Week and a half of finals, DR prep and a weekend away

Friday the 5^th was Visitors day.  We had a total of one visitor on campus. The landslides, torrential rain, and the resulting national emergency probably didn’t make it easy for people to visit. We had our Spanish class in morning at farmers market in rain. There was loads of fresh produce , delicious looking food, and gorgeous flowers and I would like to go back when don’t have to ask vendors questions for Spanish.

Coffee we picked on Melvin's farm

Saturday brought one of the most unique experiences that I’ve had here. Our outreach in the morning involved us going to the coffee farm of one of our security guards to help him pick coffee. The coffee was ripening faster than he had expected and he didn’t have a lot of help to collect the coffee berries before they all fell. We were all prepared to pick in the rain because the weather had been so bad, but luckily it was sunny. We spent a solid three hours picking coffee in pairs, working our way down a row. Julia and I finished one row and had a basket and a ¼ of coffee berries. Achim, one of our professors, optimistically told us that if we were actually working on a coffee farm we would have made an entire three or four dollars between the two of us for all our work. I guess that’s a summer job that’s better that I don’t have. We walked away from the morning with not only a great experience, but also with orange stained hands, to prove that we picked the coffee.

At the butterfly garden at INBioparque

For the day on Sunday I went into San Jose to visit teacher Cris, our good friend from Costa Rica that we met when we came down here the first time to set up the exchange program. She had plans for us to go to INBioparque, which was a sort of nature park/zoo/farm/exhibit. Interesting to see such educational park in San Jose. We saw lots of iguanas, butterflies, caimans, turtles, frogs, snakes, birds and of course all the normal flora. I felt almost like an expert because I had seen much of the flora and fauna and was able to identify some of it. We at a late lunch at INBioparque and then Cris dropped me off at bus station so I could get back to work. Back at the center and back at work, I finished last FEX, for NRM.

Monday and Tuesday were boring days, full of studying and reviews for our final exams. Wednesday brought the first of the exams, TE and NRM. Its always difficult to get right back to studying after an exam, but we still had Econ the next day, so it was back to the books. After the final on Thursday we were officially done with our three classes. Now for the rest of the time here we focus on our Directed Research course (DR), which is also four credits like the other classes. In celebration for finishing our finals, some of the staff organized a bonfire for us down in the finca. We were lucky to have such a clear, gorgeous night, as it easily could have been pouring. We even had makings for s’mores! Although it appears that there are no such things as graham crackers in Costa Rica, so we substituted lightly sweet, round Maria’s galletas. It felt just like a summer night sitting around the fire with the stars overhead, roasting marshmallows and listening to Toni and Andrew on their guitars. Defintely a pleasant way to celebrate the end of finals.

Friday , the beginning of the DR madness. We had a crazy full day of stats classes and DR stuff. Since I haven’t had a stats class before, it was very difficult to understand the information being thrown at me the entire day. After all the classes we split up into DR groups, of which there were four to choose from (NRM with Achim, TE with Edgardo, ECON with Sergio and another TE with Gerardo). I chose Gerardo’s DR, which is two-fold, looking at macroinvertebrates as bioindicators and the growth of palms in forest fragments, focusing on sustainable harvest of the palms for heart of palm. I had planned all week to go out for an early birthday dinner at La Trilla with four other friends. My plans almost got ruined with al the work that had to be done, but we made it there and enjoyed a delicious dinner of guacamole, and arroz con camarones with some wine (yes, I’m 21 now). We sat around afterwards and had some Baileys with the owner, and got some good Spanish practice in.  Everyone was exhausted and no one wanted to go out, but we saw few of the guys at Yayo’s and had a birthday drink or two with them before going back.

A weekend away for my birthday, a perfect way to celebrate. Unfortunately I couldn’t meet teacher Cris until after 3.00 in San Jose, but this meant that I was productive at center before leaving. Cris picked me up at Coca-Cola bus station in San Jose and told me that it was time for coffee, so Cris, Ana and I went to their café, Café de los Flores. Ana made me a delicious eggnog and with the Christmas decorations adorning the entire café and people walking past wearing scarves, it actually felt like it should be December 13^th, instead of November 13^th. To go with my drink, I had another drink (pineapple tea) and a sweet empanada. Since Cris and Ana own the café, we had plenty of people to visit with, which gave me some more good Spanish practice. We had some errands to run before we got back to our itinerary that revolved around food. The next order of business was a birthday dinner (number two). When I said how much I like shrimp, Cris started weaving through the labyrinth of streets to a seafood restaurant called Banco de los Mariscos. Considering how many streets we turned down and how long we were driving, I was surprised we weren’t on the Caribbean coast going to fish our seafood straight out of the ocean. We were, however, still in the San Jose area, and I had a delicious plate of camarones al ajillo, shrimp in a garlic sauce. Although I still don’t know how I managed to fit any more food in my stomach. Maybe the extra year also added some extra space in my stomach. Back at Cris’ house I got to indulge in two foreign concepts for me, TV and tennis. I watched just a little bit of a match between Federer and Monfils before going to bed.

