Highlight of the weekend: Stephanie Huang!!

Stephanie and I were suitemates this past year at Rice. She’s currently studying in San José (the capital) and we decided it was time to meet up before I left on the next chapter of my adventure. Sandwiched between a late night bus into the city and a really early morning, I got a grand total of two hours of sleep at my hostel on Friday night after a 50+ hour work week. I was SO excited to see Stephanie at the bus station on Saturday morning. We had only been able to make vague plans for how we were going to meet up in the city and I was so happy to see her.  Once we found our bus, we had several hours to catch up. It was so wonderful to have time in person with a friend for the first time since I’ve been in Costa Rica. It was even better to share time in fellowship that I’ve been missing so much since I’ve been here. We compared notes on our experiences abroad and talked about some of the things we’ve been doing on our trips before both catching some much needed rest on the way to Manuel Antonio National Park. After a couple more hours on the bus, we reached one of Costa Rica’s busiest national parks. We worried a bit that the hoards of tourists would make it impossible to see any wildlife, but our fears were unfounded. We spotted bunches of monkeys (squirrel, howler, and white-faced capuchins), a sloth, a tree frog, and even a couple raccoons.  The national park is squished between two smaller beaches and there were more than enough tourists to go around. Rather than reclusive monkeys like we had in Barra Honda, these were the incredibly bold obnoxious stuff-stealing kind. The monkeys didn’t hesitate to run up and still food (or any other available item) out of unguarded bags and backpacks. I finally figured out their con: One monkey steals some food and sits there looking adorable while eating it and all the tourists come and take photos. Meanwhile, all his monkey buddies raid the unattended bags left on the beach and the cycle begins again. Pretty clever actually. The raccoons were equally bold but not quite so cute or jumpy. I actually had to play tug-of-war with one of them that was trying to steal a girl’s bag. She was just standing there looking confused and helpless so I ran up and chased off the raccoon and god her bag back. It kept coming back to her towel to steal her food until she finally gave it some. I sighed and realized why she was having the problem to begin with.

Stephanie and I continued onto a less busy trail where we hiked up to some beautiful lookout points where we could look out over the Pacific. Props to Stephanie for doing the whole thing in flip-flops.

Our second day, we decided to visit Volcán Irazú, the highest volcano in Costa Rica. After narrowly avoiding getting totally lost in San José and missing our bus entirely, we boarded the [entirely tourist-filled] bus to drive up to the volcano. On the way there, I overheard the group next to us talking about random number generators, coding sequences, light scattering, and other thoroughly nerdy things. Stephanie sat there and laughed at me while I tried my best not to burst from excitement at hearing properly nerdy conversation. I finally couldn’t contain myself and asked them where they were from, what they were doing, etc. Turns out they were recent graduates from the College of William and Mary (another notable university) and on a combination honeymoon/vacation. Our chat with them made me realize how much I miss Rice people and our definition of “normal” conversation.

Once we got to the parking lot, it was a short walk to the edge of the crater where we could peer down into the turquoise acidic lake in the bottom.  The sides of the crater were covered in colorful vegetation consisting, most notably, of giant leaves called “Poor Man’s Umbrella” (if that gives you a picture of the size). We decided to get ambitious and hike up even further to another overlook where, on a clear day, you are supposed to be able to see both the Pacific and Carribbean coasts. It wasn’t clear enough for us, but it was a stunning view nonetheless. The tops of the clouds seemed forever below us and we could see a neighboring volcano quietly smoking in the distance. The surrounding valleys were drenched in vibrant green color brought on by the misty rain that was falling the whole time we were there.

After a quick lunch, I hopped back on the bus to Liberia bringing my 48-hour bus ride total up to 20 hours. Not too shabby! But all that time was completely worth getting to hang out with Stephanie and feel like my social life was a little normal after all.

The past week and a half has seemed to be a whirlwind of long hours, exams, and billions of goodbyes. Last week was all 10+ hour days at the school split between teaching English with Clara and working with Lizeth on science stuff.

Last week was English exams for all the classes in the whole school. Clara and I had seven fifth and sixth grade classes. I graded all of them (24-hour turn around; I was quite proud of myself) and went through a strange range of emotions as I did. The first class was great they did what they were supposed to and responded really well. I felt really good about that. When I got here, they were taking their first exams and it was great to see a full cycle go by where I was present for all that they learned on the exam. The students who scored the highest didn’t really surprise me, but it was fun to “root” for them as I was grading. In contrast, the second class I graded was a complete failure. And, as excited as I was about the first group, I was more crushed by the second. I was verbally exclaiming my frustrations at the exams as I was marking them. It was really hard to see things that I thought were so painfully obvious fly over their heads. It was obvious that this class hadn’t even bothered to study in the least and it really sucked to watch the scores fall apart as I went (the average came out to a 62%). But then after that, I went through another great class who averaged a 90%. I was really confused how there could be such a huge disparity between the classes. I wasn’t sure how to take it from the “I got to be the teacher” standpoint. A balance between not taking too much responsibility for the failure or too much credit for the success I suppose. It was still kind of emotional feedback about what I’ve been doing for the past two months.

