all kinds of wonderful

            Once again, I have failed to keep you guys up to date on what I’ve been up to. I’ve been done with official classes for a week or two, but I have been anything but lazy. These past few weeks have been absolutely unbelievable, with each week better than the last. Here are some of the things I’ve done, not necessarily in order:

1. BUNGY JUMPING

            This is by far the CRAZIEST thing I’ve done this month. Words cannot even begin to describe how unbelievable this experience was. I am terrified of heights, but this is something that has always been on my bucket list. I figured that if I could get myself to jump off of a bridge only held by my ankles, there wasn’t much I couldn’t do. My friends Jake, Matt, Lauren, AJ and Karen I went to Xtremewaves Bungy, which is a short taxi ride away. We had been talking about doing it for pretty much the entire semester, but I never thought that this plan would come to fruition. To my surprise, one day I suddenly found myself in the taxi after class on my way to do just that. To my even greater surprise, I was not at all nervous. I was so excited that I would finally be able to go bungy jumping. I wasn’t nervous when we walked over to the bridge, or when they attached the harness or the Velcro that would keep me from hitting the ground. I wasn’t even nervous when I walked into the platform and looked over the edge for the first time. The jump was about 80 meters over a river, and looked insanely high. I was even calm when they began the countdown for me to jump. It was only when they got down to one that the panic set in. But by then, it was too late to back out. I got about mid-jump before my body realized that I was actually crazy enough to throw myself off the edge of a bridge. Because of the way I half jumped/half froze off the edge, my jump was a little different than every subsequent jump. The way I went off the edge caused me to pirouette around like a top. The first free fall down wasn’t long enough for any intellectual contemplation except for “OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT.” Finally my free fall was over, and I went hurtling up towards the bridge (still spinning), and then back down. When I was finally done bouncing, I was hanging by my ankles looking at the valley. This was definitely the hardest part for me. They give you enough time there (while they’re sending the rope down to you to haul you back to the bridge) to think about the fact that you were dangling over a river by only a few ropes held by Velcro. And all too soon, it’s over and you’re back on the bridge babbling about how amazing it all was. Even after the adrenaline rush is gone, I still cannot begin to describe the experience. All I can say is I’m definitely going again! Sorry Mom..

2. Weekends Away

            We’ve had the past two weekends off (a very rare experience), and we definitely took advantage of it. The first weekend I went with a few of my girlfriends to San Jose. We proceeded to eat our way through the capital; we ate pretty much every forty-five minutes to hour. I felt like a hobbit- we had breakfast, elevensies (for coffee/hot chocolate and milkshakes), lunch, afternoon tea at the National Theater, and afternoon snacks. It was really cool to actually be able to see the capital. It was a very nice way to spend the day. That Sunday was even better- my friends Sarah and Sarah and I went to Playa Jaco, which is a fairly nice beach about two hours away from the center. We spent the day playing in the waves, soaking up the sun, and (of course) eating lots of food.

            Our last long weekend happened to fall on my friend Lauren’s birthday, so we spent the weekend in Manuel Antonio. Manuel Antonio is a beautiful touristy beach town on the Pacific side. The waves were insane, and the beach had so many beautiful shells. It was a beautiful weekend, with good people, good places, good drinks, and good food!

3. DR WEEK

            During the last three weeks here in Costa Rica, SFS ends official classes, and begins Directed Research- a four credit course consisting of an intensive week of research, another week of data analysis and writing of papers, and then long week of final presentations. It’s some of the hardest (both mental and physical) work we do while here at SFS, but most rewarding. I was working with my natural resources management professor Achim and a group of eight other students. Our goal was to study and compare the ecological differences between forest fragments, conventional and organic coffee farms. We were studying how carbon sequestration and biodiversity changes between each of these three land management techniques. Our research was important for several reasons: not much research has been done on this topic, and our work would help shed some light on this issue. It also had the potential to aid organic coffee farmers to get funding from the PES program (Payment for Environmental Services- one of Costa Rica’s most influential conservation program that essentially paid farmers to preserve forests on their land to protect watersheds, sequester carbon, and promote biodiversity). If we could prove that their farms sequester a significant amount of carbon, they could apply to this program to help them remain economically competitive. Each of us was assigned to a different aspect of this research. My particular research focused on soil organic carbon levels in the forest fragment we studied. My job was to take soil core samples from specific parts of the forest and analyze the amount of carbon in the sample. We had an entire week to make the transect lines and collect our data.