As I promised the day before, I made (or at least started) pancakes for breakfast for Cris and Ana. We had nice relaxing morning with pancakes, fruit salad, coffee and tea. A relaxing morning is something I feel like I never have at the center. The plan was originally to go to Irazu Volcano, but the weather was not in our favor, so instead we did something equally as unique to Costa Rica – we walked around the huge Multiplaza Mall in Escazu. We picked up Cris’ mom on the way, because I guess she likes to walk around the mall. I was just so shocked at how big and American the mall was. Other than the fact the people were speaking Spanish, we could have easily been in a two story mall with a movie theater in in, in the U.S. After our stroll around the mall we had a late lunch at Soda Tapia before Cris dropped me back off at the Coca-Cola. After being away from the program and the 34 other people I see everyday, I was surprised and excited to see a few friends waiting at the bus station. There were about 10 of us that took the same bus back to Atenas and shared weekend stories. Back at the center it was time to start figuring out desserts for Thanksgiving dinner, because I was designated head of the desserts and bread menu.

My DR group

Monday morning was an interesting one. We all split up into our DR groups and did a short field experiment to figure out what need to be done and how everything will work. For our DR FEX we went to a nearby river and sampled macroinvertebrates, which meant we were waist deep in water most of the morning. When you’re up to your waist in water, mid-calf rainboots don’t do much good. We were told to wear them anyway. I don’t know how much I like the feeling of having the water inside my boots, I’d much prefer it on the outside. As I had never sampled macroinvertebrates before, this was much more fun than I expected, especially after I got over walking around with soggy socks. Gerardo also brought the camera and fisheye lens so we could take a couple of practice hemispherical photos. I have never used a fisheye lens before, but now I’m sold. It’s amazing how much the lens captures! We tooka a few photos of the canopy and then we also took a few group photos with everyone leaning over the camera. The rest of the day was not nearly as exciting, although it did involve dry clothes. We had another stats class in afternoon and then Spanish. After dinner six of us had cooking class with Socorro, one of the cooks. She showed us how to make agua dulce (sugar cane water), arroz con leche and tortillas. I love cooking and baking and learning new recipes, but I think I’d be better off not knowing what goes into arroz con leche.

Tuesday we worked on statistical analysis for our DR FEX and had a short class on how to present our DR papers. We had one more Spanish class in the afternoon and afterwards, Anna and I went out to conduct some interviews for our Spanish final project. I had noticed here that almost every house has a front porch, and on that front porch there are at least two chairs. I was intrigued by this because it seems like it is such a part of the culture here to sit on the front porch and talk with the neighbors, which is quite the opposite in the US. So Anna and I came up with some questions about the culture surrounding the tradition of sitting on porches here and went out and talked to anyone we saw sitting on their porch. This idea had initially come about because I wanted to do a series of photographs of people sitting on their porches, so I brought my camera and also took a few photos while we were interviewing.

Wednesday was a day of preparation. Prep for the DR trip, and in my case, prep for Thanksgiving as well. In the morning we had our final DR stats class and a meeting with our group. After lunch my time was devoted to turkey day, although I wasn’t expecting to be in the kitchen for as long as I was. The first order of business was to make the pie crusts, since we couldn’t find premade pie crusts here. Kevin helped with the pie crusts because he also wanted to make the chocolate pecan pie. Luckily the pie crusts were pretty simple and everything went smoothly. I can’t say the same about the rest of the afternoon though. I have never made pecan pie before, or even tried a slice for that matter, so we were hoping for the best with the recipe that Megan gave us. The filling was pretty simple, although we did have to substitute corn syrup for sugar cane syrup, a very Costa Rican addition. We filled three pie crusts with chocolate pecan filling and popped those in the oven. No major speed bumps there. Then, since it wasn’t even dinner time, I decided to get started on my pumpkin-cheesecake pie. I had to start this process the day before because we weren’t able to find canned pumpkin, so I was given an ayote, which is more squash-like than pumpkin-like. I had to slice it up and bake it in the oven, scrape it out, puree it up in the food processor and add a few spices. So for the pumpkin pie, I took out my pumpkin puree to fix the filling only to realize that our kitchen was lacking in spices, like nutmeg, cloves and ginger, which I needed for the pumpkin pie spice. After looking harder, I found some whole cloves and whole nutmeg. So, I proceeded to grind up the whole cloves by smashing, rolling and beating them with a rolling pin. I had to then dump the product through a strainer to get only the fine ground cloves. The nutmeg also posed a problem, but luckily Mayela, one of the cooks, showed us the cheese grater. So we grated the nutmeg, which was fairly simple after the cloves. I can say that this was probably the most fresh, completely made from scratch pumpkin pie I will ever make. Unfortunately, my hard earned progress was once again impeded by a lack of ingredients. I needed brown sugar but all we had was dulce, which is a type of sugar made from sugar cane. Granted, it is brown, but it is definitely not brown sugar. Luckily Victor, one of the staff, came to the rescue and said he could go to the store and get some real brown sugar for me after dinner. I conveniently didn’t have to go anywhere to eat dinner since I was already in the kitchen. As soon as the brown sugar arrived, I went back to my pie making adventure. The rest of the pie went pretty well, we only didn’t have half and half, so for the cheesecake layer of the pie I had to add in whole milk and whipping cream. Not the healthiest pie ever. When this devil of a pie was finally finished it was 9.30 pm. I had spent over 6 hours in the kitchen and had 6 hard earned pies to show for it. But instead of eating them, we had to wrap the up and put them in the freezer because it was still over a week until Thanksgiving.