The past two days have been a long strung out series of goodbyes. Three of my classes threw me good-bye parties, complete with cards, presents, cake, and balloons. My fourth-graders even managed to keep a secret for FIVE days!! Today, they threw me a surprise party. Each of them brought something like food or cups and they even came up with a legitimate excuse to get me out of the room and bring me back at the right time. It was so sweet and I’m going to miss all of them so much. It was really hard to say goodbye to all of the kids and teachers. I’ve gotten more attached to them than anyone else here in Costa Rica. I was also the first classroom volunteer they’ve had at the school and so the kids aren’t jaded yet by the show up/leave/show up/leave volunteer cycle. They weren’t afraid to get attached and they really didn’t understand why I wasn’t coming back. It was so hard today to refrain from saying “See you later!” when I was saying goodbye. I came home with, not exaggerating, more than a hundred notes and cards from different kids. All of them said basically the same thing: Please don’t go, we’re going to miss you so much, thank you again and again, please don’t ever forget us, we’ll never forget you. It was still so touching to read each of them and see the artwork the kids had done on each sheet of paper.

I was afraid I missed saying goodbye to my teacher, Clara. We didn’t get to talk after I got kidnapped for a party yesterday and I was worried I wouldn’t get to see her at all. Fortunately, she came over to my house this afternoon just to say goodbye. It’s been such a tremendous experience getting to actually teach and work with the students and I’m so glad she let me jump in and was so friendly about me working with her.

My goodbye to Lizeth was definitely the hardest. Over just the past month, I’ve grown to love and respect her so much. She’s opened her home to me, let me play with her kids, shared her life and her experiences with me, and been so encouraging as I’ve worked in her class. She works so incredibly hard and is so loving and gentle without being a pushover. And her little kids are well-behaved little angels. I don’t know how she does it. A million hours a week teaching fourth graders, then being the science curriculum coordinator and being a single mom of four kids on top of all of it. She has two older ones- one is in college but the other lives at home with his one-year-old daughter (and sometimes his girlfriend too). Then she has a four-year-old and a one-year-old too and no support from her ex-husband. Plus she’s basically raising her granddaughter. She has been so wonderful to me over the past couple months and it was really emotional to say goodbye to her.

It’s been a really great experience teaching over the last two months. I’ve had lots of frustrations and tough spots, but never because the kids and teachers weren’t wonderful. I got stuck fighting the “system” but still got really attached to the people. I’ve been so blessed by the opportunities I’ve had here and am so glad to have been here.

My Costa Rican TV debut wasn’t exactly what I expected. Actually, I didn’t really expect it at all, so there’s a place to start. Projects Abroad offers free English classes for adult community members and they wanted to advertise it on a local television station. The teaching coordinator asked Poppy and I to be the ones to come talk since we’re both teaching English and have a decent level of Spanish. In true Costa RicanProjects Abroad scheduling style, the day we were originally supposed to do it was a full week before it actually happened. But Friday morning, we finally made it to the television station to “film the commercial.”

In a sudden bout of preparedness, Marielos had prepared us a “script” of questions and answers about the classes we’d be offering. As we sat in the lobby attempting to rehearse, we started piecing together what was about to be asked of us. We saw people walking through the lobby and moments later appearing on the channel feed playing in the lobby. Based on the question/answer format of the script, we realized that we weren’t going to be recording a 30-second commercial; we were going to be interviewed on live TV! After sitting on the couch waiting for almost half an hour, the camera guy suddenly came in and rushed us into the set. No prep.  No sound check. No “Look here, not there.” Not even a “Hold the mic here, speak clearly.” About fifteen seconds later, we had quietly slipped on to the couch across from the host and been handed our microphones.

In the brief time before the camera turned to us, we had time to observe the set and the studio. It was nothing like how I envisioned a television studio (even a low budget one) to be. The rain outside on the tin roof added a layer of heavy noise to everything. The people from the sound mixing room were yelling at the camera guy who was walking about and talking to other relevant people in the studio. All that noise while we were on live TV. Our set was one of seven located in a large warehouse type room. It consisted of two couches and a small coffee table with some curtains strung up behind us to break up the beige wall. Other sets had themes more like “Carribbean” “Western” “Breaking News” or the like. Behind our set was a “wall” made of iron bars and chicken wire that opened into a drive-through garage type area. Occasionally, cars would drive in, maybe honking as they locked their car. Not exactly CNN.

