2018 Costa Rica Indigenous Research Experience

12/09/18 Today I slept in till 9. I was going to wake up earlier but the bed stole me. I didn't want to miss breakfast so I got myself up and went and ate. Man the morning was so beautiful. I went from cold weather to the tropics. It was amazing. I was taking it all in, eating my breakfast. Listening to the birds and the traffic of the town and of course all of the planes coming in. We were literally next to the airport basically. haha But after breakfast I went and got ready and Randall and his boys came over to our hotel and we end up getting a taxi and went and explored the City Mall in town. At first the mall didn't seem that big on the first 3 floors than all of a sudden it got HUGE! There was a huge Christmas tree and a little winter wonderland set up. It looked so nice and cute. Dawn and I seen a virtual reality simulator that we tried out and it was pretty cool. First we were on a roller coaster than we went through space. The space one was awesome!!! After that, we w

12/08/2018 Last night, my family and I stayed in Billings down the road from the airport so I'd be able to catch my flight in the morning. I got up and ready at four and was at the airport by 5:15. Luckily Billings airport isn't that busy and getting through TSA is a breeze. Our flight left at 6:30 in the morning. The plane was actually pretty packed. I played sudoku most of that flight because I'm a nerd like that. haha But we got into Salt Lake City around 8 I think. It was a short layover and we boarded our next flight to Atlanta not too long after that. We got to Atlanta in the afternoon and we had a kind of long layover there which was okay because we got to eat and also exchange our money there. It was cool because they had to open up a new pack of money for us. I was feeling fresh. But we only had like 5 minutes until we started boarding our plane and we made it just in time to board. The flight was kinda long. Like four hours. I fell asleep on it because I'm a

12/16/18 Spent part of my morning in the lab trying to ID a sample. It was our free day but I wanted to get it done. Sadly I missed out on the talks and walks with the Ngobe but I got to ask around and see it on Snapchat. After lunch we took a taxi to town. Luckily our driver spoke a little English! Anyway we walked through the town. It is so small. There’s a lot of people though. Lots of little “powwow shops” ad Kate called them. Haha but that’s kinda what they were. I bought myself some sandals and a new outfit because it was sooo hot in town!! We stopped by the grocery store and got some snacks for ourselves. Than we found a little bakery that was amazing! I’m not sure what we ate but we ate it. Haha than we continued walking around town. It got kind of boring after awhile because the town is so small and we basically went through the whole thing. We end up waiting in the town center for awhile because we had nothing else to do. All the little couples were there as well and

12/15/18 Today I was mostly in the lab doing identifying. But tonight was something special. We got to do another cultural exchange which was awesome! I can’t remember what it’s called but Chad and Jaidyn showed and explained the thing Navajo women wear in their hair. I can’t remember what it was called!! But it was beautiful. And Jaidyn sang a song and oh my gosh her voice is beautiful. Johnathan also brought up stick games. It was kinda confusing the way they explained it but I had to explain my version of it too. Just how we do the guessing. Haha when I was hiding, they couldn’t guess me. I should hop on a team when I get back home. Erbz. Lol (sorry, Rez slang) but afterwards we tried having a movie night but we didn’t have speakers and it took awhile to figure something out. And when we finally did, almost everyone fell asleep within like 30 minutes of the movie starting. Hahah it was a fail but we tried. I was super tired and went to fall asleep right away!

12/14/18  Today, most of my group went back out to the water fall to get another sample from there because the same we got from there wasn’t the best. we only found 3 macroinvertebrates in the whole sample and my mentor didn’t like that so him, Dawn, and his son Gabriel went back out to get another sample. Randall JR and I stayed back so we can go through our samples and I started identifying the larvae in one of our samples. I didn’t get to finish the sample because i was stuck on trying to ID one but eventually got it. I’ll finish it in the AM. But lunch today was super good. We had jojo’s (potato wedges) and omg they were the bomb. Dinner was good too. After dinner, I went back to the lab to try and get as much of my sample done but came back around 9 and I’m getting ready for bed! Good night!

12/13/18 Today we went out to the Caldera streams I think. They were the first two streams going into the forest. We collected two more samples at those streams. The first stream we stopped at, which was the second stream along the trail, had lots of movement in it. We also seen lots of crabs in our sample. Some of the crabs climbed out. I’d do the same if I got kicked into a net. Haha but we also caught a tiny little fishy and released him because he isn’t a macroinvertebrate. We also seen a lizard! It was an anol lizard. It was awesome! We got some good pictures of him then we set him free to do his thing. Then for the second stream sample, we stopped at the first stream that’s along the trail and got our second sample. There was some movement in the sample which was good! We hiked back up to the lab and started sorting out our samples. Luckily there’s 4 of us to get it done! The day went on and after dinner we had a cultural exchange with the Ngobe people. They showed us one o