Lluvia (Rain)

Let the wet season begin! As I am writing this I can barely even hear the music in m headphones over the pounding of rain on the metal roof of my house. Tropical rain is pretty intense! It has rained quite a bit lately, and at least once a day for the past 4 days. Today, while I was out searching for lizards, the ominous gray clouds above me must have decided that I was dehydrated, so they shared some of their water with me. I came home quite drenched, but I managed to find one lizard before the downpour began :) My new method of applying the powder I use to track the lizards at night has proven very successful, and I have found all seven lizards I have used it on so far. Even with all the rain, the powder works great!

I am hoping to find more amphibians now that it is getting wetter. I hear more frogs every night and I saw a salamander (Bolitoglossa robusta) D.O.R. yesterday, which means they're becoming active again. I don't even know what I can find around here, but there has to be something!

Only four days of data collection left and I am at 38 lizards. Hopefully the weather will cooperate enough for me to reach my goal of 50, but I am happy with the amount I have been able to find so far. Last day of lecture and Spanish is Friday, then we are back to the station and have to do a lot of work writing up our projects. Three weeks left, but they are going to fly by! But I'm soaking up as much Pura Vida as I can until then :)

Mi familia tica (My Costa Rican family)

I'm sure many of you have heard the phrase “Mi casa es su casa,” which means “My house is your house.” Well, this homestay experience has taught me a lot about what that phrase really means. It has been amazing to see how welcoming my homestay family has been, even to a strange looking gringo with a goofy beard :) I guess they have seen it all, since they have been housing students for 15 years, but their hospitality has meant a lot to me.

I have been here for three weeks now (which has gone by incredibly fast!), and I have loved every day of it. My family lives on a small dairy farm in the San Luis Valley, which is at a low elevation in the Monteverde region.

My tica mom, Xinia, has lived in this region her whole life. She works a few days a week up in Monteverde, and she cooks all the time when she is home. She told me that her dream is to open a “panaderia” (bakery) here at the house. They have been saving up money and are going to get a loan soon to build a little building next to the house where she can bake all the bread and other food. I am sure that the bakery will have great success, because she makes some of the best bread I have ever eaten in my whole life! My favorite are her banana bread cupcakes with chocolate frosting :) She also makes all kinds of sweet breads and other assorted loaves...We always have fresh bread :) She even sells bread to the local supermarket. I have enjoyed talking to her and getting to know her. My tico dad's name is Jose, and he works on the farm all day. He doesn't talk a whole lot, but he is a really nice guy.

My tico siblings are Cindy (21...3 days older than me) and Eduardo (14). Cindy is married and has a daughter named Tatiana who is 1 year 9 months (and incredibly cute!). Cindy and her husband live in a little house behind ours, but they are over here basically all day. Eduardo goes to school at the Cloud Forest School in Monteverde, and speaks very good English. In fact, he doesn't even speak Spanish with me :) He has helped me a lot with my project as he has grown up catching these “gallegos.”

Most night we watch TV while we eat dinner. My favorite show is “Caso Cerrado” (Case Closed), which is basically the Spanish version of Jugde Judy :) They have the most outrageous cases on there, but it is a good way to learn Spanish. My family also loves “telenovelas,” which are the standard TV shows here. They are practically the same quality as daytime soap operas in the States, with ridiculous plots, excessively loud theme music, and tons of drama. My family's favorite is “En Nombre del Amor” (In the Name of Love), and we watch it every night at dinner :)

Because of my project, I usually am out until about 8:30 or later, and my family is in bed by 8 every night. Once I had to stay up until about 11 doing some homework and the next morning my mom said I was crazy for staying up so late...I tried to explain to her that if I was back home that would be early for me, but I think she just thought I was more crazy :)

One week left, then we head back to the station, but I will never forget this month on the farm and my newly adopted tico family!

Gallegos

I have had a lot of requests to update my blog lately, so here is a quick recap of the past 3 weeks or so...

I started a homestay the week we got back to Monteverde and have been working on my independent research project. I am staying on a farm in the San Luis Valley, which is a little lower in elevation than the rest of Monteverde. It is about a 1.5 hour walk to the Biological Station, but I only have class once or twice a week. My family is very nice and I am loving Costa Rican food :) We watch a lot of TV, so I am learning a lot of Spanish comprehension! I will be here for another week and a half, until we return to the Station on 5/2.

My project is studying the sleeping site selection of Norops lizards ("gallegos" in Spanish) around the farm and surrounding areas. So far I have caught 31 lizards, and my homestay brother, Eduardo (13), has helped me a lot. I use fluorescent powder to track the lizards using UV light at night. My success rate at tracking them has not been phenomenal, but I am getting better. I have also developed some new strategies that seem to help make the process easier. My goal is 50 lizards, so we'll see if I can get that many by next Sunday.

There were fiestas in Monteverde over the past weekend, with food, carnival rides, and bull riding. I learned that here in Costa Rica, bull riding is not a spectator sport...In fact, after the rider is launched from the bull, it is customary for the spectators to run around inside the ring, taunting the bull, somewhat like a tame version of the "Running of the Bulls" in Spain. In an effort to fully immerse myself in the culture, I couldn't not participate! Although as some of the bulls were over 1600 pounds, I decided that my position by the wall was the best place to be :) It was quite an experience!

That's about all that has been going on for the last 3 weeks. It is crazy to think that I will be home in 25 days! The time is going to fly by...

The Atlantic Adventure!

This trip was FULL of exciting stories and beautiful  places! In order to simplify things, I'm just going to make entries for each place we stayed and include all of the stories from each place...Unfortunately, my camera died about halfway through the trip, so I might  not have pictures of everything like I wish I could, but I'll do the best I can to borrow pictures from other students :)