The host briefly intro’d our program and purpose before starting to “grill” us about our language school. Poppy and I had picked a couple answers that we each knew and so we transitioned back and forth pretty seamlessly when talking about the “when and where” kind of stuff. The hardest question that we didn’t anticipate at all was “Why should people learn English?” Luckily, I’d graded this one on my fifth graders’ exams last month (ha!) and had some answers ready. With minimal Spanish stumbling, we made it through the questions and answers for almost seven full minutes on live TV. I was quite proud of us.

When we finished, we both confusedly asked Marielos who on earth watches this kind of programming. Apparently this is *the* channel to watch for people like housewives who are, conveniently enough, part of our target audience for our English classes. We left the studio rather confused but satisfied with our performance. Unfortunately, since the piece was live, we never actually got to see or hear how the final version turned out, but apparently we were on TV. And that’s how I survived my live Costa Rican television debut.

My trips are getting a little jumbled together in the blog timeline, but I’m trying to get caught up with my experiences in something that resembles an organized/readable pile of words that makes sense to anybody besides me. Thanks for bearing with my insanity and reading along all this time. I know I write [too much] a lot but I love you guys for sticking with me. It means so much to me to be able to share these experiences with people, even when you’re not here with me.

Two weekends ago (yikes, it’s been a while), Poppy, Sarah, and I got to meet up with some of our volunteer friends from Barra Honda. With minimal communication and a little bit of luck, we all ended up on the same bus headed to the Llanos de Cortes waterfalls. Steph, Zach, Luca, and Sebastian all made it down to Liberia and we got to spend the entire afternoon at the waterfalls (same ones I went to in THIS post). Zach and Luca even teamed up with some Ticos (about 15 of them) who were building a human pyramid in the water and only knocked it over once! We got caught in the rain on the way back, but survived a very VERY wet walk home without any major issues. We met up for dinner and went out to celebrate my 21^st birthday at a local restaurant/bar. Steph bought me a delicious birthday cocktail before we all called it an early night so we could get up the next morning.

The plan was to leave at 6am and head to Rincon de la Vieja, one of the closer volcanos in the region and spend both Saturday and Sunday hiking. The others made it, but I, unfortunately, ended up reaaaaally sick. I found out later that 10 volunteers and 5 Projects Abroad staff all got a severe bout of food poisoning from our dinner on Thursday night and we were all laid up in bed for the weekend. Less than exciting, I know, but that’s how it goes. I was bummed about missing the volcano, but at least I was sick on a weekend and didn’t have to miss work. I basically just wrote off that time to “Getting Better” and was ready to go again on Monday.

Last weekend was much more successful. About 20 volunteers headed to Playa Tamarindo, a local beach, on Friday to enjoy the sun and sand for the weekend. Saturday morning, I got to spend about 3 hours laying on the beach with one of the other girls before the skies opened and the rain (which lasted the rest of the afternoon) started. (Fun fact: I got woken up from my sunbathing nap by a bee sting on the ankle.) I grabbed my umbrella and headed down to the single main road of Tamarindo. Tamarindo is such a tourist town; they don’t even bother to mark prices in Costa Rican colones, everything’s just in dollars. The town basically exists because of the tourism, not the locals. While that can get old fast, it’s great for a stroll on a rainy afternoon. I systematically worked my way through every little souvenir shop looking through a never-ending rotation of butterfly towels, striped wood cutting boards, shell necklaces, and frog-painted shot glasses. Steph (from Barra Honda) arrived that afternoon as well and she and I went out to dinner at a delicious falafel place to catch up and swap stories. We went back to the hostel where she and most of the other volunteers were staying (I was in the one next door) and played Scrabble for a couple hours. I took a quick dip in the pool at my hostel (a hostel with a pool? Awesome!) before calling it an early night. Steph and I woke up early the next morning to get down to the beach for a couple hours before we had to leave and it was gorgeous as ever. Here are the pictures I took from sunset on Saturday night. The new ones (there’s only 7) start at number 71.

I’m planning on posting all my pictures from daily life in Liberia as well as pictures from the school by Tuesday night so keep an eye out for those as well. Chau!

Anybody who has let me talk for long enough has probably heard me talk about how awesome science fair is. How it consumed my life in high school, how much I loved working on my project, how great Internationals was, how much I learned, and basically anything else you’ll put up with me to hear. So imagine my joy when I found out that I was going to help a Costa Rican school run their own science fair!! And not just a random unconnected one. This science fair was sponsored by Intel and was the preliminary round to eventually go to Internationals, just like I got to do a couple years ago. (Yay Intel!)

