Monteverde

“No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone.  God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”

~1 Corinthians 10:13

So I figured I should share a little of the town I am actually living in, and talk about what I am doing while in Monteverde.  Basically my semester here is broken up into sections that focus of different classes.  It is not a normal schedule by any means.  The field trips are very intensive, and we were all looking forward to coming to Monteverde for a break.  However that was not the case when we arrived.  Frequently I find myself feeling like this when we are assigned yet another essay or presentation and zero time to complete it…

Callicebud caquetensis

Beyond that overwhelming (and all too frequent) sensation, I am keeping busy and learning lots in a schedule jam packed with lectures, activities, and Spanish!  Class eight hours a day quickly wears you out, and homework and studying on top of that have all too often felt impossible.  Yet this too shall pass, and time keeps moving!  Now in just a couple days all our tests will be over and off to the second field trip we go!

Don't let all the pretty colors fool you...

On my first full day in Monteverde, I went into town to church with my friend Heather.  We weren’t really sure what to expect (or how to get there for that matter) and neither of us really spoke much Spanish.  However we made it just in time to see the circus roll into town.  I guess it was “Feliz dia des ninos,” happy kids day or something like that, and so a group from San Jose was up and leading activities for kids in the communities.  All the leaders were dressed up as clowns and farmers (and one farmer clown), and the kids danced and sang and jumped up and down praising God over and over again!  I suppose that was actually a good way for me to experience church in Spanish for the first time, as the children repeated phrases over and over again I began to pick up on a few words.

"Church of God Inc."

The next Sunday when we tired to go to church it was Independence Day, and the whole town was out in the streets celebrating.  When we got to church we found out that the service was moved to the evening so that everyone could go to the parade.

Kids from the schools preformed in the parade

Church that evening also included traditional dances, and it was so great to see the people here celebrating their country.  The message was about how we have been set free in Christ, and that is a gift that is to be celebrated!

One the school spectrum, classes have been going well.  Many of our activities are still very hands on.  We played with dirt last week to learn about characteristics of tropical soils in different ecosystems, and went insect hunting to learn about the inset orders (this lesson taught me that I need some more work with the butterfly net…) We have done various experiments and analysis on topics ranging from composition of the morphospecies of the lichen community to epiphyte presence on trees.  One day we went out and counted water striders in the stream all afternoon.  Field biology is much more wet feet than a lab that is for sure!

Product of insect collecting

Counting water striders

Hard at work?

Other activities have included constructing the food web within a bromeliad on the station wall, and a “poster session” to learn about different plant growth forms in tropical forests.

This activity was more like a middle school art project...

Spanish has been my most difficult class.  Complete immersion, homework heavy on memorization, and a million different ways to conjugate verbs makes for a difficult class on top of my normal school work.  I am in Elementary Spanish 1 at CPI (Centro Panamericano de Idiomas), and though my class moves the slowest I feel like we are flying through the material.  The good news is that I feel that if I could actually learn everything I am expected to know I would be able to get by fairly well in Costa Rica.  I suppose that is the goal by the end of the course!  Here is a picture of my school.

Hopefully after the second field trip I will be able to make some actual progress in Spanish!  Friday we are leaving for another two weeks in the Jungle.  We will be backpacking in the wettest area of Costa Rica during the wettest part of the wet season… Praying for sporadic sun amidst the 9 to 11 meters of rain that this place accumulates a year!