Worry Not, We're Still Alive

Happy Thanksgiving!

So I know it's been nearly a month, but in the past two weeks, we've started and completed two research projects, given two presentations on these projects, written two papers on these projects and taken two final exams. It feels almost as if we just fit the entire semester into the last fortnight. Needless to say, much sleep has been lost, much coffee drank, much hair pulled out of stress and all of this hasn't been without an occasional disagreement between stressed Type A pre-med students over the correct way of doing something.

The past two days of presentations have been long, but incredibly interesting. Given the amount of time we had to squeeze our research into the end of the semester, the studies the class was able to conduct, complete and present were very impressive. Research topics included sexual education, attitudes and belief among adolescents in rural San Vito, whether breastfeeding has a protective effect against diarrhea in young children, what kind of zoonotic parasites are found in dogs kept by the Ngöbe coffee workers, how the presence of water treatment in the indigenous territory has lowered incidence of diarrhea, whether redrawing EBAIS districts according to current utilization would create a more equitable network of primary care,

However, I just finished my final research paper and am feeling very liberated by it. Our research looked into how crappy living conditions on coffee plantations affect the respiratory health of the indigenous migrant workers who work and live on these plantations. The whole experience was peppered with unexpected twists and turns, as I think all research is, but I'm feeling rather proud of the 13-page product that has come of it. Hopefully my professors agree.

In other news, our days in Costa Rica are numbered. We leave Las Cruces for the last time on Sunday, return to San Jose on Monday, and most of my classmates fly back home to the States on Tuesday. I have been looking forward to aspects of being home since the end of October, but don't feel that I'm ready to leave Costa Rica once and for all. Luckily, my parents are flying down to spend a week of vacation in the land of Pura Vida, so the abrupt end of the course won't actually bring an abrupt transition home - not just yet at least.

Another cool tidbit: Mahmood Sasa, the director of OTS' Palo Verde station, our guest statistics professor, herpetologist, and crazy guy that led us into the Palo Verde marsh on a snail collecting mission was just named Scientist of the Year in Costa Rica. Pretty cool.

And for your viewing pleasure, some photos!

Hanging out with the howler monkeys on the bridge at La Selva.


Learning about ethics in pineapple agriculture with the people from Foro Emaus.


String for bracelet-making: our official class pastime.


Crossing the river to visit the Bribri people.


The main house at Luna Nueva Lodge: home of a medicinal plant garden, interesting food and really nice interns


A red-eyed tree frog brought to us by a young Maleku man who emerged suddenly from the marsh

Wildlife, Fieldwork and Halloween Fun!

Cumulative wildlife sightings at La Selva:
• a family of howler monkeys
• countless lizards of all shapes and sizes
• many a procession of leaf cutter ants
• peccary, peccary everywhere!
• turtles in the river
• bioluminescent fungus: that's wildlife, right?
• a female quetzal, maybe? we're not entirely sure.
• frogs - tree frogs, little yellow frogs, big sapos
• I'm pretty sure I saw a bat flying the other night
• THE PRIZE: a two-toed sloth mama and her baby!

For me, the highlight of this week was getting off-station and working in the community around Puerto Viejo. We were working with the local EBAIS, going house to house, talking to people about the dangers and prevention of dengue fever. Dengue is [easily?] preventable because it is transmitted by a mosquito that breeds in clean stagnant water in and around the house. So our mission was to convey this piece of information to the local residents and help them to rid their environment of receptacles of stagnant water. Many people live in dilapidated houses and have garbage everywhere - empty plastic bottles, buckets, empty coconuts. Many also get their water from uncovered wells or keep their drinking water uncovered in a barrel near the house. All of these things are opportunities for mosquitoes to lay their eggs and continue the infective cycle of dengue.

Informing people of this simple way to nip a disease in the bud has the capacity to save people from a potentially deadly illness. However, unless people are convinced of the importance of these preventive practices at a community level, they will not change their habits or behaviors. This is where a community's public health workers are indispensable. Working on a local level, these kinds of people are able to commit more than just two mornings of engaging community members in conversations about health. They can legitimately take the time to establish a working relationship with the community and, as a result, carry more weight when it comes to convincing people to change their health behaviors.

We also did a student-led crash course in Pesticides 101 - their history, uses, mechanisms, the good, the bad and the ugly. It's quite a conundrum that things like DDT have been so instrumental in controlling diseases like malaria and pesticides help bolster the portion of the world economy that's dependent on agriculture, but pesticides with their properties that aim to kill pests are not without their own adverse effects in human systems. Lots of chronic health problems result from pesticide use and exposure, and on one hand, it seems to me we should be able to minimize our use of pesticides for the sake of the environment and ourselves.

However, to what point can we sacrifice people's immediate economic livelihoods for long-term health and environmental benefits? Are there practical ways to minimize pesticide use that don't sacrifice crop yields? What about malaria? It still kills millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa, and to date, the best means of controlling the spread of the disease is vector control, which includes bed nets and residential spraying of pesticides. As recently as 2006, the WHO promoted the use of DDT, an incredibly persistent and potentially harmful pesticide that's been put on the Stockholm Convention's Dirty Dozen list of persistent organic pollutants, to control malaria in Africa. Do the costs outweigh the benefits? It's a head-scratcher.

One promising alternative to widespread use of pesticides is the more holistic approach of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) that replaces blind, extensive spraying of pesticides with common sense, spraying only as a last line of defense against pests rather than the weapon of choice. This is something that I think should be pushed and enforced in agriculture all over the world. It would immediately benefit the health of the workers who tend fields all over the world and provide benefits to the environment and global population in the long term.

On a local level, we were able to see the effects pesticide have in the northern Caribbean region of Costa Rica where they grow a lot of pineapple and banana. The communities around Guacimo county are full of plantations where they harvest pineapple and banana. Most of the plantations are owned and managed by large property owners or companies who are not held accountable for their practices. As a result, all the water sources in the area are contaminated with pesticides. People can't drink it. They shouldn't bathe or swim in it (although they do). Their livestock drink it, get sick and die, robbing people that are already poor of the few resources they have. A couple of people from the organization Foro Emaus guided us through the area's communities, sharing with us the social and environmental battles they've been fighting to improve life for the campesinos and keep the big plantation owners in line.

For Halloween, we had quite the Global Health celebration. Each student was assigned a microorganism. We had to create a costume and prepare some sort of presentation to represent our organism and perform it for the class. No one knew beforehand who was who, so trying to guess based on costumes and performances was a true test of our knowledge. I dressed up as Toxocara canis - an intestinal worm that's usually found in dogs, but it can affect humans as well. In humans, toxocara is always in its larval stage and it migrates to different parts of the human body, so I made a hat like Peter Pan (you know, the boy that never wanted to grow up) and ran around the room migrating from the intestine to the liver to the eye. It was really fun to perform as well as see what great ideas everyone else came up with. Performances included dramatic readings, dancing, singing, rapping, crawling around on the floor, and more. It was great.