Interspersed between my “I love science fair!” spasms, Lizeth and I slowly worked through all of the prep that needed to be done before Friday’s fair. Making signs, going to meetings, filling out paper work, talking to teachers, all sorts of fun stuff. Thursday, the kids all had a half day of school because (obviously) science fair is just that important. Theoretically, this meant that we had an army of teachers at our disposal for decoration, setup, and other prep work. Not all of the teachers stuck around, but enough stayed that it made the workload bearable. We decorated the whole school with all of the “Under the Sea” themed illustrations and banners. I ironed chair covers for the VIP’s and judges. (Sidenote: Ironing was not what I expected to be doing when I said I was coming to Costa Rica to teach English.) More decorations. Then rearranging all of the classrooms in the [not very large] school for the projects the next morning. The coolest part of Thursday’s setup was getting to see all of the teachers and other staff when the kids were gone for more than a 20 minute recess. It was so much fun to watch them interacting and see their non-teacher personalities coming out. Everybody joked around and had a fantastic time and there was even a little Cumbia dancing that went on in the hallways. Several hundred pushpins later, after another 11 hour day at school, we called it quits and went home for the night so we’d be ready for the big day.

Friday morning, bright and early, we were back at the school getting everything set up for the students’ arrival. Parents and students were everywhere carrying everything from carrots to silly putty to blenders and rocks. I had the unfortunate job of going around telling students they were setup in the wrong place and then helping them tear down all of their work and move it four feet in one direction or the other. Not my favorite part of the day. Luckily, after the morning setup was done, it was a pretty laid back day. I got to go around and talk to all of the competitors, help out a teacher with a Father’s Day project that her kids were working on, and help out in the judges room. It was so cool to be watching the other side of the judging process. After 4 years  of presenting projects, it was interesting to hear the conversation going on at the other end of things. Excitable nerd that I am, I even got to talk a little bit about my own project from high school.

While the judges tallied up scores all the students who were there gathered for some sort of “arts presentation.” Basically, singing, dancing, and other random entertainment from people who are too old to be in elementary school. Tomas Guardia (the school) has a program called “Open Classroom” for students who are older than thirteen but haven’t finished elementary school yet. These fifteen and sixteen year olds provided the majority of the day’s program (as well as the entertainment for every other gathering and assembly). Friday’s entertainment consisted of the “rockstar” singing along to a couple popular Spanish songs and a group of them performing some [rather impressive] breakdancing. The moderator continued to kill time by putting on different songs and getting them to improv more song and dance while everyone waited for the results. Eventually, the moderator gave up and everyone basically just wandered off until they were called back for the results. When all the scores were finally tallied, we basically had a second assembly and started all over before the winners were finally announced and all the students went home. And as for us, everyone mutually agreed to leave the majority of the decorating mess for Monday and headed out for the weekend

It was so rewarding to see all of these future science fair kids at their beginnings. I loved getting to help with all of the stuff that I loved as a student and passing on that enthusiasm to kids in another country. What a cool opportunity to use my experiences to serve people totally outside of my normal sphere of influence!

Lesson of the day: I owe all of my elementary school teachers and class moms about a million more thanks than I ever gave them.

Wednesday was my first time ever chaperoning a field trip and it was a looooooong day. We were supposed to be at school at 7, which meant I had to leave the house at 5:30 am. My teacher, Clara, who also didn’t want to leave so early, came up with a crazy plan: I was going to drive us to school. She explained to me that she has a car but, like most Costa Ricans, doesn’t have a license. She uses it on occasion within the city we live in, but didn’t want to drive the 40 minutes to work on the highway without a license. She decided that my New Mexico license was good enough and asked if I would drive us the next day. Loving driving as much as I do, I readily agreed before realizing that, oh yeah, I’m in a foreign country with new rules and unfamiliar driving customs in a car I’ve never driven before. Too late, it was go-time. Lucky for me, Costa Rican road rules are almost identical to US ones, I’m a decent driver, and Clara did a perfect job of directing me through one-way streets and crazy intersections. I’m not quite aggressive enough to be a Costa Rican driver yet, but everyone was thoroughly impressed nonetheless. I was quite proud of myself for not even killing a chicken, let alone a small child. On the way home, I finally realized that my speedometer was marked in miles per hour, not in kilometers per hour and that I’d been trying to speed the whole way there because I thought we were going too slow. Oops. Even managed passing on the Interamericana- the highway (read: surprising small road) that runs from Mexico to Panama. All in all, a success.

Anyway, long story long, we made it to school on time and alive. Of course, everyone was running on Tico-time and we didn’t end up leaving until 45 minutes later (which we all knew would happen) when we’d finally rounded up all the kids and their projects. We took the bus to the town of Fortuna, about 45 minutes beyond Bagaces where I work. This sleepy little town is higher up in the surrounding countryside and was a welcome relief from the Liberian heat. The school we were going to has a terrific view of Volcán Miravalles, one of the many volcanoes flanking the Liberia region. The school in Fortuna was hosting the Arts Festival for the local elementary and high schools. Schools competed in events such as Folklore Dance, Storytelling, Painting, Flute Ensemble, Choreographed Dance, and a million other things.

