Vaca

My first San Luis sunset, about 5 minutes earlier than the next picture. Both pictures were taken from the porch of the Student Union building, which is where the library, computer lab, offices and cafeteria are.


My first San Luis sunset, isn't it gorgeous?


Planting my baby! I got a really nice spot on a hillside in the sun.


Cutting the plastic bag off of my baby.


Showing off my steak knife I used to cut the plastic bag off of my baby tree.


At the end of our hike today. Beautiful views! We could see the pacific from where we were part of the time!



The cows here are a lot more sculptural here than in the U.S., I have no idea what kinda they are but they look like serious business - in a good way. I've also noticed they drive a lot closer to each other (cars and pedestrians) than we do. It makes me nervous, and I wonder if it is my American value for personal space shining through.

After the grand tour of campus we went to a lecture about the carbon offset program we've paid as part of our student fees to participate in. It sounds pretty neat, I'm sure how they'll implement everything but they certainly have big aspirations.

We saw our first San Luis sunset around 5:55. It was amazing, and supposedly it is that beautiful every night. We'll see if that is possible. We were all on the porch of the Student Union building, which faces East. Behaving like total tourists, taking bunches of pictures and freaking out. Dinner was served at 6pm, by which time the sun was completely down. The moon doesn't come out until later, so it is pitch black any time during the night that you would be awake for. For dinner we had egg salad, rice and beans, yucca, beets, green beans and carrot cake. On our way to dinner we saw an agouti in front of the student union building! We tried to stalk it and take a picture, but it hopped away too quickly. It looked like a Bunnyrat. After dinner our group just hung out in the dining hall with our computers and uno. I facebook chatted with my mom while coming in second in Uno. I also got to know my fellow students more, we talked for like 3 hours. My roommate Amy went to bed pretty early, but came back to the cafeteria with a GIANT SCORPION she found ON HER PILLOW. The naturalists said it was the biggest they'd ever seen, and that they don't have many here. Lucky us! I also went back to my room to get my flashlight earlier, and I kept seeing these sparkles on the ground. When I finally got close to one I realized they were reflective SPIDERS everywhere! AHH! I was wearing sandals and proceeded to run back to the Student Union building and squeal. People on the porch thought I was weird, but whatever. After playing Uno and computing for a few hours we decided to go to sleep. Because of the scorpion incident all of us girls planned on doing a bug sweep of our rooms. Apparently (I was still writing my blog post at this point) the girls found a rather large spider and started screaming. The bungalows have no sound proofing and we're all in the same building, so the boys ran out to see what was wrong and locked themselves out of their room in the process. The naturalists had forgotten to leave the radio in the main building, so they had to go wake them up and have them walk to find security to give them a spare key. David killed the spider, which we're not supposed to do since this is an ecolodge, whoops. After doing a bug sweep of my room and finding only a few small spiders and evidence of a larger one I went to bed. The wind howled all night long, and the door bangs every now and then, even when locked. I woke up once early, but was able to go right back to sleep. I actually woke up before my alarm this morning, shocking! My roommate was already up and gone, so I thought I was late to breakfast. Luckily I was up about 10 minutes early.

We ate breakfast at 8am, which was one of the best breakfasts I've had in a long time. Toast with fresh preserves, cheese, gallo pinto, fresh pineapple, watermelon and cantaloupe, fresh locally grown coffee, and the best fried plantains I've ever had. After breakfast we began our carbon offset program. We potted plants, planted one tree each, and weeded around trees that had already been planted. And by weeded I mean hacked around an 18in diameter with a steak knife. It was a lot of fun, and a beautiful sunny morning to be outside working with plants. While potting plants my group found a cute little froggy in the dirt! It wasn't very hard work, but it was rewarding and lent itself to photo ops. After cleaning up, Kate, Wyatt, David and I played soccer until lunch at noon. We won, but Wyatt played soccer in high school, so he won, basically. For lunch we ate salad with a tasty home made dressing, juice (maybe cantaloupe?), gallo pinto, chicken and steamed veggies.

After lunch we went on a hike on the Camino Real trail with one of the naturalists. He was really helpful and friendly, and it was informative but fun! It was a two or so hour hike and it was steep enough to feel like you did something, but not exhausting. I learned about swiss cheese plants, vermillia and epiphytes, coffee plants (most of campus used to be pasture that they're restoring into forest), secropia, strangler figs, candle plant, leaf mining beetles, ebony trees, leaf cutter ants, glass wing butterflies, brown jays, and the plant that had "deer eye seeds" and has adapted to lead bats right to where they need to be pollinated, and brown jays. We heard birds that are apparently green with a white forehead, but we didn't see them.

After the hike we met up and talked about our class schedules. I will be taking horseback riding from 6:15-7:45 am, one day this first week, but hopefully two days a week once we get back from the homestay (which I go to after next weekend - it has come so soon!). Then I have Spanish from 8:30am - 9:45am, Intro to Geology from 9:55 - 11:10, Anthropology of Costa Rica stuff from 11:20 - 12:35. No afternoon classes, yay! I should be pretty busy, but I really am looking forward to it.

Tomorrow we're going to hike to the San Luis waterfall (which I will swim in no matter what the weather is), come back in time for lunch, and go to a tour of a coffee farm. They're harvesting right now, so we're going to get to see how everything works from picking to roasting to brewing. We're also going to get to pick some ourselves, I'm excited.

Tonight I've still got dinner to eat and a movie to watch, I'll post again when I can.