Catching Up

Greetings from La Selva! We arrived here on Thursday afternoon to OTS’ biggest and best-known research station. It’s located in the tropical lowlands on Caribbean side of the country, so the climate is veritable rainforest – warm and sticky. We have seen a fair amount of wildlife, even just after a couple days of being here. Poison frogs, peccary, ants, lizards, bird and monkeys. We had a really fun, up close and personal experience with a family of howler monkeys yesterday. We haven’t spotted any fer-de-lances yet, but there’s hope for the days and week(s) to come.

In terms of classes, we are back into learning again after a much needed fall break. Our subjects for this week have included snakebites and public health, an overview of the immune system, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, water treatment, a visit to one of Costa Rica’s private hospitals and helminthes like intestinal worms and stuff. We also got a chance to sit in with a microbiology lab class at the Universidad de Costa Rica. They were looking at fecal samples under the microscope that were collected from kids in La Casona, the indigenous territory near San Vito. In the past, this population has recorded high incidence of parasites, mostly because this population, especially the women and children, doesn’t wear shoes around the village. So under the microscope, we were able to see eggs of various worms and protozoa. Pretty cool, and we got to know some Costa Rican students in the process, which was also very fun.

And now for a rundown of fall break:

We arrived in San Jose on Saturday afternoon. To kill some time in the afternoon, we went to the mall and stocked up on string to feed our class-wide bracelet-making obsession. Highlight #1: We ate lunch in the food court at the mall, and the U-20 world cup quarterfinal was on TV. The food court was packed with people, and all of the sudden, we were bringing our trays of food to find a table, and the entire place erupts in cheers. Costa Rica just scored. I proceeded to profess my love for Costa Rica and their enthusiasm for their soccer teams. On Saturday night, we went out to Castro’s and had a great night of dancing.

On Sunday, Victoria and I took a bus to La Fortuna to see Volcán Arenal. We made this trip on only two hours of sleep from the night before and (probably as a result), this adventure was filled with its fair share of mishaps. We had a hostel bed without sheets, 10 minutes to eat a free buffet dinner (seriously, the torture!), encounters with interesting characters at the very touristy hot springs, painfully slow and stuffy bus rides, and a couple hours of panic when I thought I lost my camera at the hot springs (in my sleepless stupor, I had just left it on the bed at the hostel). It was a very quick trip. We spent all of 18 hours actually in La Fortuna and around Arenal, but we considered all the rush and mishaps worth it because we went to see the volcano at night and got to see lava run down the volcano’s slope! This was obviously Highlight #2. It was very cool – kind of like watching fireworks, which lots of oohs and aahs. I wasn’t even able to try my hand at long-exposure shots with my camera, because at this point I though it was lost. I did all I could to try to forget about it and enjoy the amazing, once-in-a-lifetime show that was in front of me.

We returned to San Jose on Monday afternoon and spent the night in a hostel in the city. In the morning, four of us caught a bus to Playa Sámara on the Pacific Coast of the Nicoya Peninsula. The beach was beautiful and relatively quiet. We played in the waves, and in retrospect regretted not buying surf lessons. Victoria and I went on an excursion kayaking. A guide took us in kayaks out to an island just off the coast. There we enjoyed some fruit that our guide brought with us. We played with hermit crabs, played in the waves some more and spotted a sea turtle in the water! It was a very enjoyable experience. In the early evening came Highlight #3: joining in on a game of soccer on the beach with all the local guys. I was the only girl playing, and eventually I started picking up some of the important soccer vocabulary in Spanish so that the guys would pass me the ball. It was so much fun to play, and I actually held my own among all the Ticos. Later when we went out for dinner, one of the guys that was playing was waiting our table and complimented my playing. From Sámara, we also watched the US vs. CR world cup qualifying match. Costa Rica lead for the entire game, scoring two great goals, and in the 91st minute, the US scored a really fluky goal off a corner kick to tie, foiling Costa Rica’s hopes for an automatic qualification into the World Cup. In that moment, I think all four of us felt ashamed to be Americans, because we were all rooting for Costa Rica to win.

We spent the rest of the week in San Jose. We spent some time exploring the city, shopping in the artisan markets and dancing. We reunited with our host families on Saturday and returned to class on Monday, ready to take on the last few weeks of the course.

And now we're here in La Selva!

Here, There and Back Again

Our midterms are over! We are just days away from a week of fall break – and I anxiously anticipate the opportunity to go dancing again at Castro’s.

Palo Verde is beautiful. There are tons of animals - lots of birds in the wetlands, crazy looking turkeys in the woods. Monkeys, peccary, mapaches, iguanas all chill out around the station. While studying in the dining hall, which is a building that abuts the woods and is screened on three sides like a porch, it’s really easy to spot animals just roaming around. While walking the hundred meters from the library to the dining hall for lunch the other day, I crossed paths with three iguanas sunning themselves on the sidewalk. Crazy stuff. Here we are not enclosed by the jungle, so from the station, you can see out over the wetland all the way to the mountains across the river. I appreciate being able to see long distances – that’s definitely something I take for granted in the prairie of west central Minnesota.

We had a great post-exam adventure this afternoon, all in the name of statistics. We have a couple statistics lessons with Mahmood, the head scientist at the Palo Verde station while we’re here. In order to practice statistical tests in the classroom, we need some data to work with, so we went out and collected snails and dragonfly larvae in the swamp today. But this wasn’t just any data collection. There were no boats involved, only us, in our trusty rubber boots and field clothes traipsing through swamp, sometimes up to our waist wading through lily pads, cattails and Lord knows what else was with us in that water. A couple people, including one of the professors, lost their balance and fell in! It was a blast. Kind of makes me want to be an ecologist – I would totally love to work outside and get dirty on a regular basis.

The rusticity of Palo Verde, with no hot water, lots of bugs, mosquito nets and a really slow internet connection is a significant contrast to our trip to Nicaragua. We stayed in Granada (the oldest city in Latin American, I’ve been told, circa 1500-something), which is a beautiful city with a cobblestone boulevard and brightly colored colonial buildings. One of the first things I noticed upon crossing the border into Nicaragua was how many people were on bikes. Transportation via non-automobile in Costa Rica (and particularly in San Jose) is so dangerous, and all of you at home know how I’ve grown to love depending on my bicycle and my own two feet for transportation. In this way, the pedestrian culture of Nicaragua appealed to me a lot, and in Granada itself, people on foot and bicycle far outnumbered those in cars. So refreshing! We stayed in a beautiful old hotel that must have been converted from an old convent – stone and brick masonry with arched doorways and windows and candles everywhere. We enjoyed all of our meals in an open-air dining room facing Calle de la Calzada and one of Granada’s several cathedrals. It was very European and we savored every moment of the luxurious experience.

The weather in Nicaragua was significantly hotter than the places we’ve been in Costa Rica. I feel like I may have lost half my body weight in sweat in the five days we were there. It was quite the change. It’s also quite hot in Palo Verde. Cold showers are actually a pleasant experience after returning from a hike or a romp through the swamp.

