Semana Santa

The week of easter is called Semana Santa (Saint Week) and most of Costa Rica is closed and on vacation. A lot of people go to the beach for the week.  My family stayed at home and we took day trips.  The week before semana santa I saw a wooly opossum, a giant iguana and a goofy looking bird with her chicks.

(Look in the middle of the picture.  I didn't have a lens zoom with me at the time.)  This opossum normally lives in a tube in the bridge and comes out when it gets hot.

The bird blended in with leaves, but it kinda looked like a large quail and walked like a chicken.

 Then Semana Santa came and we were all excited for a week of relaxation.  My host mom was supposed to work but she hurt her back making 8 cakes so she got to hang out with us.  She was making 8 cakes because she used to work in a bakery until her asthma got so bad from the flour. However, now when anyone needs a cake they ask her to make it. (I didn't get a chance to take a picture, but they were beautiful.)  So that was Friday night and Saturday morning.

Then Saturday afternoon we went to a baby shower.  My host mom's sister is due in April with her third son.  She has a 5 year old and a 3 year old.  The sons blew out the candles and then the youngest stuck his face in the cake. It was hysterical.  (Also Saturday morning we watched The Lorax, which I really enjoyed and highly recommend.)

Sunday: we put in the inflatable pool.  I didn't go in, there were too many little children, but it was fun to watch all of them.

Monday: make over time. My host sister, Sofia, paints her nails all the time so she decided to paint mine too.  I think they look like easter eggs, but since they don't paint easter eggs here we settled on mushrooms.

Tuesday- Wednesday: We went to another sisters house about 2 hours away.  We went to the movies and saw The Croods. Everyone liked it excepted my host mom.  The best part was the sloth named Belt. (We watched it in spanish and his name was Abrazo which more means hug.)  Basically he makes dramatic noises and holds the guys pants up.

Thursday: We drove two hours to La Fortuna to see the Arenal Volcano.  This is one of the largest volcanoes in Costa Rica and the only one that still has a conical top.  Unfortunately it was raining and this was all I could see...

Do you see a volcano in this picture? Me neither, I'm not convinced it was there, but we are going to try and go on a day that is sunny.  However, we did go to a friends how and she gives chocolate tours (talks about the history of how chocolate was made and you get to try the different steps).  That was fun.

From left to right: Joel (dad), Ileana (mom), Stephany (13), Me, Sofia (17) and in front Sol (7)

 

Also there was a really pretty bird that lived there.

Friday: There was a procession to the church depicting the crucifixion of Christ.  We had stayed up late the night before doing tongue twisters in english and spanish and then the procession was early so I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I could have cause I was exhausted, but it was still fun.

Saturday (today):  I came back to San Jose.  Everyone in the program will be giving a presentation on Tuesday and doing some preliminary analysis of data and then leaving on Wednesday.

Feliz Cumpleaños Anamika

Happy 21st Birthday!!! 

From middle school...

To high school pep rally's...

To prom...

To graduation...

To college...

To now!!!

Thanks for being such a great friend! Have a wonderful birthday!

LOVE YOU!

P.S. This summer we need to take more pictures of us.

Relay For Life

March 29th is Relay For Life of Colorado College.  Even though I can't participate I still want to show my support.  We all know people who have cancer, who have beat cancer, and who have lost the fight.  That doesn't change just because I am now in Costa Rica.  Last semester I helped with planning the even before I left because I truly believe in this cause.  I would love it anyone who is reading this could go online and donate now to help show your support.  Even $10 can make a difference.  

Click here: Donate to Relay For Life of Colorado College

Random Thoughts

I can now safely say that I do not want to do research as a career.  It is a lot of work and never goes how you intend it to.  When I last mentioned my project, I had missed a week of research because I went to San Jose.  So last week I was able to put out the bat recorders on Monday and I got them on Saturday.