The events were held in some sort of town common area. Essentially it was a rather large cinderblock room with a tin roof that made everything unnecessarily canned-sounding and loud. For the morning events, one of the local schools was there and talked the WHOLE time. Poppy (another volunteer) and I were absolutely shocked by the level of disrespect shown to the performers by the audience. There was never once quiet, even for things like poetry readings or skits when the dialog was crucial to knowing what was happening. The whole event was flooded by full volume conversations and screams and cheers. The worst was the screaming teenage girls when the boy bands were performing. They hit that perfect pitch where every muscle in your body wants to start twitching simultaneously and sustained it for several hours. It didn´t help that the culture is just inclined to be loud anyway. Then there was the feedback from a poorly setup mic/speaker combination and a lot of really terrible little musicians with out of tune guitars. Basically, after seven hours in this crowded noise box, I was the most irritable chaperone anyone could ask for and didn´t want to talk to anybody for at least several hours. But, as anyone who´s ever been on a field trip can tell you, bus rides home aren´t so conducive to that. My one-word summary of the day: loud.

Even though we competed in plenty of events, our Bagaces elementary only won at a couple events and only the ones where we were the only entrants in the category. The kids were…disappointed to say the least. I felt really bad for them, but the ones who won were at least happy a bit. It was neat to see all of the hard work they´d put into all of their performances. I especially enjoyed the dance portions. The high schools, naturally put on a better show, but our little ones were cute too.

Also, field trip lunches rock here. Not only did we bring along our own lunch lady, but we got a full lunch just like we would have had at school. We had an entire cooler full of mixed rice (Yeah, just open the cooler- it´s full of rice.), beans, chips, and even fresh pineapple and tamarind juice. Yum!

Remind me to thank everyone who ever chaperoned a field trip for me. Not as easy as I thought it would be, nor as relaxed. Soooo much noise!! I loved getting to see the volcano, experience a bit of the town, learn more about Costa Rican culture and have lots of conversations with my kids and fellow teachers. Overall, a positive day, but not something I´m in a hurry to do again anytime soon.

Work has taken a huuuge turn for the better over the past week. Since I’ve started working with Lizeth, I’ve had tons of work and have felt really productive. This week we celebrated Earth Day with programs about recycling, crafts that you can make out of bottles and boxes and such, and other fun programs for the kids. I went over to Lizeth’s house last Sunday to work on crafts to show the kids. Her son, Alejandro, an adorable little four-year-old, helped me make things like a pirate ship (milk carton) and binoculars (bottles) to take to school the next day. We presented the kids with all of our crafts and toys that we’d made and they really seemed to like them. The next day, we brought the kids to the library by class and showed them a video about recycling. Lizeth taught the first two and then led the class in a group discussion. (Group discussion for second graders is more like a billion little kids shouting at the same time, but I’ll take what I can get.) After that, she asked me to teach the class. I was a little nervous the first time through, especially because I was teaching in Spanish to a bunch of kids who didn’t know me or have extra patience for me because I’m their English teacher, NOT their science teacher. But I made it through! I taught the same class 5 times in a row and, by the end, was actually feeling pretty good about it. It was fun to get to contribute in a different way and actually feel productive about what I was doing with the kids. We talked about ways to do recycling at home and more crafts that they can make. It felt like a much more sustainable kind of lesson to teach because we’re instilling good habits in kids who will grow up to instill good habits in their kids. And who doesn’t want to save the world when you’re in Costa Rica?

English class was also really great this week. Clara had asked me to prepare some flashcards to help teach the kids family vocabulary and work on family trees. I asked if I could make it more personal and bring it pictures of my family and do an activity with the kids. I made a partial family tree with pictures and names of my own family which really got the kids’ attention. It was so much fun to see the kids get engaged (they love when you share something foreign) and I had lots of fun getting to present my family. The whole class period (times 3 or 4 classes through the afternoon) was designed by and led by me and it was a lot of fun too. It was really great to see the kids be more involved than they are in the normal activities too.

As a sidenote, I also got to break up my first real fight today. It’s nice when you’re twice the size of the kids who are fighting. Two girls in on of our fifth grade classes started going at it in the middle of class. Neither Clara nor I ever figured out what happened between them, but they were maaaad. Lots of swear words, fists flying, and hair pulling. When we finally grabbed them, their fingers were would so tightly into each other’s hair that we just had to hold them still until they finally listened to Clara’s commands to let go. Yet another thing I don’t understand about Costa Rican education systems: discipline/tolerance for violence. This fight didn’t even necessitate a trip to the principal’s office- just a sit-down with the teacher outside to ask what was wrong. Go figure.

The past four work days have been really encouraging to me because I’ve gotten a waaaay bigger perspective on what’s going on in the education system. I’ve gotten to spend an entire day with a single class and see what they’re doing when they’re not “learning” English. Turns out they actually do have class sometimes and even actually learn some things. I got to do math and social studies and science with one class and see a little more of the continuity that I miss when I jump from class to class. It’s also been cool to work on curriculum stuff with Lizeth because the science is right up my alley. Instead of being frustrated by the “distractions” and festivals and such, we’re actually creating them. I’m starting to see how the pieces fit together more than before. The first month, I just saw stuff from the “English angle” where all of our class time was getting eaten up, but now I am FINALLY starting to see how the elementary education system works.

