THE CAST:
MEREDITH: The one who always wins Rook and knows the most Spanish. She also draws quetzals, rides horses and procrastinates with the best of us.
HEATHER: The small one who is always put together. She is like a highly intelligent otter. And she laughs well and dances loud.
ASHLEY: The future PA from Minnesota. She’s smart and collected and cross-country skis. Also, she can’t smell.
SHANNON: Study, eat, sleep…. Lather, rinse, repeat.
JORI: The one who hugs trees and climbs rocks in pursuit of lizards, coffee cup in hand.
COLIN: The bearded one. He listens to music and has easy to read faces. He was almost named Fritz, he can build a fire and he likes Nickel Creek.
KEVIN: The runner. He runs up the mountain and he shaved his head at our suggestion. Also, he is cheerful.
DANIEL: The athletic studious guy from Kansas. He makes pens and is graceful.
DAVID AND SARAH: Station managers in their mid-twenties. They play cards with us and remind us to be responsible.
EXTRAS
HARLAN: Our neighbor across the river. He’s from the States and he narrated documentaries for the Discovery Channel and did voices professionally. Now he reads and looks through his binoculars.
LAURA: The Canadian who lives up the mountain a little. She has a bakery and houses Nick and Stephanie, the yoga instructors of the valley. Her bakery involves a bookshelf full of pastries and a big table covered by a scarf. I appreciate it.
JAVIER, JULIAN, KARLA, LUIZ, MARIA, ETC.: The kids who live in the valley. The first three come to English classes and all are thoroughly entertaining.
THE SETTING
The Quetzal Education Research Center in the valley of San Gerardo de Dota. It’s in the middle of a cloud forest and is fairly isolated. It’s a nice two-floored building covered in sky lights and surrounded by balconies. The downstairs has our lab and the station managers’ apartment and the upstairs has three giant dorm style bedrooms, one suite, bathrooms and a big study/living room. We eat in the Bodega, a small building in the front of the QERC. A river runs nearby. It’s Central America. It’s exactly as relaxed and beautiful as one might think.
THE PLOT
Mainly we stay at the QERC every day. Sometimes we hike around to waterfalls and up to better locations for Frisbee or soccer, but mainly we stick around here. We wake up, study, do our research, hang around, eat our meals (prepared by Ana, our housekeeper), and play cards and watch Arrested Development at night. On the weekends we play soccer with the kids in the valley. We just got back from a grand tour of Costa Rica, and unfortunately... I've not shrunken any of the pictures from the trip yet. We went down very, very close to Panama and worked our way up through the country doing all sorts of things. A short list of things we accomplished:
-SO MUCH hiking
-snorkeled above reefs
-climbed a volcano and looked in
-surfed (only a few of us... including me)
-saw several monkeys, tapirs, snakes (poisonous ones!), crocodiles, all kinds of birds (including parrots, toucans, and macaws), and a general assortment of domesticated/farm animals
-made compost piles for a solar energy place
-cleaned up the beach
-watched a sea turtle lay a nest full of eggs
And so many more things. Hopefully I'll update with pictures on this eventually. All depending on the "speed" of the dial-up, of course.
AND FOR THE PHOTOGRAPHS
You'll have to excuse the poor quality... I had to shrink them considerably to even get them to begin to load on the slow connection here.
This is the Bodega, where we eat. Sometimes dogs follow us home from our walks and we keep them until their owners get concerned.
Laura’s Bakery and a bunch of us playing cards.
The jungle-y hike we took to see some waterfalls… It was green everywhere.
This is the group that went on the hike. Colin, Ashley, Sweaty Jori, and Heather.
Our spring break hotel in Manuel Antonio. If you look closely you can maybe see something that looks like a blue power line. It’s a monkey bridge, so monkeys can cross the road.
Spring break on the beach. This is the Pacific Ocean at sunset.
Our spring break group. Ashley, Meredith, me, Heather and Kevin.
Colin shaving Kevin’s head.
AND NOW FOR MY BEST OF FRIENDS:
This is Trevor the lizard. He’s the least shy of the bunch. Note the red bead with which I tagged him.
A baby lizard. One of the lizards I’m studying had babies and this is one of six or seven, I think. They’re playful and curious, unlike the adults.
And a whole bunch of us after an intense futbol game. That’s all for now.
Hasta luega.