• Bad news: the batteries that I thought were new were not, so in one of the recorders I only got one night of data instead of five nights.
• Good news: My professors were able to find a PC so I can use the good computer program.  For the past two days I've been using a program that is made for bird calls and it doesn't work very well for bat calls because bat calls are much shorter and at a much higher frequency.
• Bad news: my professor told us he would be getting to Tirimbina at 2 yesterday so I thought I would have the afternoon to work.  Instead he didn't get here until 5 which is when I leave with my host mom.  I was going to go on a hike today with some people who are volunteering here, but instead I have to wait for my professor and work on the computer.

Besides my research project everything is going great!  Sofia, my oldest host sister painted my nails yesterday.  I've started playing hide and go seek and talking on banana telephones and whatever else Sol, my 7 year old sister can think of.  Then my middle host sister Stephany loves english music, especially One Direction so I've been helping her understand the songs.  Her english is really good so she doesn't need much help.  Also we found out that we have to same birthday!

This is our house.

A giant spider at Tirimbina.

This frog was trying to get into the bathroom at Tirimbina.

I got to catch bats!

Tirimbina makes most of their money from ecotourism, which they use for maintenance and research.  They have 2 main programs: one is a chocolate tour (there is an old cacao plantation and they show you how chocolate was made a long time ago) and the other is a bat tour.

The bat tour is more of an educational presentation about bats and their benefits.  Then at the end they show you some bats that have been caught while you are learning about them.  So I asked if I could help catch the bats yesterday and Emmanuel said yes!

There were two groups and so we needed to catch 6 bats (3 for each group) and at least two different species.  Here is a drawing of the net, its really hard to take a picture because you can't see them, which is the point if you want to catch anything.  (I had used these types of nets to catch owls and song birds in my animal ecology class last semester.)

So we went down to the edge of the river at 5:30 and set up 4 nets.We caught the first one within the first 15 minutes of putting up the first net!

 This is what they look like caught in the net.

 Here is the other type that we caught.  Both eat fruit.  This one was making all kind of noise that we could hear so none of these calls would have been picked up by the recorder that I am using.

 We caught too many of the first type so I got to hold one and then release it!  They are really soft.  (Three rabies shots was worth that experience.) Then after we caught five we only needed one more so went to one of the other traps and there were about 4 bats caught in the net.  There were a bunch of other ones flying around and one flew right over my head and I could feel it.  It was really exciting and kinda scary at the same time.  So we worked to quickly get them out and close off the net because we kept catching more.  It was a great night!

I was feeling a little down about my project and the fact that I only put up recorders and analyze sounds but would never see animals, but going out last night helped a lot.

Photographer

I've decided that since I now have a nice camera I need to relearn how to use it. (Its been 3 years since my last photo class in high school and I have forgotten everything.)  So I decided what better place to figure it out than in Costa Rica where there are all kinds of beautiful things to take pictures of.  So none of the following pictures were taken on automatic (I may have taken a lot of each before I got it right, but I finally did it!) Sorry a lot of them are so dark, it was raining on and off during this adventure.

spider's web

roots

caterpillar 

I found out that people white water raft on the river that I cross every day.

If you look in the background there is a long green straight line.  That is one of the bridges.

leaf cutter ants- they carry the leaves back to their nest in order to grow fungus which they eat

leaf cutter ants

leaf cutter ants

bird

Sloth!

Colors and Textures

Everything here is so beautiful.  I started out yesterday to go take some pictures when the sun was out and then shortly after I left it started raining again.  O well, I decided to press on and was rewarded with howler monkeys and beautiful flowers.

The negative to all of this biodiversity is all of the diversity of insects.  I was attacked by little red ants that were in my shorts before I put them on yesterday and of course the expected mosquitos are everywhere.  Also yesterday there was a cockroach in the house that was twice the size of any cockroach that I've ever seen.  It was quite a production to get it out of the house.

The bridge I cross to get into the forest.

Another bridge in the forest where I saw the monkeys from.