This week, I’m supposed to start working with an adults’ English group in the evenings with Projects Abroad. It’s going to make for a really long week, but I’m so excited to finally be having lots of work to do and feel like I’m finally contributing to the work that’s being done here.

Sorry for the delay. I’ve been laid up in bed with some sort of food poisoning/fever thing for the past 2 days. But I’m mostly recovered, just taking it easy for a bit.

The narrative continues…Days 4 and 5.

Day 4 was definitely the longest of my days in Barra Honda. It started at 3:30 am and didn’t wrap up until midnight. We woke up insanely early to hike up the mountain (not a very big one) to watch the sunrise. With some skillful flashlight guiding skills from Stefan, we made it to the highest lookout point before 5 am. From the Mirador (lookout point), we could see out over the local village lit by a few pinpricks of light. To the east we looked to the Gulf of Nicoya and the largest island in Costa Rica. Once we got to the top, we sat in silence to listen to the sounds of the morning. The howler monkeys were the first to start with their raucous noises, yelling and screeching over the treetops. The ongoing drone of the crickets was matched by the waking noises of all the other buzzing flying insects. Like instruments in a symphony, the birds built the morning concert to a noisy atonal crescendo. Color peeked slowly into the sky. Growing shades of blue, purple, and pink rising up over the gulf and lighting up the surrounding hills. When the sun had finally risen, a cascade of clouds began pouring from the mountaintops at our backs into the valley in front of us until the whole region was obscured by the dense white fog.

Around 6:30, we started heading back to the camp to get ready for breakfast and to start our workday. The post-dawn hike down was filled with wildlife and more beautiful sites. Just like we were waking up, so were all the animals. We spotted several monkeys and lots of exotic birds. At one point, about sixty green and yellow parrots descended on a tree just in front of us and we all just stood there in a mutual staring contest.  Much of the mud in Barra Honda is the magical stuff that’s simultaneously incredibly slippery and sticky and between the walk up and back, my boots were absolutely covered in the brown-red mess. I started looking for roots to scuff my shoes on and nearly fell on my face trying to avoid the boa constrictor I was about to step on. It was just a “little” one (about 4-5 feet long and as thick as my fist), but more than big enough to give me quite a scare.  It was kind enough to stay long enough for me to call to my companions to come back and see before slithering away back into the forest. I spent the rest of the walk down eyeing every curvy twig with heightened paranoia.

Meicel met us with a delicious breakfast (as per normal) upon our arrival and we checked the board to see that our morning would be spent in the caverns. Woot! The caverns were the reason that Barra Honda was rescued from its former farmland status and are the main tourist draw for the park. An hour after our return from the “hill”, we turned back around to head up to the top…again.  This time, with ropes, helmets, and harnesses. Much to my surprise, this hike felt easier than any of the others the whole week. A good sign? When we reached the cave entrance, Rich and Oscar got us strapped into our harnesses and we climbed down the 50 meter ladder into the caverns. Oscar, who was a park guide for 10 years before he started working for Projects Abroad, took us on a tour through the primary cave (out of the forty-two in the park). After climbing back out of the cave, we were greeted by a couple more howler monkeys as we walked back to the Mirador to take another look over the now cloudy valley.

After lunch, Meicel taught me to make her Arroz con Leche (basically amazing Rice pudding) and I got a whole hour to do nothing before our bat project responsibilities began. We started by setting up the bat nets in the nearby woods and checked them at fifteen minute intervals. Almost every time, we found a tiny (or not so tiny) bat tangled up in the fine net mesh. Joe, one of the park staff, was on hand to extract the wings and impossibly tiny feet from the layers of mesh. When each bat was freed from the net, we put it in a tiny wriggling bag to carry back to camp and take data. Each tiny wriggling bag was weighed and we measured their wingspan and took lots of other notes on them. After collecting all the necessary data, we got to release them. It was really interesting to have this squirming ball of fur and skin held between my hands before giving it the freedom to move around and flap its wings. We found fruit eating bats (the biggest ones), some insect eating bats, and even two vampire bats. They don’t just have two big fangs- all of their teeth are huge and razor sharp.. We didn’t get to hold those- only Joe and Eduardo handled them, and only with thick gloves. (Eduardo has an inch-long scar on his thumb from the last time he held one without gloves.) After six hours on bat duty and a day of more than twenty hours, it was finally fiiiinally bedtime.