Even though we were in areas of Nicaragua that weren’t particularly poverty-stricken, it was still apparent that Nicaragua is a much poorer country than Costa Rica. Everywhere we went there were people begging for money and food, many of which were children. Coupled with our exposure to some of the more opulent houses on the isletas in Lago Nicaragua, you could get a vague sense of how the country works socio-economically: a small number of families own all of the country’s big economic industries and in turn, have the political leverage to have their way, while the poor majority persists without much agency to change their circumstances.

We also had the chance to visit Nicaraguan health facilities to make comparisons with the Costa Rican system. On our way to Granada, we stopped in Rivas where we had a chance to see a couple a clinic and a Nicaraguan EBAIS. We also visited the Ministry of Health in Managua where all the national laboratories are. It’s interesting because on a superficial level, the health systems in Costa Rica and Nicaragua look very similar. The hierarchy of local primary care feeding into a system of regional secondary care and national tertiary care is essentially the same. The difference comes in how care is offered and the resources available. The Ministry of Health provides the system of universal care offered to all people without regard to social security status, while a social security system is available to those who are gainfully employed. The problem of sustainability is inherent in Nicaragua’s health system. With the country depending on foreign aid for 80% of its national income, health services are maintained and supported financially by outside sources. The hope is, naturally, that with this foreign assistance, Nicaragua can get on its feet politically and economically so that it can start producing and providing for itself. Costa Rica started in the same place in the evolution of its health care system, which was supported by foreign aid in its infancy and is now maintained entirely by the country itself. Not all hope is lost in the poverty that plagues Nicaragua today. They just need some positive forces in those places where changes are made.

In fact, we learned that Nicaragua has a lot of potential as a country. The cities are much more beautiful than those in Costa Rica because the colonial architecture has been maintained to a much higher degree – it has much more historical character than any town I’ve seen in Costa Rica. The natural resources in Nicaragua are equal or greater than those in Costa Rica – the entire Atlantic half of the country is jungle, there are rivers and lots of volcanoes. The opportunities to take advantage of these resources for energy, export and ecotourism are significant, but no one has ever managed it properly to reap economic benefits for the country as whole.

From the few Nicaragüenses I spoke with while we were there, despite the political and economic garbage that keeps the general population in poverty, there seems to be a fair amount of national pride. One guy I talked to was telling me how he was studying to be an engineer and will be going to Canada at year’s end for a post-graduate program. I asked if he would return to Nicaragua after he’s finished and he gave a resounding yes. He was also telling me about all the cool places Nicaragua has to offer to visitors. Granted, this is just the testimony of one person, but the spirit of pride and the willingness to work for the betterment of one’s country are essential complements to the developmental aid that Nicaragua currently receives.

On our way from Nicaragua to Palo Verde, we stopped in Liberia in Guanacaste to visit the Proyecto Epidemiológico Guanacaste (known in the English literature as the Guanacaste Project). I was excited for this visit because I had read about this project in my literature searching at DMU this summer. This project, funded by the National Cancer Institute, was the first to establish the causal link between human papillomavirus and cervical cancer, and they did so through a massive cohort study. They basically followed every woman in Guanacaste (maybe not every one, but they had a sample of <10,000 women). A couple of the epidemiological researchers lectured us on the natural history of HPV and the research that has gone into developing the vaccines. What’s ironic is that despite this research that has been so important in controlling cervical cancer through the development of the vaccine, the vaccine is not included in the list of vaccines made available by the Caja system in Costa Rica. Translation: if you want the HPV vaccine, you pay all $360 out of pocket to get it.

I asked one of the epidemiologists if the Guanacaste Project is involved in any public health initiatives to get the vaccine distributed in Costa Rica in any way. She said no. I know GP is a privately-funded research organization, but it still seems silly to me that the ongoing research undertaking is not doing anything to make the outcomes of this research available to the people of the country where the research is being conducted. They are conducting clinical trials there, and the people that participate in those studies are taken care of and definitely benefit from their participation. but on a population level, it seems so backwards. If your research indicates benefits to widespread vaccination, then why do they stay in their labs and not get out into the community and find ways to distribute it? It boils down to money, cost-effectiveness, funding, resources, but that doesn’t make it any less backwards.

In summary, we have less than 24 hours left in Palo Verde. Three (or four?) more academic commitments before we hop the bus back to San Jose for fall break. Mid-semester really crept up on us, and I’m not sure how I feel about being half done with my Costa Rican experience. However, looking forward, we have a good week ahead of us. I will be hunkering down in San Jose with three of my classmates, and taking overnight trips to Volcano Arenal and Sámara, a beach on the Nicoya Peninsula. We will be back in San Jose on the weekends to aprovechar of the opportunity to go dancing (naturally). Should be a fun week. I will be sure to update at least once while we’re adventuring around.

Sigamos en la locura

Today we’re recovering from another intense week of class, although luckily, it was not spent entirely in the classroom. Today, on our only rest day, I slept in for only the third time since arriving in Costa Rica and incidentally missed breakfast, but really, I think I needed sleep this morning more than I needed breakfast.

Our learning this week consisted of a laundry list of topics including: non-timber and animal forest products, methods of data analysis in ethnobiology, basics in tropical forest ecology, bioprospecting, malaria, tuberculosis, leishmania, lab observation of the three parasites responsible for malaria, TB and leishmania and a discussion on the efficacy of foreign aid on health in developing countries. We also went out and made our own sampling plots for ethnobiology in the garden, collected samples, identified them and will analyze them in the next couple days and got some new and different exposure to Costa Rica's indigenous people.


Tuberculosis = red in a sea of blue. Do you see it?



Collecting plant samples in the garden




We visited an indigenous group on Thursday, the Boruca. This visit was an interesting contrast to the visit we made to the Ngöbe village earlier in the semester. On the whole, the Boruca have adapted very well to life in modern society while still maintaining their cultural identity. They earn their livelihood by selling handcrafts, which they market primarily to tourists. Their trademark products are hand-carved wooden masks. Traditionally, these masks symbolize demons (or diablos) and are used in a three-day ceremony that starts on December 30th, but since they started selling these masks to tourists, they have evolved from their religious symbolism. They are now painted very colorfully and often include quintessential Costa Rican symbols like tree frogs and toucans. They also weave, making purses, table runners, scarves and belts from fibers that they dye themselves with natural plant and animal dyes they collect from their surroundings. They demonstrated natural dying techniques over wood-burning fire and allowed us to dye pieces of our own clothing if we wanted.

I spotted Boruca, the town, from the road. Do you see it?



Some results



Dyed yarn, naturally



The Dying Setup




Boruca Masks, for sale



Though it’s easy to see how the Boruca have adapted to modern society and to subsequently conclude that they’ve sold out and sacrificed their cultural values in order benefit from tourists’ curiosity, there are many aspects of Boruca culture that remain intact. The native language is taught to children in school, the handcraft traditions are passed down generations and ceremonial traditions, like the balie de diablos with the masks persist. It’s also clear that, in general, the Boruca people (and their dogs) are a much healthier community than the Ngöbe community that we’ve observed. This state of community health seems to be due to multiple factors, arising from a healthier diet (more protein, less starch), a viable economic livelihood, and an educational system that sends young Boruca to university. And many of them return to Boruca to serve the community with the skills they gleaned from their education – an indication, I believe, of the strength of their cultural identity despite the pervasion of mainstream culture.

