My Research

Before I head off for 2 months I decided that I will let you in on what I will be doing with my life on the beach. I have written a 25 page research proposal but I doubt anyone is really interested in reading all that so I shall try to recap. I will be working in Tarcoles on the Pacific Coast, my research focuses on a responsible fishing area and how this area is affecting the economic situation of the people who live there. The local cooperatives ( I will be working with 3) of fishermen were the ones who fought to create the area in order to conserve fish and shrimps for the future. Right now there is a regulation that forces the big shrimp trawlers to not shrimp with in 15m depth of the shore, unfortunately the local fishermen cannot shrimp there either, because the big trawlers have no problem moving farther out and the local fishermen do, they are the only ones being screwed over by their own regulation. But, if they dont conserve the shrimp and fish now their way of life will die out due to overfishing.
           My project is going to focus on this interaction and try to show just how much the fishermen have lost out, I also will be conducting interviews with the fishermen to see how they are feeling about it. In addition to this I will be tracking all the fish that come into the cooperative to see how much money is being made overall, I will then compare it to 2009, right before the area was enacted. Also I will be creating projections for what the future looks like for them in a variety of different situations such as the area goes away and the shrimp boats come back and eat up all the progress that has been made etc. Also I will be looking at the environmental impacts of the area to see if the zone is even effective in conserving the populations that it was designed to protect.
              If i ever get all that done, I plan to use the information to give these fishermen a clearer view of their economic situation and help discover the best alternative for moving forward. This is even more important now because the responsible fishing area goes up for government re-evaluation in August, my research could help the cooperative make its argument to the government about the area stronger. Which is exciting because I get to do something that will actually matter outside of academics.
             Unfortunately the paper portion of my project is kind of a mess because I have like 4 projects within my project which do not exactly cover a specific discipline but we will worry about that in May. I will be attempting to post once a week from this point on however I am sharing a dial-up internet connection on a very old computer with an entire cooperative so we will see how that goes. If you are used to communicating with me through skype or facebook, that will be going away.

Week 3

My home starting March 2nd

Coffee being toasted

I have now completed 3 weeks in Costa Rica! As before a lot happened this week. On Wednesday we went to a coffee plantation which was a tour of the factory, it was really really loud and I understood that it is important to control the humidity in the factory and that the beans need to be dried many times. After the coffee tour we went to a local alternative medicine place where they tell what is wrong with you by reading your energies with a stick... theres more to it than that but I am struggling to describe it. I of course volunteered to lay down on a massage bed in front of about 60 people I don't know and have my energies read. This was a bad life choice as it was discovered that the middle of my forehead contains an energy that relates to my reproductive glands so they stopped and asked me in front of all these people if I was having a hard time getting pregnant. I then got to explain to the people poking me with sticks, my classmates, and a canadian tour group that I am in fact on birth control so were I trying to get pregnant it should be difficult. It was awkward but they found parasites in some people so it could have been worse I suppose. The coffee trip ended with a whole bunch of coffee drinking which was fabulous.

this is the spider I found in my bed
its not dangerous but it is super creepy

Just the view from my house. 

This weekend I visited my field site for the first time. It was a mixed experience. Lets start with the good things, my new host family is very welcoming and well connected to fishing which is what I'm there to study sort of, the house is roughly 50 feet from the ocean (30 at high tide), they have 5 or 6 dogs and a cat that I suspect is part jaguar, and there are scarlet macaws that live naturally in the trees. In terms of bad things, my room is not connected to the house internally so when they lock the main house at night I loose access to the bathroom, there are spiders that are really way too large living in the house because they eat mosquitos, and there are chickens on the property that will be dinner therefore I as a member of the household will be slaughtering chickens. Also there are crocodiles.
On Saturday night I got quite sick probably due to the travel and different bacterias in the water. My San Jose host family seeing that I was about to get quite sick from drinking iffy water offered me

Crocodiles in Río Tarcoles

Lagoon located 1 mountain above Volcan Poas.

"alcacelcer"which turned out to be 1/2 a liter of salt water, I was quite displeased at being deceived by them however it probably kept me from getting even sicker so they have now been forgiven.
Sunday morning I was woken up at around 6 and asked how I was feeling, not well so I was packed into a car and taken to the volcano poas for some fresh air. Even though hiking on a very upset stomach wasn't the most fun thing in the world, the lagoon created by an old volcano at the top of the mountain was beautiful. The volcano is at a higher altitude than san jose so I was told to dress warmly or I would freeze, it was around 55 degrees at the top of the mountain.... there were people there in snow suits. Why anyone in Costa Rica owns a snow suit is beyond me but they looked chilly and told me I was crazy for walking around in a t-shirt and jeans. Unfortunately the volcano was spitting out sulfur smoke stuff and that with the clouds made the actual volcano impossible to see unless you were lucky enough to be looking at it right when a cloud moved, I was not so I did not seen the actual volcano. During my stay here I plan to visit at least 2 other volcanoes so hopefully I have more luck then.
That pretty much wraps up all the fun things I've been up to, my research proposal is almost finished and on Saturday I leave San Jose for Tárcoles where I will be living for 2 months. I am hoping to be able to post from there as I will have access to my e-mail so fingers crossed.