Friday morning held fewer surprises. Rich gave us an optional free morning, but worked on wood for building the lookout point (yay powertools!!) and clearing some of the excess grass on the campsites. We made a quick post-lunch trip to the pool at Manuel’s and the afternoon was more bat net mending. Dinner was a rather somber affair. Everybody was dreading having to say goodbye and our attitudes reflected it. After only five days, it was so hard to have to say goodbye to such wonderful people and such a beautiful place as Barra Honda. I was so lucky to have gotten to spend a week there and can’t wait to have another in July.

The narrative continues…on to Days 2 and 3.

Tuesday, we got to enjoy the entirety of the wonderfully structured day that Rich prepares for the volunteers each day. Breakfast at 7:30. First work assignment 8:30-noon. Lunch at 12:30. Rest/Free time in the heat of the day. Second work assignment 3:30-5:30. Dinner 6:00.

We checked the white board to see our work placements for the day. My morning started with “Moving Sensor Cameras.” Didn’t sound too bad, right? Ha! Up the hill, down the ditch, scramble up the roots, around the wasp nest, avoid the stinging ants, don’t drink all your water at once, back down the 30 foot sheer drop, up the other side. Don’t drop the cameras!!

Isabel, Poppy, and I were on camera duty. We followed Eduardo, the biologist out onto his “trails” in the jungle. I use the word “trail” loosely. Here’s it’s a route, known only to Eduardo that gets hiked by 4 people a couple times a year. We went up and over and down and through too many land contours to count. I clawed my way up what-appeared-to-be walls of roots and dirt and successfully avoided the “bad” wasps. All while carrying a water bottle, giant sensor cameras, and a first aid kit in my hands. I went with the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach and promised myself I wouldn’t give up, no matter how exhausted I was. It worked! No whining, just persistence. I was really proud of myself, especially given how physically drained I was. Trekking through the jungle turns out to be a pretty exhausting task. And, lucky for me, it gets you surprisingly dirt. I made it back to the camp wearing my blue-now-brown shirt like a merit badge for a morning’s work well done.

During my free time after lunch, I decided to go for a stroll up the hill from camp a ways. Within just a couple minutes, I started hearing monkey chatter coming from the trees around me. When I started scanning the trees, I found myself completely surrounded by about fifteen Capuchin monkeys (those really adorable white-faced ones). There were moms running around with babies on their backs, monkeys literally swinging from tree to tree, some of them banging hard seed pods on the trees to open them, others digging into their fruits and scooping out the seeds with their little fingers. All of them were eyeing me suspiciously, obviously not thrilled that I was in their space. I reached for my camera, only to realize I’d left it in the first aid bag from the morning. (That was the last time I was caught without my camera for the week.) Instead of worrying about snapping the perfect shot, I got to stand their watching and appreciating all the activity going on around me. Listening to the sound of monkeys chattering to each other is actually wonderfully fascinating. After they’d finally all edged their way away from me, I hurried back to the camp to get my camera and returned to try to hunt down a couple that had disappeared into the trees. And I was lucky enough to even get a couple pictures before being chased off by some very territorial wasps.

My second afternoon session was orientation with Rich. He gave us a rundown of all the projects that are happening at the park and all the work that is being done. Especially with all of the physical labor to be done, it was awesome to see why we were doing the work we were doing. That was something that we never got in Liberia. The Why of what we’re doing. All we ever see is our little pixel of the picture and we never know what we’re working towards. Barra Honda was totally the opposite. We had vision from the get go and ran with it the rest of the time there.

Dinner-time included another sunset walk before heading back to Manuel’s. This time, I tried to learn a bit of Cumbia (but failed miserably) before flopping into bed completely exhausted.

Day 3, our wonderful cook Meicel didn’t show up. And nobody can work without a good breakfast of rice and beans. Oscar, Steph, Eduardo, and I took to the kitchens to try to do what Meicel does single-handedly. Lucky for us, it turned out pretty well and we got off to a good start without any more hang-ups. My work for the morning was the most stereotypical “conservation” project you can come up with (besides saving whales): planting trees! After carrying up baby trees from the nursery garden, we set out to planting trees…in the woods. Strange? Maybe a little. Barra Honda is actually a secondary forest which means that it was a forest, and then not a forest (silly humans), and now it’s a forest again. None of the trees in the park are older than 50 years. It’s pretty impressive how it’s turned out for such a “short” time span. After that, we worked on cleaning up the park’s campground area. Really, it’s only space for a couple of tents, but it still has to be kept tidy, mowed, etc. And we even found a little turtle while we were working. After lunch, I had to break down and do laundry. In 48 hours, I’d managed to “filthify” everything I’d brought for 5 days.  They called it a “laundry machine.” I called it a sink with way too many bilingual dials, knobs, and switches. My afternoon work was on mending bat nets. Rich took a couple of us to a giant net that he’d set up in the parking area and showed us how to go about reparing the ultra fine mesh. He pointed to a 2-inch diameter hole and said it’d probably take about an hour to fix. I laughed. Turns out he was right. I actually loved working on the nets. It was incredibly relaxing and obsessive detail work which I tend to be quite good at. Happy Megan.