Yesterday, we entertained two Ngöbe visitors. Don Alejandro and Doña Maria are from La Casona, the Ngöbe territory that we visited earlier in the semester. Don Alejandro is a traditional healer in his village and Doña Maria is a midwife. We had the chance to ask them questions about their practices, the cultural ideas behind their practices, and how they relate to conventional medical practices. We also went out to our sampling plots with Don Alejandro and asked him what he knew about the usefulness of the trees we sampled. In the afternoon, Doña Maria opened shop selling from her collection of handcrafts including traditional Ngöbe dresses, then they roasted cacao beans for us.



Roasting Cacao



Traditional Ngöbe Dress: the latest fashion trend in our class




Last night, three of us went out to a small bar in San Vito. It was packed with Ticos and even though there were just three of us, we were most certainly a spectacle. Everyone in San Vito seems to know everyone, so when strangers come into town, it’s painfully obvious. When we arrived, there was really bad karaoke, but thankfully, the music evolved into something a little more dance-friendly which was much more enjoyable. Even though San Vito doesn’t have much to offer in terms of weekend entertainment, by the end of the week it’s almost necessary to go out and get off-station for sanity’s sake. It’s certainly nice having all of our activities in one place during the week, but the lack of variety gets wearisome – especially when there’s not much opportunity to take advantage of the outdoor opportunities available at the station. Sadly, I have not been down to the river or on any of the hiking trails at Las Cruces since we arrived almost two weeks ago, and unless I find some time today, I probably won’t before we leave on Wednesday. Goes to show just how much of our time here is already spoken for when we can’t even get out on the trails that are right in front of our noses.

Looking ahead to this coming week, we’ve got several assignments due, including our final research proposals and our analyses for our ethnobiology sample plots. Our research group will also be going out to a Finca Sana on Tuesday evening to observe the data collection for the survey we’re going to help analyze. On Wednesday, we’re leaving Las Cruces for San Jose to spend the night before heading to Nicaragua for a few days at 4 am on Thursday morning. Following a few days in Nicaragua, we’ll be traveling to OTS’ field station in Palo Verde National Park in Guanacaste. We spend another handful of days in Palo Verde where we’ll take our midterms (yes, midterms) before they let us loose on fall break on October 11. The next two weeks will be busy, and will go by fast for sure. It should be interesting, and I’ll do my best to post accounts of our adventures in these places.

And here I am, sitting at the top of the waterfall where we ate lunch in Boruca. Just as evidence that yes, I am in Costa Rica and no, I'm not always behind the camera!

Changed Comment Settings

FYI: If you don't have a Google account but want to leave a comment on any of my entries, you should be able to now. Let me know if you can't :)

Putting the Intense in Intensive

Our first week back in Las Cruces has been full. Full of lectures, full of reading, full of discussion as well and conception and organization of our research ideas into proposals. Our days are long, with class from 8 am until 8 pm (sometimes even 9 pm) six days a week. Admittedly, we get short breaks throughout the day, but when class adjourns for the last time at 8:30 pm and only then do we have the chance to start our fifty page reading for the next morning, it feels a little overwhelming sometimes.

Everything we're learning is fascintating. We had a really good discussion on ethical research. We are considering the validity of non-empirical medical practices in other cultures (cool, related article here). We watched a video about the public health rock stars who were on the ground working to eradicate small pox in the 1970s. We've been hearing lectures on all sorts of tropical diseases and delving into plant identification and collection techniques and cultural sensitivity issues in ethnobiology.

Clearly, the volume of information we've received this week is rather large (I've taken 35 pages of notes since Tuesday), and this is great in the sense that there are lots of interesting points to ponder, but at the same time, as a slow and methodical learner, I have found it difficult to really absorb what I'm learning on a deeper level (the way I like to learn), because there simply isn't time to sit and ruminate on what I learn because we are always moving quickly on to the next subject, the next topic of discussion or the next activity.

Just days after arriving in San Vito, I found myself missing immersion into Tico culture that was characteristic of our home stays in San Jose. I crave the challenge of being in a place where I cannot fall back on my English. At this stage in my acquisition of the Spanish language, the only way I'm going to improve is if I don't have the option of reverting to English in order to communicate my thoughts. Studying with American students has been great; I enjoy my classmates a lot. I'm thankful to have people here that I can communicate easily with when I need to, but this experience, in which we exist predominantly in a buffered cultural environment (a Gringo bubble, so to speak) has also reaffirmed my desire to experience a culture by immersion into it. I envision this desire being fulfilled in the future through service in the Peace Corps.

Among other things, I'm starting to miss certain foods that are staples of my diet at home. In the past week, I have craved macaroni and cheese, hamburgers, pesto, pasta in general and temperate fruits (peaches, berries and Minnesota apples). Rice is getting old. It's a treat when the ladies at the dining hall serve pasta at the station, and today for lunch, they made fresh homemade pizza. Muuuuuy rico.

Since it takes so long to upload videos onto my blog posts, I decided to try another strategy to let you see short videos I've taken while in Costa Rica. My solution: YouTube. Enjoy.

Also, I added some more photos to my Photobucket page yesterday and added some titles and descriptions to the ones that were already uploaded. See the entry below for the link. I don't think you need me to post it again, do I?

Photobucket Link

I've loaded a bunch of pictures up on Photobucket.com. They're not all posted yet, but I'm working on it. The volume of pictures I've taken in my first (almost) month in Costa Rica seems a little excessive, but hopefully you will enjoy them!

And hopefully this link works.

Finale in San Jose and Back to the Sticks

We arrived back in Las Cruces yesterday afternoon after a long and uneventful bus ride from San Jose. It is good to be back at the station where our class is living together again, we have reliable internet in our house and we just walk downstairs to go to class. I am sharing a room with my dancing buddies, Rachel and Victoria, and am looking forward to two weeks of this rooming situation. However, we awoke early this morning to take showers and brush our teeth only to find that water didn’t come out of the faucets in any of the showers or the sinks. Welcome to pura vida in the sticks – hopefully we’ll have water again before day’s end.

Our stay in Las Cruces is going to be interesting, but busy. We picked up Hector, our ethnobiology professor yesterday on the way to the station. We start with his first lecture this morning and our activities for the rest of September include some interesting ethnobiology-related field trips to herbaria and indigenous communities. We also are going to be nailing down our topics for our first set of research projects this week. Dr. Ortiz, the health director for the Coto Brus area who brought us to see the barracks in the coffee plantation and to the other Ngöbe territory is going to construct a list of possible research projects that we can choose from if we don’t already have one in mind. Its a really cool opportunity to have his input. He really understands the health needs of this area, and if any of us execute projects that he suggests, we’ll be providing him with data that he can actually use in the future. Its very cool to be in a place where we have such a reliable connection to the community and its needs.

