December 8, 2018

December 19, 2018 Today we gave our presentations. Kate and I were the fourth group to go, the last group before a break. I was nervous before the presentation. Watching everyone do their presentations so well and enjoying themselves, calmed me down a bit. Being up there presenting wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It went great and others were complimenting us. After our presentation we had a 10-15 minute break, then we resumed the presentations. I loved watching everyone present. These past weeks seeing everyone working so hard and to see their end results to their hard work was great. To see the passion that people had for their topics was inspiring. I learned a bunch from their presentations. These days here at Las Cruces went by too quickly and it's bittersweet that tonight is our last night. Tomorrow we will be making the long drive back to San Jose. Although I am excited to be going home on Friday, I will definitely miss this place and the amazing people I have

December 18, 2018 Yesterday It was crunch time for finishing our projects/posters. We spent the day crunching numbers and putting them into a poster. Kate had done one of these posters before so she was a pro. The poster had a green gradient background and looked super nice. We put pictures in it from when we took samples, set up the cameras, and were processing our samples. Seeing this poster made me remember the past weeks in this program. The research and hikes, although draining at times, were so much fun and it's rewarding to see all the hard work from Kate, Bridgette and I on one poster.

December 17, 2018 After the fun day exploring San Vito, it was back to working on our projects. We processed the rest of the samples and retrieved the last two cameras. The cameras, sadly, did not catch anything. The cameras were too sensitive and took a picture with every movement of a leaf. The only things that we caught on the cameras were: people walking, a squirrel butt and an agouti walking in the background. Later that night, when I was using the bathroom, I spotted a tiny lizard on the wall. It was super cute. This trip I have seen everything that I hoped to see. I saw a frog, lizard, tiny black snake, monkeys, different birds, spiders and other animals that I do not have at home.

December 16, 2018 On Sunday we went to San Vito! This was our free day from doing research and we got to explore the city. Everyone had the choice to hike there or take a taxi at either 1:30 pm or 5:30 pm(for dinner). I chose to take the taxi at 1:30. When we arrived in the city, we got dropped off and everyone went off into groups. The first place that we went was a grocery store to shop around for snacks. I got some delicious cookies and two bags of chips. I then waited outside for others to be done. Mike Heim then came around the corner with a group and said that there was a bakery down the street. I asked if they had donuts and he said they did. At this point, I had been craving a donut for so long so I got excited. I then asked Mo if he wanted to go the bakery and we went. We got to the bakery and I picked out a delicious looking donut that had caramel and peanuts on it. After getting the pastries we set out and explored the rest of the town. My favorite part was visiting a play

December 15, 2018 On Saturday, we attempted to take down the rest of our cameras. We were unable to take them down. They were connected to the trees using zip ties and we had no tool to cut them down with. After we tried to retrieve the rest of the cameras, we came back to the lab and processed some of our samples. In each sample, we picked through them and got out any invertebrates that we found. In our samples we found mostly mosquitoes. The work was tedious, but interesting the see the life inside of the bromeliads.

December 14, 2018 Bridgett, Johnathan, Kassandra, Kate and I went on a hike to the waterfall. The hike was quite long, but we saw some interesting things along the way. We saw orchids and Kassandra pointed out the shampoo ginger that her group was researching. We also saw a cute, tiny glass frog. This was my first time seeing a glass frog so I was excited. She told us to smell the leaves (which smelt like Christmas) but to not touch our face, because it could possibly give us a rash. On the way to the waterfall, we spotted a bromeliad that we wanted to sample on the way back. The waterfall was beautiful and so refreshing. The mist coming off of it felt nice after the hike down. Kate and Bridgett dipped into the waterfall. We got some pictures from the falls and when Bridgette and Kate were drying off we explored a bit. Kassandra found some clay and possible frog eggs. I then found the carcass of a spider. Once Bridgette and Kate were ready, we set off towards the station since it wa

December 13, 2018 Thursday, Kate and I set up cameras pointing at a few bromeliads. We set up cameras to possibly catch some vertebrates using the bromeliads. We also saw two wolf spiders, male and female, using one of the bromeliads in the garden as a home.

December 12, 2018 This was our first official day in the field. We saw a bunch species using the bromeliads. We saw spiders and a masked tree frog. This was also the day that we went on the jungle trail and saw a bunch of animal activity. This was my second official day in Costa Rica and I had already seen many animals. *I took a bunch of photos that I would share here, but sadly my phone fell in some water and no longer works.

December 11, 2018 Today we woke up freezing. I attempted to take a shower, but again it was too cold so I just washed my hair. After getting ready, Nicole and I went up the main building to have some complimentary breakfast. The view was beautiful. The sky was clear and it overlooked the property. We sat in front of the windows and witness multiple hummingbirds visiting the feeders. After eating breakfast, we went on a hike in one of the trails on the property. The trail was beautiful, it was full of all sorts of plants. I felt like I was in the movie Tarzan. My favorite were the bamboo and ferns. I got tired easily because I wasn't fully used to the elevation. After leaving La Georgina, we went to Paramo for another short hike. From Paramo we headed to Las Cruces Biological Station in San Vito. After arriving at the Biological Station, we took a short tour, since we arrived there a few days late. Nicole and I then met our roommate, Kate. Shortly after, Kate and I met with our m

December 10, 2018 We got up at 5:30am to get ready and head to the airport by 6:00am. Our flight to San Jose, Costa Rica was at 9:46am. This time everything went smoothly and we were on our way to the Juan Santamaria International Airport in San Jose. I sat next to a girl who I learned was returning home to Costa Rica from a month long trip in the US. We arrived in San Jose around 12:30pm. There, we met with one of the CRiRE mentors, Jessica Black. From the airport we traveled to a car rental place. After the car rental place we went back to the airport to pick up another CRiRE member, Mo. The wrong airport was entered into the GPS and we ended up at a tiny airport. After about an hour of riding around, we made it to the Juan Santamaria International Airport. The five of us packed tightly into the car and started the journey to the cloud forest. As we started to go up in elevation, I felt my ears pop and I had to take deeper breaths. My lungs were able to adjust pretty quickly. We ar

December 8-9, 2018 On Saturday December 8th, Nicole, our teacher Mike Heim and I left for the Minneapolis airport at 11:30 pm. We arrived at the Minneapolis airport December 9, around 2:30 am and waited around for our flight at 5:30 am. Our plane landed around 9 am and we quickly started to head to the gate of our connecting flight to San Jose. We took a wrong exit through an area and we had to go around, causing us to miss our flight. The next hour was filled with waiting, phone calls, booking a new flight, and more waiting. Everything was eventually settled and Nicole booked us another flight for the next morning. The rest of the day, Nicole and I went to a mall to do some shopping and look around. Later that night we ate takeout and we watched food network.