a lot longer than I thought.

To the left is a picture of my host mom (pronounced Marlenney) wearing the scarf I gave her.

I walked up the blessed hill (oye) to be have my first tour of the school. These kids are the luckiest kids ever! Their school is surrounded by nature on all sides and beautiful views out of every window.

The different parts of the school are in separated buildings. Kinder and Prepa students are in the lower building, with their own little garden and play structure. The first and second graders share a building and then the third and fourth and the fifth and sixth. I can't remember which buildings are which, but they are all beautiful!

In the upper part of campus are the high school classrooms. History and Social Studies (both taught in Spanish at the high school level) share a building. Then there is the science building with a music room. The pictures are hopefully going to load so you will be able to see my "home" for the next 5 months. There are paintings of cells and processes and some earth science stuff. Anna, the teacher I am going to be working with, works with 7th to 11th grade students, which means so will I. We walked up the hill behind the science class into one of the many trails that they have around the school. This was absolutely breathtaking. I couldn't believe how amazing it looked. Some of the areas were being reforested during their ecology and environmental education classes. The land the school now owns used to belong to a Quaker community who logged the area for use as a pasture, where they raised their dairy cows. Some of the trees are huge and it is hard to believe that it is only secondary growth.

We also saw some newer reforestation projects that still look like they have been planted but it is all a process. In some of the areas, they even have horses, they don't belong to the school, that eat the grass in the open areas, but leave the newly planted saplings alone, helping them to grow.

In the greenhouse and the planting grounds (each grade had their section) they grew seedlings in recycled bottles and cartons and some of the posts in the greenhouse have "rescued" plants strapped to them. Because the school is on a reservation, they can't harvest anything from the forest that wasn't already dead. So one of the teachers finds these plants that live ON other plants and brings them back to the greenhouse and they then grow on the posts and walls there. It is all quite spectacular.

I can't wait to begin working tomorrow, although I have to catch the bus at 7:15 AM...and you all know how much of a morning person I am.

The other interns are wonderful and I can't wait to get to know them better.

I'm sorry the pictures are not loading. I will try something new tomorrow maybe but you will see pictures, I promise!

Hugs!

K

Traveling to the Coud Forest

2009-01-05T15:00:00.000-08:00

Pictures will follow, but just an update.

The plane rides here and the stay in the hostel was just fine. My largest disappointment was that at the airport, an embargo on weight was in effect, so the extra weight I had packed and was prepared to pay for, I had to send back home with my parents...which happened to be most of the things I was bringing for the school! I had dissection kits and some small electric balances but those had to get left behind. I only home some other people can carry them for me. I want the school to have the supplies so much!

Today we did a small gathering with Bethany, the coordinator for the interns at the school. She lives about a forty five minute walk from my house. There were about three hills between there and downtown Santa Elena (where I live) so I definitely got some exercise today. We looked at the hill that the school is at the top of (the mother of all hills) and I made a mental note on how long it might take me to climb it tomorrow morning for orientation.

Bethany made a vegetable soup from some things we have never seen before. She lives in a little house by herself that literately overlooks part of the forest. Sometimes she sees monkeys out there and the trees are amazingly dynamic.

Everything here IS green, but such a different and more varying picture. All the green is bright and deep. The color saturation here is like it was after my own heart. Nothing about the color here is weak. The "clouds" shift over the hills, so I never really know how much further it goes. Just the extensiveness of it is breathtaking. Today was overcast and raining on and off, but still beautiful. I can't wait until it is clear again.

I am living in a very small house outside of Santa Elena, my host mom doesn't seak any english but her children do. I met her two daughters yesterday, Milady and Johanna (not sure if these are the correct spellings), and they were fun. Her son, Andres, will be coming home soon...he was on vacation with his grandfather. I think. My spanish is weak, but I am already understanding more than I did yesterday.

Tomorrow we are meeting at the school for orientation, a potluck lunch and then an afternoon of planning and organizing with our mentor teachers. Mine is named Anna, she is the high school science teacher. I am really excited to begin working with her.

I should get home and take a shower before dinner.

Remember, I love mail (internet and snail) and thank you ALL for your love and thoughts.

With Love,
K