Although I’m very excited to be back at Casa Wilson, living with my classmates again, it was bittersweet to leave San Jose. I was just getting adapted to getting around by bus and taxi, getting to know the geography of the city a little better and feeling more and more comfortable with my host family.

On Saturday, I celebrated my birthday Costa Rica-style by going to school. Yes, we have school most Saturdays. In the morning, we drove to Heredia to visit the Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBIO) that maintains a park with a butterfly garden, snake, frog and tarantula exhibits and areas that represent the various ecosystems found in Costa Rica. They collaborate with researchers and volunteers in order to catalog and document the diversity of species found in Costa Rica, and they have a free database available to the public via their website. While we were there, we visited the butterfly garden, saw iguanas just cruising around the park, saw snakes, tarantulas and poison dart frogs (all in cages). Some really cool stuff – and they brought out a baby boa constrictor for us to hold, and Mumsy, no joke, I held the snake all by myself :) You would have either been proud or screaming. I don’t know which. I have proof.



Our afternoon was spent at the OTS office listening to lectures about viruses and bacteria that cause diarrhea and discussing issues in vaccine distribution around the world. We were learning about diarrhea in preparation for a lab that we are going to start this afternoon. Mariace stopped at the San Vito hospital last night to pick up some caca for us to test in lab today. Should be interesting. We also had birthday cake at the OTS office on Saturday – it was sad to cut up such a happy looking pastry.




I went out to dinner with a couple girls after class. We went to an Italian place near Universidad Costa Rica that my host family told me about. We ate really tasty pasta and pizza – a nice reprieve from la comida tipica of Costa Rica. We all shared a piece of cheesecake for dessert. The girls sang to me for my birthday, and when the waiter heard, he brought over a candle, put it in our half-eaten piece of cheesecake, lit it and took pictures for us.



The highlight of the day was, naturally, going out dancing at Castro’s. Rachel did my hair for me and we met up with most of the class there. It was a really busy night at Castro’s. At one point there was hardly any room to move on the dance floor, but it was still a blast. I danced with a really nice Tico for most of the evening. It was definitely a birthday to remember, and a good way to bid farewell to San Jose before returning to the sticks of Coto Brus.

After arriving in Las Cruces yesterday, we had some free time to kick around the soccer ball a couple of guys bought in San Jose, and after dinner the group went into town for the Independence Day festival in San Vito. There was crowd gathered in the street in the center of town and they were sending off groups of kids to carry the torches to the nearby towns to symbolize the torch-carrying that brought the news of independence all the way from Guatemala. People in the crowd brought homemade lanterns, and after all the send offs happened, there was music playing. We started dancing in the middle of the crowd of Ticos and quickly become the center of attention with people circling around, taking pictures and watching without joining in. They were clearly missing out on the fun, although we got one Tica to join us.

18 Hours of Veritable Costa Rica: Written September 6, 11:00 am

The last 18 hours have been full of good Costa Rican experiences. Yesterday was Maria, my host mom’s birthday. She spent the latter half of this week preparing for the party she was hosting to celebrate with her friends and family. She moved all of the furniture out of the living room, cleaned the floor and set up table and chairs for twenty (or so) people. She planned to feed her guests tea, bocas and then a meal of chicken lasagna, salad and a cake from Giacomin (famous Italian pastelería in San Pedro). We had class at OTS all day, so I arrived late to the festivities, but when I arrived, I asked where I could dish up a plate of food for myself. Maria told me not to be silly, to sit down and to wait for the waiter to bring me my plate of food. I sat down with Caroline, the British woman who rents the apartment next door (who was thrilled to see a friendly English-speaking face when I arrived). I enjoyed my meal with a glass of wine and absorbed the spirit of the celebration until the mariachi band walked in. They played a selection of songs, took requests and got Maria and all her friends singing and dancing along. And a little later, Marcela busted out her belly-dancing outfits and demonstrated for everyone. It was quite a spectacle I wasn’t expecting at all. It was no wonder that José and Mauricio, Maria's husband and son had escaped to another room in their house. Kind of a hen party. Oh, and the cake was fabulous.

Maria’s guests left around seven, which gave me the chance to go meet my classmates at the bar down the street to watch the Costa Rica vs. Mexico soccer match. I heard about this game a couple weeks ago from Maria. I immediately wanted to look into trying to get tickets to go see it live, but Jorge told us that all the tickets sold out two months ago because Costa Rica-Mexico is such a bitter rivalry. It’s so fun to be in a place where people actually care about soccer. All day long we saw people everywhere sporting red and blue national team jerseys. Taxi drivers drove with Costa Rica flags waving out their windows. Many restaurants and businesses hung banners or flags proclaiming their pride for their team. People generally admitted that Costa Rica’s chances of winning were not terribly high (Mexico has won the majority of their previous meetings), but in many cases, that did not put a damper on the country’s enthusiasm for its team. Turns out that Costa Rica’s defense got severely outplayed by Mexico’s strikers and they were never able to generate any particularly strong attacks, but really, it was fun being at the bar with the game playing on all of the TVs with people cheering for their team regardless of the game’s odds.

After the game was over, I went out dancing at Castro’s with Rachel and Victoria. We went out on Thursday night, but had to leave just as things started picking up in order to get enough sleep before our 8am class on Friday. With a rest day today (Sunday), we were free to stay out a little later last night. Castro’s is a super fun place to go – there is a huge dance floor with Latin music all night, every night, and people are there to dance. It’s great fun. I’m reaping the benefits of dance classes at the language academy, and I even picked up some cumbia last night, which was so fun. Like I said before, it’s really great to go out with a small group of friends because when we go, we don’t feel like obnoxious tourists. Sometimes we’re the only Americans there, and that’s really cool.

We only have three days left of language school (a very good thing, in my opinion) and just one week left in San Jose before we return to Las Cruces next Sunday (I think). I need to be sure to bring my camera with me this week, so I can capture important aspects of life in San Jose (language school, my Costa Rican family and their house, bus rides home in insane traffic, crappy drivers in general, la Universidad Costa Rica, Mall San Pedro – which is quite a monstrosity, but right down the street from language school, all of these things) to share with you.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that.

Today was a better day in language school - probably the best yet, in fact. The quality of the day was definitely associated with the amount of time we spent in the classroom with barred windows (aka la cárcel). We spent two hours over at the Universidad de Costa Rica, practicing our interviewing skills in Spanish. This exercise brought me back to the work I did at DMU this summer - feeling like I'm preying on unsuspecting victim, but the Ticos at the Universidad are so cooperative and happy to help, even when I stumble over my words in Spanish. Its nice to be outside during the day and to be interacting with Ticos and absorbing the environment at UCR.