Third consecutive sunset walk before heading back to the house. We sat around listening to Stefan play some of his awesome guitar compositions and singing along in German. Even though very few of us spoke German, we all had a great time listening to the music. I got a nice nighttime burst of adrenaline when I found a baby scorpion making its way across my bare knee. I had a split moment reconciling my desire to show it to people, take a picture, fling it away, and continue my video of Stefan’s song. What I ended up with was a swinging camera shot, shouting “Look! A scorpion!” and knocking it halfway across the room with the back of my hand. Another excellent day in Barra Honda.

The past week in Barra Honda was so much more than I possibly could have asked for. I never thought I could get so attached to a place in only five days, but the experience was just that incredible. To spare your eyes too much reading at once, I’ve broken this narrative into three [slightly] shorter pieces. The exciting part is the pictures here.

Like I mentioned last week, those of us teaching in Liberia had the week off because of the census. Projects Abroad was kind enough to give us the opportunity to go work for the week on their conservation project in Barra Honda National Park (map here). After a very bumpy two-hour car ride to the middle of nowhere, we arrived at the park in time for a delicious lunch prepared by Meicel, the camp cook, before meeting the other staff: Rich- project director and hilariously sarcastic Englishman; Oscar- former park guide, now PA employee, jungleman, and straight-up beast; Moncho- completely unintelligible PA staff member, super talkative, likes to dance; Eduardo- 21-year-old brilliant biologist, soft spoken but with a great sense of humor. We also quickly got to know the small group of volunteers: Stefan- naturalist extraordinaire, German, musician; Steph- 29-year-old Bostonian, super helpful, awesome work ethic; Isabel, Amy, Sebastian, Luca, and Zach- other PA volunteers. There were five of us there for the week (myself, Poppy, Sarah, Ivan, and Josephine) bringing the week’s volunteer total up to twelve.

When we first saw the volunteers, they were red-faced, sweat-soaked, and completely covered in dirt. My first thought was “This is gonna be fuuuun!!” quickly followed by “I may or may not die!!” I decided then and there than I’d make up for my lack of physical ability by having an awesome attitude about whatever work I was about to plunge into. Turned out that that was an awesome idea…for the whole week! My first afternoon work session started with hauling rocks in the rain. Sounds like fun, right? I thought so. Luckily, the “rain” was more just a drizzle that mingled with the dripping sweat to cool us down a bit. I was working with Poppy, Stefan, and Oscar to move zillion pound rocks and build a retaining wall near the campground. Since I’m a still –ehem- lacking in the strength department, I moved what I could and shouted encouragements as the guys pushed the wheelbarrows up hills and over roots and through gravel. Apparently, having someone screaming “Go! You can do it!! Go! Gooooo!!” behind you is actually more helpful than I realized. At the end of the day, I was caught up in the mud/sweat/rain soaked department and just skipped straight to hosing off so I’d be clean enough to shower.

For those of you who have never had the opportunity to be free to be covered in dirt for an extended period of time, it’s quite lovely. I recommend you try it. It’s “hard-earned” because you had to do something to get that dirty and your companions are right beside you, equally disgusting and everybody’s just really happy. Sounds strange if you don’t know what I mean, but I promise, it’s great. It makes the bugs easier to deal with too. Less spazzing and swatting and more brushing and ignoring.

Also awesome is not having internet access/responsibilities. I spent hours the night before I left taking care of all my computer-limited responsibilities and was able to enjoy the week being completely inaccessible. While it might not be a sustainable state for me, I looooved not having to worry about answering emails, sending anybody anything, or otherwise being responsible to the outside world. I’m also surviving quite nicely without a cell phone. Freeing…just like being covered in dirt in the wilderness.

Our first evening, we made the short trek out to a lookout point where we could see the sunset. The mist from the rains had settled into the valleys making it look like a yellow cloud forest. All we could hear was the crickets and the frogs. Not a hint of car noise or cityscapes anywhere to be seen or heard. After dinner we went to Manuel’s Bar. It takes some guts to build a bar/hotel/pool a million miles from anywhere (and only a ¼ mile from our ranger station), but Manuel’s the guy to do it. Since it’s the only thing anywhere close by, a lot of volunteer nights are spent on his cozy little patio. The least cozy creature was the cockroach the size of my palm (not exaggerating). Bugs, frogs, and everything else seem to be a little bigger in Costa Rica. We spent the night dancing Salsa and Merengue before making the pitch-black walk back through the jungle to our housing.

Stream of consciousness from my Day One journal: Mosquito nets. Giant bugs. A million miles from anywhere. Sunsets. No internet. No noise besides nature. Cold showers from a pipe in the wall. Crickets. 6 people to a room. Bunk beds. No responsibilities. Frogs. Bird calls. So much contentment. Everyone living from a suitcase/backpack. Can I just stay forever?