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!

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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?