After trying to coordinate evening activities among our class as a whole, trying to keep a group of 19 classmates together, happy and safe at San Jose bars and venues is more work than its worth. I think people are starting to realize that going out in smaller groups is a little less obnoxious. In smaller groups, we don't become the gringo majority in any given bar. Last night, I went with a friend to the Jazz Cafe in San Pedro. The walls of the place are lined with grisly busts of famous jazz artists, but the live music last night, although good, was not actually jazz. We chatted with another English speaker who was volunteering in a San Jose orphanage, and we were all thoroughly amused when the band busted out the Beatles' Come Together.

We have yet to find a good place for Latin dancing. All of the bars we've seen either don't play music for dancing or play reggaeton, which is not my style. My host sister told me that none of the jovenes (young people) dance salsa or merengue, but I don't care. My classmate, Rachel, who has been doing research at La Selva all summer and is basically ready to become a naturalized Tica has a little bit of conocimiento (knowledge) of the Latin dancing scene in San Jose, and a couple of us are meeting tonight to check it out.

Random fact: The guy that teaches dancing at the language academy is a contestant on the Tico equivalent of Dancing with the Stars, which is less surprising when you consider how small of a country Costa Rica is, but still.

This video is one I took when we visited the Ngobe village in Coto Brus a while back. I was sitting in the sala of the medicine man's casa, trying to listening to what he was telling a group of my classmates. While I was doing this, one of the many chickens that wander the village, walked into the sala, poked around for a minute and then left. At the time, I was amused by the wandering chicken and decided to record a video. The cool thing about the video is you can hear the medicine man talking in Spanish in the background. The image of the wandering chicken and the sage advice of the local medicine man are an interesting juxtaposition.

*Note* Video upload took too long before they kicked us out of language school. I will upload it to this post another day.

City Living

We are sufficiently settled with our families in San Pedro - a suburb of San Jose - home of Mall San Pedro, Universidad de Costa Rica, Universidad Latina, and the Costa Rican Language Academy. Im writing from an internet cafe down the street from my homestay, and my computer has a really tricked out keyboard. Ive been here for an hour and a half and only just recently found the keystroke for the question mark and have yet to find the one for an apostrophe. So I apologize ahead of time for the lack of punctuation.

My host family is very nice, as you can probably imagine. More often than not, my host mom, Maria feeds me way too much, but in my defense I have been quite sedentary and without much of an appetite since arriving. Their daughter Marcela is very nice, but pretty quiet, and is very busy. She works full-time as a pharmacist and is going to school again for a degree in business administration. We watched the Tico equivalent of Dancing With The Stars last night after dinner (and ironically, the guy that teaches Latin dance at the language academy was competing! Small world... ). Maria fries me two eggs with ham every morning with toast, juice and tea. Its a breakfast muy rico, and a lot of my classmates say they do not get that much, so I think I just got a good mama Tica. I catch a bus to get to school right down the street. The bus system is pretty good here, apparently, and very cheap (175 colones per ride - about 30 cents). The city is very hard to navigate, but I am getting to know it little by little. Its difficult because streets are generally not named, houses do not have numbers (my address determined by the neighborhood in which I live and the supermarket that is across the street), and streets are not at all grid-like. Very confusing. I walked around this afternoon with one of my classmates and the map we got from the language school to try to get an idea of where our other classmates were living.

A group of us went on a day trip up to Sarapiqui (tropical lowlands) yesterday for a canopy tour and horseback riding. Included in the cost of the language academy is one of several excursions - so we had a great day of free fun including a very good lunch. I am excited to return to that region of the country at the end of October. We were close to the OTS La Selva Station yesterday, and it is a whole different kind of beautiful that I am excited to spend some time in. Even though we have only been in San Jose since Wednesday, leaving the chaos of the city for something a little more beautiful and rural was a big relief. Costa Rica is better seen from the boonies - this big, confusing city is a little much for me.

Language school is okay. It feels much more like school than going on field trips and listening to lectures at the station. We sit in the classroom all day, and I am bored with it already. It all feels like things I have done before in my grammar and language classes at UMM, and since I have been done with those for almost two years, the class feels like a waste of time. The best thing about it so far is that we are learning some medical terminology. I will try to bear with it this week and not have such a negative attitude.

But seriously, if thats all I have to complain about, I think I am doing just fine. Pura vida, man.

Interacting with the Indigenas

The past couple days have been incredibly interesting.

Dr. Ortiz, the director of the Area Salud Coto Brus has been teaching us the past two days about the indigenous Ngobe (pronounced no-bay) population that lives in and seasonally migrates to this region of Costa Rica. We visited one of the Ngobe territories yesterday and spent the morning on an assignment with Dr. Ortiz. We were paired off and sent into the village with the task of observing one of several issues (from infrastructure to clothing) that affect community health risks. My partner and I were commissioned to observe animals in the community - where were they, how did they look, what were they doing, etc. At first we were amused by what we saw: chickens, turkeys and pigs roaming free range around the village. We spoke with some Ngobe people asking who owned the animals, if they were pets, what they used them for if they weren't pets, and if they were allowed in the houses. Our most noteworthy (and rather obvious) observations were that a) the animals (especially chickens) were everywhere, b) they left their waste wherever they pleased and c) although the Ngobes, in general, had shoes to wear, many didn't, so they were essentially walking in animal waste (holy parasitic infection, batman!).

Beyond our assignment, we got an eyeful of the limited infrastructure of the community. The best way to get to the residential part of the village from the road was to cross the river on a rickety bridge straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. Potable water was not available, but water from a contaminated mountain spring was pumped in from a hose that was also precariously strung over the river. There were power lines in the village, but generally no electricity in the houses - so no refrigeration or lights. Houses were generally jerry-built structures made from wood posts and corrugated zinc panels with dirt floors, indoor kitchens and no chimneys. Oh, and obviously all of the small kids were constantly asking for their pictures to be taken.

The poverty of this community was evident just from making some superficial observations walking through the village, but talking with Dr. Ortiz, who is known in Costa Ricas Caja system as the one who fights to serve the indigenous communities adequately, foster cultural understanding in order to eliminate health disparities between the indigenous and general Tico populations. There are several interesting and very inspiring (for me at least) articles from Nación, the Costa Rican newspaper that pay attention to Dr. Ortiz's work and public health matters related to the Ngobe people. You can find them here, here, and here. The articles are in Spanish, so if you know any Spanish at all, it may be worth your while to check them out. I'm already discussing some of these issues with one of my classmates as a potential direction for our research practicum!

This morning, we spent time at the Jefatura de Area Salud Coto Brus (health headquarters for Coto Brus county, which is where San Vito and Las Cruces are located) learning more about navigating cultural differences in trying to evaluate and meet the health needs of the indigenous communities. This has included interesting discussions about vertical deliveries (this topic has come up in discussion three times in the past couple days - including late night discussions in our bunks), and how western medicine customarily performs horizontal deliveries for the physician's convenience only. Another issue has been with the community's contaminated water sources. When they found out the water was contaminated, Dr. Ortiz instructed the Ngobe to boil it before consuming it (for obvious reasons), but they refused because of a cultural belief that the water is alive and boiling it will kill the essence of the water. Problem. In order to communicate the importance of this problem, they told the Ngobe that, if the water is alive, it is sick and needs to be treated, so now they treat the water with chlorine tablets furnished by the government. Other issues involve navigating conflicts between western medicine and traditional healing by the Ngobe elder (who some of my classmates talked to for a couple hours when we visited the village!).