            Let me tell you, that was one of  the most physically exhausting weeks I have ever had. We left the compound (what we lovingly refer to our campus as) every day at 7:30am, and didn’t get back until around 5pm. We had a forty minute lunch break, but the rest of the time was spent hiking and data collection. Our forest wasn’t exactly a walk in the park either. Most of the time we had to machete our way through the forest, dodging the ankle vines, spiked plants and rotting wood that blocked our way. The hills we had to climb up and down were some of the steepest I’ve ever climbed. Since the transect lines were drawn in a computer program and uploaded into a GPS, we did not get to chose where we worked. It didn’t matter if there was a tree, a pile of brush, boulders, or even a cliff in the way. That isn’t an exaggeration by the way- there was one transect that had at least a twenty foot ledge that we had to fall down to get down the ravine and on the other side of the cliff of. There was one transect that I had to collect the samples from that had a thirty degree+ slope that was so steep I had to hold myself to the hill with one hand and bang the soil corer into the dirt with the other. Thank god I had Alex to help me after he finished collecting his leaf samples- he did all the work with the 45 pound auger for me, because otherwise I would have spent my entire week falling more than I already did. I was stuck doing a different soil test (bulk density if you’re interested) that consisted of banging what looks like a tin can on steroids into the ground, carefully digging it out without losing a crumb, and repeating for five more times in the same spot down. It was a lot harder than it seemed it would be, and most days we went to bed right after dinner. And if the slope wasn’t tough enough, we also had to fight off the army of insects that came to attack us the moment we stepped into the forest. There were these evil flies that had the ability to bite through any fabric that particularly loved to go after my ankles, eyes, and any open cuts I had. There were also hundreds of ticks smaller the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Our professor won the most number of ticks award when he pulled off SEVENTY ticks in a single day. Our only consolation was that there is no Lyme disease down here, so while they were annoying, they did not pose any threat.

            I realize that the way I described the situation makes it sounds like the forest from Hell, but it really was an absolute blast. The week flew by, and we all wished it could last longer. I got to spend the entire week in a tropical dry forest playing in the dirt, listening and watching the wildlife. There were a couple of Toledo birds that would call back and forth (their call sounds exactly like their name), and blue morpho butterflies that would fly lazily past. On the last day of data collection, I was sitting digging one of my samples out, and was annoyed that so many leaves were falling in (a single leaf would ruin my data). I looked up to see what was causing so many leaves to suddenly fall and noticed that there was a white-faced monkey sitting in the tree above me! He watched me for a few minutes, and then continued on his way. I didn’t spend much time with the other people in my team (we were all busy working on our own thing, although we were always within shouting or cellphone distance), but did have really fun lunches with them. We were accompanied by a botanist from the national university who helped Achim identify all of the trees (we identified 1200 of them over six transects of 200 meters each). He was one of the strangest men I have ever met. My first impression when I first saw him was the caveman from the GEICO commercial. He looked EXACTLY like him. He was a very intelligent person who had a lot of very strange personal quirks. The first thing he did when we got to the forest was to walk up to a tree, whip out his pocket knife to cut the bark, and proceed to take the sap to brush his teeth. Apparently this particular type of tree was good for personal hygiene and curing general ailments. Every lunch he would walk into the forest to construct a plate out of two leaves and a few twigs. Everyone else on this trip was really fun, and it was a great group. This week hasn’t been quite as fun- all data processing and analysis…

4. FUTBOL

            This past Sunday, all of the students in the program went to a professional soccer game in Alajuela. I have never ever been to a game like this before. Costa Ricans take their soccer seriously. I remember in my Costa Rica culture class, our professor said that there are two things that matter in Costa Rica: church and soccer. He wasn’t kidding. The people are absolutely fanatical about their team. We were told we were not allowed to wear purple to the city because it was the color of La Liga’s mortal enemy (and they weren’t even playing against them that week!). Before we went into the stadium, we all had to get a pat down to make sure we didn’t have anything in our pockets, and we had to throw away all of our change because it was forbidden in the stadium. I guess they’ve had problems in the past where angry fans began to throw the money. Once we were inside, we were allowed to sit anywhere we wanted. There were riot police that patrolled the rows to protect the opposing team’s fans and to make sure the fans didn’t get too out of hand, which was a definite possibility. A few games ago, the fans got so rowdy that a riot started, and a few cars were overturned. Futbol is a serious thing here in Latin America. The fans sang and chanted their fight chants for the entire game, and the energy when Alajuela made a goal was unreal. We won the game by a landslide- 2-0.

What a wonderful past few weeks. I can’t believe it’s almost over!