A GENERAL OVERVIEW OF MY CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS AND A BRIEF PICTORIAL UPDATE

These are just the details of things at the QERC, in case you were wondering. Eight science students in Costa Rica, a small selection of pictures taken thus far, etc.

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.

A Few Words from Costa Rica

Just thought I’d check in and report on my recent activities in Central America. We’re staying in a valley that’s in the middle of a cloud forest. There are other houses nearby (maybe a five minute walk to the nearest one), but it’s at least two hours driving to the next biggest city (San Jose). Needless to stay, much of our days here are spent at the QERC (Quetzal Education Research Center) or within walking distance. Besides devoting hours to study and research, some of the events that have been of interest thus far include:
• 45 minute hikes up out of the valley to Laura’s bakery. Laura is a Canadian who opens her bakery every weekend. It’s quite nice to sit around up there and visit with her, or her two yoga teacher tenants. Quite nice.
• Hike through the jungle-y forest to two different waterfalls. These involved a good deal of actual climbing on rocks, crossing rivers on logs or Indiana Jones type bridges, and avoiding the slick spots on the moss covered rocks. Four of us went on that hike.
• Futbol with the kids of the valley. Every Saturday and Sunday, at 4:30, the local kids come in from afar and we all play soccer. Unfortunately, Costa Ricans have innate soccer skills that most of us gringos were born without, and therefore we’re highly challenged by children. It’s fun though… especially after a good afternoon rain. Coming inside all mud splattered makes one feel like a lot cooler of a soccer player than one probably really is.
• ESL. Every once in a while I go help teach English to the kids of the valley. They get really excited about knowing English words and I practice my weak, weak Spanish on them. So far we’ve only really covered colors. Little Julian is six years old and is probably the most eager to show off his skills. He still thinks “brorange” is a color though.
Other things have happened as well. We do a lot of studying and research during the day. My research is centered around the Sceloporus malachiticus, a green lizard that’s as common here as squirrels are at home. I’m glad they’re so common though… I can just wander out with my coffee in the mornings to observe them, go wash my cup or refill it, depending on the intensity of the previous night’s card game, and go back out to capture them. I catch them with a noose. It’s a process I’m still learning. So far I’ve only captured babies, who are too curious to run away when the noose falls near.
And this weekend is our “spring break,” which means we have a day off and have to leave the QERC for a few days and explore Costa Rica. We're staying at a hostel in San Jose and a hotel in Manuel Antonio, so it looks like I’ll have the classic spring break at the beach. We're in San Jose right now. Therefore, I am taking full advantage of the wireless internet.
That’s all for now. There will probably be more later (read: pictures).

To Tide You Over

Fear not, I am working on sorting through my photographs from the trip. Jet lag is gone and took an almost imperceptable toll. For now, I thought I'd put up the film Corbin and I made over break, if you've not seen it yet. Nothing too extravagant... just something to occupy idle hands.

From Right to Left

Fear not, I am safely back in the States. And from the moment we set foot on American soil, it's been nothing but trying situation after irritating situation. The whole ten days abroad went smoothly and wonderfully, but getting back in to our dear country provided me and my traveling companions with the following treasures:
-a frozen luggage hatch and a three hour wait at the baggage claim
-ten degrees below zero, and dropping
-a missed connecting flight to Kansas City
-an insufferably long line to claim accomidation vouchers and new flight reservations
-no pizza places willing to deliver to the O'Hare area hotel
-a worker at the "free" breakfast counter requiring a persuasive speech to prove that we were, in fact, guests at the hotel and we were, in fact, entitled to the "free" breakfast. The convincing of said worker took so long that in order to make the shuttle to the airport (at 5:45 am, mind you) there was no longer time for breakfast.
-the world's slowest line at the ticket counter, almost making us miss our flight
All in all, it's not been too bad. Could have been much worse. Now I'm in Oklahoma, winning the battles against jet lag (which also isn't too bad) and making preparations for Costa Rica. I'll be heading there in about four weeks. Until then, I have to keep up with a whole two and a half classes (Origins and Cadaver Dissection Lab, and Lifetime Wellness, which only qualifies as 0.5 class, to me).
I'll be posting Middle East trip summaries and photographs soon. I have to wade through my hundreds of pictures first.

Until next time--

THE THINGS I DID YESTERDAY

I am writing from a very slow internet connection at the Manar Hotel in Amman. It's actually a very strong wireless connection but it's all the way downstairs and I am feeling a little too tired and a little too full to drag my computer down to the lobby. All of that to say-- too slow of a connection for pictures this time.
Tomorrow we leave Jordan and head into Israel, and I don't know if I'll have internet there at all. So I thought I would take a moment, before drifting off to sleep to the sound of endless city traffic, and write a short list of yesterday's activities, which included (but are not limited to):
Waiting in an airport from 11 am to 9:45 pm
Looking at Canada's night lights from several thousand feet up
Watching the sun rise over the United Kingdom, after which I immediately fell asleep and missed France
Waking up to seeing Germany out the window
Eating breakfast over a handful of Eastern European countries
Falling asleep again, briefly, only to be awakened by the sunset over Greece and the Mediterranean (breakfast and sunset were in fact only a few hours apart)
Landing safely in Amman and checking in to a nice hotel downtown

We did a lot today... Saw Jerash, saw a lot of Amman, drank some Turkish coffee, saw the river where Jacob wrestled and was renamed Israel, saw some fantastic Roman ruins, fumbled with/butchered Arabic, etc.

My battery has only a few minutes left. It will probably be a few days before I write again.

Ma'a salama

in chicago

Even though my days in Chicago aren't really worth writing about... I have some time to kill and some pictures from our grand day out.
We were dropped off at Union Station yesterday afternoon and spent the rest of the day trying to master the public transit system so we could use it with ease. Then we checked in to our hotel, ordered pizza, and had a fat, junky night.
Today we were good little tourists and I used my training in subway usage (thanks to parental lessons from San Diego, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and Toronto) and we got around just fine.
We went to Shedd Aquarium, glanced at the bean in Millenium Park, wandered around the Magnificent Mile, ate sushi on said Mile, then slowly walked around and found our way back to the hotel.
It's been good, here. I like this city.

This is Jay and Jessica, two of my three current companions. Dear, dear Chicago.

These three pictures are from the aquarium, our big event of the day. I was the nerdy science kid who kept getting excited and rambling about my limited knowledge of the physiology of a few species. See? That's an adolescent male dogfish, because look at the size of his ventral claspers. And His external gills look like that so he can do countercurrent exchange and get enough oxygen, since he has a single circuit circulatory system. Not to mention my long and jumbled lesson about the lamprey and three or four outbursts of I'VE DISSECTED THAT or THAT'S CALLED ITS OPERCULUM. I shouldn't have, I know. But it's exciting to know things. Or, rather, to know that I knew things at one point during the last semester and that they are still partially intact.
Anyway, here. I took them through glass, obviously. It was good. Tomorrow we go to OHare and do the international part of the trip. To Amman--