The importance of evaluating what these people need based on their culture, and not ours, was central to the discussion. Many of the houses in the village were furnished by a governmental grant in order to fulfill the constitutional obligation that every Costa Rican should have a decent house. What is decent for the Ngobe is very different from what is decent for a Tico. The houses that the government furnished for the Ngobe had indoor bathrooms (which are instead used as storage space because it is culturally inappropriate for them to go to the bathroom indoors) and no ventilation or chimneys for the indoor kitchens. As a result of poor ventilation, respiratory illness are one of the principle Ngobe ailments. Something more akin to the houses the Ngobe used to build for themselves, with thatched roofs with a hole for smoke to escape, would have been a more culturally-sensitive choice for the government to furnish for these people.

Another group of Ngobe are migratory and move from Panama to Costa Rica every September to pick coffee in the thousands of acres of coffee plantations in Coto Brus. Dr. Ortiz took us to visit a couple of these plantations this afternoon to see the conditions in which these people come to work. The ramshackle huts and bare bones barracks that these people pile into for six months of the year are sub-human. They provide little more than a roof overhead and because of ridiculously high occupancy, are a breeding ground for infectious disease. The ethical issues of this situation run really deeply into economics and politics and have a huge significance public health-wise especially with respect to H1N1 vigilance. Many of the migratory Ngobe don't carry papers, but they are allowed to cross the border because they play an important economic role in the coffee industry (whose plantations turn a multi-million dollar profit each year). There is little done in terms of holding plantation owners accountable for the working conditions of their trabajadores, even though every presidential candidate in the past ten years has promised to rectify the situation. So there is a lot at work here, and actually, one of the articles linked above goes a little more in depth about this issue of the migratory Ngobe in particular. This is the issue that my classmate Chelsea and I are interested in exploring more as a research topic. We'll hopefully be able to dialogue more with Dr. Ortiz, as he has played a major role in fighting for the rights of the Ngobe and trying to get some political accountability for the sake of human rights and for the public's health, as well.

Have I told you all that I'm loving this? Because I am.

We leave for San José tomorrow morning, changing gears slightly and going to language school for two weeks. After the two weeks, we'll return to Coto Brus and Las Cruces for several weeks to start our first bits of our own research, but we'll have returned with valuable improvement in our Spanish to facilate effective communication in our research endeavors. I'm excited to meet my host family and get a better, more accurate taste of life in San Jose - and finally start speaking regularly in Spanish! Consequently, my internet access may be a little more sparse in San Jose than it is here at the station because most families don't have internet in their houses, so if I don't post much in the next two weeks, that's why. I will do my best, though. I feel like we'll be able to access the internet at the language school, but we never know anything too far in advance down here because we're living the pura vida.

Hasta lo proximo!

Día de Descanso

Today is our first day of rest since arriving on Monday. Even though we don't have an class obligations today, meal times are still the same, so I, along with a couple classmates, rose just before 7am to get some breakfast in the comedor. Getting up before 7am every morning hasn't been as difficult for me as I anticipated. Maybe its because I got up early for most of the summer, but its definitely good to get up and not feel lethargic and then be tired by 10:30/11:00 pm. Also, the sun sets at 6pm here, so the early rising and setting of the sun works in our favor.

After breakfast, five of us took a hike down the Rio Java trail at the station. And right at the beginning of the hike we saw toucans!



We also went on a frog hunt last night - they were very noisy but not easy to find.






And I took a video of some cutter ants on the forest floor for your viewing pleasure:




This afternoon I have some work to do for class (writing survey questions, lab report, read articles), hope to get more pictures posted online - I'll be sure to post a link, read for pleasure (started the Brothers Karamazov yesterday) and go to mass in town with a couple others. Then we're right back into the chaos tomorrow morning!

Health Care: U.S. vs. Costa Rica

A commitment to solidarity = the primary difference between the health systems in these two countries, according to this article from the Tico Times.

Visit to the EBAIS: Observations

We went on our first class-related field trip this morning. It was a medical mystery tour of sorts: all Jorge told us of our excursion was that we were going to visit the EBAIS. He did not tell us what an EBAIS was – only that we were going, he wanted us to talk with people there, observe and try to get an idea of what it was. It was another precariously bumpy ride through the mountains in the back of the OTS 4X4. The mountains are so beautiful – one of these days I want to take a walk down the road to San Vito and bring my camera. Pictures taken from the car are not quite adequate. Upon arrival, all eighteen of us gringos got out of the car, standing out like a sore thumb among all the Ticos and Ticas.

The EBAIS is a blue building in the mountains where people from 20-30 km surrounding area come for primary health care. The acronym EBAIS stands for equipo básico de atención integral en salud (basic team of primary health care). It is essentially a clinic with a doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist, a medical records clerk and a technician that makes visits patients to make sure they are cared for (they go on motorcycles and give vaccines - a couple of the guys marveled at the glory of this job). There are over 800 EBAIS facilities in Costa Rica. They are the baseline referral point for more specialized care in the bigger clinics and hospitals, although over 90% of all problems are resolved within the EBAISes themselves.

The EBAISes are evenly distributed geographically throughout the country in a very organized network of care that’s provided through the social security system for all Costa Ricans. This particular EBAIS serves about 2,500 people within a 20-30 km area and sees about 40 patients a day. Most consults are walk-ins, so an early morning rush around 5 am is not atypical. When we arrived, there was a line of people coming out of a salita, a little building attached to the main one. Initially, we deduced from a sign that all those people were presenting with flu symptoms, but later found out that wasn’t true (phew). They were in line to receive powdered milk for their children.

Other interesting tidbits:
• Jorge says, most towns consist of an EBAIS + a church + a soccer field. That’s really all you need, right?
• All Costa Rican physicians are trained initially as general practitioners – all EBAISes have basic obstetrical/gynecological equipment for Pap smears, deliveries and other such basic OB/GYN needs.
• Our other professor, Mariace, who is not an expert on tuberculosis in Costa Rica, but THE expert on tuberculosis in Costa Rica, does not speak of her expertise to her doctor or demand mutual respect as a colleague. Rather she just lets her doctor be her doctor. At her last checkup, he asked her about TB testing, and she said she just laughed to herself because he had no idea how much she new about it.
• Vaccination of children in Costa Rica is completely mandatory by law. Parents cannot keep their kids from getting vaccinated. Jorge cites the importance of herd immunity in public health as the primary reason. If parents do not comply with this rule, authorities will come, handcuff the parents, vaccinate the children, un-handcuff the parents and leave.
• The HPV vaccine is not offered in Costa Rica/not covered by social security. Reasons for this were unclear – something having to do with the vaccine’s effectiveness being limited to women who have never been sexually active. Though this seems bad upon first impression, screening practices for cervical cancer in Costa Rica are good. The EBAISes we visited devote one day a week to Pap smears – and the EBAISes also monitor their patients so closely that it is much more difficult for them to fall through the cracks and not get that important preventive care.
• Doctors are legally obligated to report crimes they come across in their practice (i.e. suspicion or evidence of rape/abuse/domestic violence).