Week 2

Cacao fruit, only the white part is for eating
the middle is the part gets made into
chocolate

Sloth!!!!!!

A lot happend this week, most notably during the week we had a dance class in which we learned salsa, a dance I can't remember the name of, and regatton. We have 2 more classes over the course of the semester so hopefully I will improve. This weekend we had our first outing as an entire group. We left very early friday morning and drove to Puerta Viejo in Limon provence. In Puerto Viejo we visited a cacao farm. Cacao is the plant chocolate is made from and this farm is one of the most productive in Costa Rica. Additionally cacao farms are known for encouraging biodiversity and sloths like to live in them. Consequently, within the first 2 hours of our adventure I tried cacao fruit which is unlike any fruit I have ever tasted but is quite delicious, and I got to hold a sloth!!!! It was adorable. We ended our visit to the chocolate farm with a tour of their refining factory in which cacao seeds are turned into chocolate liquor (the stage before the chocolate is refined into what we know it to be in the states). I purchased 1 kilo of this chocolate and am trying to think up what on earth I am going to do with it.

Following the chocolate farm we went to a banana plantation. This particular plantation was owned by Dole. The banana tour was fascinating  we watched the packaging process of taking the bananas from the bunch and cutting them into appropriate bundles etc. The most interesting part for me was how much was done to make the bananas look pretty, the people at the farm explained that measures such as placing cushions in between the bananas while they are growing does nothing for the flavor or to protect against bruising, it is simply so the bananas look absolutely perfect. Its extremely labor intensive and made me feel a little bad for only selecting perfect looking bananas. The banana trees themselves were amazing too, the entire life cycle of a banana tree is around 40 weeks so once the fruit has been cut off they cut down the tree and the now dead banana tree is fertilizer for the offspring which immediately takes its place. The whole experience felt like being on one of those tv shows that show you how things are made and I enjoyed going behind the scenes in banana production.

The longest bridge in Costa Rica, Tirrimbina

Immediately following the banana tour we drove 3 hours to Tirrimbina, a biological reserve in la Virgen in the north of CR close to the border. At Tirrimbina we had a bat tour in which we learned to disregard the bad reputation bats have and got to see some of the bats that had been captured by researchers earlier that night. The bats were actually super cute.

The next morning we went on a chocolate tour!! on the tour we stopped and went through every step of the chocolate making process sampling each stage of course. At the end I was gifted 15 chocolate seeds which would have bought me a chicken or something back when chocolate seeds were used as a form of currency. After the chocolate tour was over we went for a walk in the rainforest, ate some termites (they taste kinda like pepper and kinda like carrots), and hiked about until about 1 pm when it was time to return to San Jose.

Pretty Orchid

Today I slept in for the first time since Ive been here and went to an orchid fair with my host mom. It was ridiculously pretty, orchids are the national flower here and some truely unique ones grow here including one that has giraffe spots! After the fair we stopped by the local park to listen to a band play. They were a beatles cover band who didn't speak english so some of their lyrics really made my day such as their rendition of "Where is her son" as opposed to "Here comes the sun" We then returned to the house for afternoon coffee and a catch up on my new soap opera "El Clon" which is so incredible that I intend to dedicate an entire post to its glory when the season finale plays.

Week One!

I have officially been here for 9 days!!! I am a master bus taker and have completed one adventure! This weekend I went to Manuel Antonio National Park which is in the south pacific of the country and should be marked on the map that I posted earlier. It was absolutely beautiful!! 12 of the people from the program went and we stayed in a hostel for two nights and went to the park all day Saturday. Manuel Antonio is known for its wildlife and beautiful beaches. I found both of those to be true in terms of wildlife I saw white-faced monkeys, howler monkeys, sloths (pellerozos in spanish which translates to the lazies which I find apt), a very nice iguana ana two very bold raccoons. We woke up way too early (5:30 am) because a guide book said that all the cool animals were up then. I was not disappointed but very very sleepy. A group of us hiked about a mile to the closest beach and set up camp for the day. 8-2 on Saturday was spent swimming, sleeping in the shade, and exploring the park it was a pretty perfect first weekend. I had been warned previously but the animals are really quite bold in the park and two raccoons came up to our stuff while we were sitting there and tried to take someones bag. They were rather persistent and the bag needed to be taken out of their hands before they admitted defeat. I observed a similar episode occur with monkeys. Now that I am back in San Jose most of my time will be dedicated to my research project which is proving rather difficult I am obligated to have an outline of it written by Thursday so I will be able to inform you all in a more eloquent manner later but I will be working with a fishing cooperative on the Pacific coast and will be preforming some sort of economic analysis involving the environmental restrictions but on the fishermen there. Tomorrow I am taking a dance class and this friday I am visiting a chocolate farm!!!!