The Poltergeist Leaves Us Powerless

9:30 pm: Reporting from the Wilson House at Las Cruces Biological Station. We lost electricity about ten minutes ago. Word at the station is that Robert and Catherine Wilson, the couple that originally built the house we're staying in and built up the botanical garden that is now part of the station, have been known to be present in their old house, if you catch my drift. So naturally, once the lights go out, the class starts joking about the ghostly apparitions of the Wilsons walking around the house, and the boys obviously proceed to hide behind dark corners with the express purpose of scaring the girls. It's great fun.

For whatever reason, we have no lights, but the wireless router is still in good working condition which is what brings my to my blog tonight. I am in the classroom of the Wilson House, because it's the only place where I get a reliable connection to the internet. My classmate Chelsea is sitting next to me reading our homework assignment by headlamp. We made sure to close the door when we came down here because bats have gotten stuck in here before when the door wasn't closed at night. Welcome to pura vida in Costa Rica!

I compiled a list of things I've noticed about Costa Rica in the last couple days:

• Most establishments (houses and businesses), especially in San Jose, are enclosed by wrought iron fences and sometimes even with coils of barbed wire. Windows and doors have wrought iron bars on them as well. It's very sinister looking, but I assume the latter is so that the houses can be open to air circulation without danger of intrusion by unwelcome guests.
  
• Theres one know on bathroom sinks marked H, but the water is not hot - it's helado (cold). I remember this from the poem H y C we read in Span 3101 that talks about how H and C mean hot and cold on American faucets but helado (cold) and caliente (hot)- it's backwards - on Latin American facuests. The poem was about how American culture is dominant over Latin American culture - even hegemonic.
  
• Strets are seldom marked with signs, which is frustrating for people like me who like to figure out the geography of a new place. No signs means I need to pull out a map and a compass in order to figure it out.
  
• "No left turn" signs read "No virar a la izquierda." Virar is a Spanish verb I've never seen before.
  
• Phone numbers are eight digits long, and the telecommunication system in Costa Rica is owned by the government. Because of this, foreigners can't purchase cell phones here, but they can rent them for $10/day + usage! What a deal.
  
• Useful fact for navigation: the front doors of churches always face west.
  
• Caskets are not buried - every cemetery I've seen has above ground graves that are almost like mini-mausoleums.
  

First Impressions

We arrived this afternoon at Las Cruces Biological Station after a six-hour drive out of San Jose and through the mountains. It was a sunny morning and the views were spectacular. We stopped for breakfast in the mountains where we stood in the company of clouds and had to put on our warm layers. It started to rain around 11 am and did not let up until about 8:30 pm - which is not uncommon for rainy season in Costa Rica.

On Tuesday, we spent the day at OTS' offices at the University of Costa Rica in San Jose. We met the office staff, our professors and did more formal introductions of ourselves to our classmates. Got the run-down of the semester - our entire schedule got turned upside down from what was advertised in our orientation packets. Everyone is really excited for what we'll be studying this semester. We also took placement tests for Spanish class and got to sit outside, nap, play cards and read during lunch.

We officially start class tomorrow with some afternoon lectures on the history of Costa Rica and a short introduction to microbiology. I'm in the company of some really talented students and faculty. There is no doubt in my mind that the academics here will be a challenge. I'm glad to be in a place where I can completely dive into these topics that are so interesting and not be encumbered by extraneous responsibilities that often spread me thinner than I prefer to be.

I have been journaling some of my thoughts the past couple days, but I do not have my journal with me at the moment. Next time I sit down to blog, I will be sure to transpose some of my journaled thoughts and impressions for your reading enjoyment. All for now!

Mostly Packed and Anticipating

On the patio in my parents' backyard, my dog (and soon later, my mother) just happened upon garter snake hiding under the grill cover. My hates snakes - and unfortunately I have inherited this fear from her as well, but garter snakes will be the least of my worries a week from now. But by then I will have invested in a good, sturdy pair of knee-high rubber snake boots.

My days in Minnesota are coming to an end - I will be embarking on my semester abroad first thing on Monday morning. I fly into San Jose where I will be greeted by program staff, meeting my classmates and spending the night in San Jose for orientation. We will travel to the OTS field station at Palo Verde National Park (found on the map below in the northwest quadrant of the country just north of the Nicoya Peninsula) on Wednesday, August 19 to begin classes.


OTS has three field stations in Costa Rica and we will be staying a couple weeks in each location. The La Selva station is in the northeast quadrant of the country closest to Sarapiqui on the map above (right at the edge of civilization, it seems), and Las Cruces is near San Vito down by Panama in the South Pacific region of the country. We will also spend two weeks near San Jose enrolling in two weeks of intensive language school. During the two weeks of language school, we will stay with Costa Rican families. I will be with the Fernández-de la Mata family. Maria, my Costa Rican mother is a homemaker, and her husband José is a chemist. They have a 28 year old daughter at home, Marcela who works as a pharmacist, and a 32 year old son, Mauricio who visits the family on Saturdays with his wife. I look forward to getting to know this family soon.

My gear and belongings are finding places in my luggage - including my 7.8 lb Manson's Tropical Disease textbook, and I'm excited to get on an airplane for the first time in a long time. I love flying, and haven't done so since I went Ireland with the high school band my junior year at Jefferson.

I will be able to receive mail while I am in Costa Rica, but the program strongly advises against sending packages. Steep charges are assessed just to receive packages in Costa Rica (we're talking $20 - $50 for small packages), but it appears that letters can be sent to me via the following address:

Organización para Estudios Tropicales
Undergraduate Program
Apartado 676-2050
San Pedro 2050
Costa Rica

My coursework this semester will consist of four four-credit classes:

1) Public Health & Tropical Medicine - we will learn about Costa Rica's socialized medical system with field- and classroom-based instruction. We will be visiting clinics and medical facilities to get a first-hand look at how Costa Rica handles health care for their population. We will also learn about the medical practices of indigenous people as well.

2) Research Practicum - we will design, implement our own research projects, individually and in groups, in order to get a better idea of all that is involved in the process of conducting scientific research.

3) Field Ethnobiology - we will study how plants and animals are used medicinally including the spiritual and symbolic roles they play in Costa Rican and indigenous cultures.

4) Culture and Language of Costa Rica - Our homestay in San Jose is part of this course; we will also be learning colloquial terms that are used in medical settings.

All this, I believe, has served to adequately introduce what global health with OTS in Costa Rica is going to be like. I am excited to share this experience with you - and will do my best to keep you up-to-date on what we're doing and learning in our program.

Vayanse con Dios!