First Day of Classes

Today was the first day of classes. I am a half hour by bus from my program site which meant that I had to wake up at 6:00 this morning. The bus left at 6:45. This was quite the experience, the bus was so full that I was in charge of holding the doors closed so that no one fell out. After a couple stops it calmed down and I was able to sit down. I'm very glad that my host mom was there because the bus system here is very tricky, everything is marked by colors and if you look very closely by what town you want to get to there are also no assigned stops only buttons that you press when you want the bus to stop. Due to this fact the bus stops every hundred or so yards and moves at a ridiculously slow pace. After the bus we made our way to the ACM building.
               I said goodbye to my host mom and awkwardly sat with everyone. For a precious few minutes we were allowed to speak english but class began rather quickly, the first thing we did was sign a contract promising only to speak spanish on ACM premises, with each other, and with our families. Everyone in the program seems really nice, there are fifteen of us altogether. Because my program is through the associated colleges of the midwest (ACM) all of us come from small liberal arts colleges like Grinnell so we have things to talk about which is nice. Around 11 we took both an oral and a written exam to determine our spanish level which was really no fun at all but, after we were done with the written portion we got to drink coffee which I'm sure I will be addicted to by the end of the week. Lunch immediately followed coffee time which didn't make much sense to me but thats ok. We went down to the university of costa rica campus for lunch which was rice and beans because I could not afford anything else. The lunch vendors only accept colones and the 10,000 bills I brought which are like $20 are outdated and no longer accepted in Costa Rica so I only had about $4 for lunch and I needed to save 1 for the bus back. The good news in this is that I can have a decently filling lunch for only $3 but the bad news is that all my costa rican money is useless. My program director and I are going to the central bank tomorrow to see if I can exchange it.
                The rest of the day was spent getting to know each other and learning about social norms. It was very nice but I am super exhausted. By 4 I was ready for the day to end however my host mom and I needed to buy a cell phone for me which took an hour. But now I'm back at my house trying to figure out how to use it. I'm trying my best not to cheat and switch the settings to English.
               I'm noticing that I've been describing everything as nice, this is because my spanish vocabulary is currently limited and my best descriptor for everything is que linda which translates to how nice therefore when I think back on my day the adjective for describing everything is nice.

Arrival

I have officially arrived in Costa Rica!!!!! Aside from being very tired from the journey yesterday really fun. I was picked up from the airport by my host mother Doris and father Santos. They are both very nice and easy to talk to. I haven't gotten a chance to talk to my host brothers much yet but they seem really great. The first thing we did when I got off the plane was to stop at Super Smart which is literally a Costco. It was eerily familiar even though all of the merchandise was different. After stopping at the store we went back to my host families house to have afternoon coffee. I have never really liked coffee but Costa Rican coffee is amazing. I drink mine with half milk half coffe and it tastes like chocolate so I am very excited about that. My host family really likes the sound of some english words which is funny to me. In spanish animal sounds are slightly different so roosters say tic-a-tee instead of cock-a-doodle-doo so when I explained that to them they honestly laughed for 5 straight minutes while attempting to say it. It seems to be a new favorite because every time I meet someone new in their family they turn to me and say "Emily make the rooster noise" only they say it in Spanish. So far I have met most of the extended family, last night we went to one of their sisters houses to watch their 4 year old play with his new roller skates. My host family doesn't seem to want to call me Emma, when I told them that I went by it they looked at me funny and kept calling me Emily. I think nicknames work differently than they do in the US maybe? I really don't mind going by Emily here so thats ok.
             This morning I woke up for more coffee and then met Doris' sister and sister in law who were playing with parrots in the garden. It did not want to be on my shoulder but they live in the trees so I will have time to befriend one during my stay here. I think in an hour I will be attending mass and then going to get "crepas" for lunch. From what I understand crepas are not in anyway related to crepes and involve rice and beans which is not shocking.
           This post is pretty scattered but so is my life right now so to recap, I have been to a Costco, had really really good coffee twice, I am living in a tropical paradise and there are very pretty birds in the mandarain trees.