12/18/2018

We finalized our poster made it look nice and looked at it projected on the wall. After we made the adjustments and fixed all of our errors and added a lot of pictures.  It's the waiting that really kills you for your presentation but I'll be fine.  After dinner we walked the jungle trail at night, and somebody tried to scare us at the end of the trail.

12/17/2018

We got all our data and started to put our presentation poster together, and in the evening I saw monkeys for the first time in the wild it was so cool! then we went for a walk right at night before dinner.

12/16/2018

Today was our free day and I took a total of 14 steps throughout the morning it was GREAT.  I showered ate lunch and waited to go into town and explored.  Too bad it was Sunday so everything was closed :( but it was still fun walking around their cute little town and looking around at stuff.  I went to an ice cream shop and got an ice cream sundae as well as a chocolate shake.  Also went to a bakery and got a few donuts that I'm beyond excited for, I was way too full to eat them after the pizza dinner. 

12/15/2018

It was our last data collection day, we hiked through the water trail and went to the waterfall.  On the way we got a couple canopy gaps in abandon pastures, but the waterfall was really the highlight of the day it was gorgeous.  We made our way back to the station showered and ate lunch, they gave us ice cream sundaes and it was amazing.  After lunch I took a nap and ate dinner then we had a cultural exchange after that I watched some UFC fights on my phone it was a good day.

12/15/2018

We went on a 6 hour hike to go collect data, going through different forest types like abandon pastures and went in the primary forest.  It was  mainly uphill and extremely exhausting for this flat lander, I think I'm finally getting acclimated but we're almost done collecting our data.  We made it back to the station I showered and I laid in bed for like 4 hours until dinner.

12/14/2018

Today we hiked a mountain and got a lot of data almost everything that we need so far.  Now I'm starting to work a little on our presentation and waiting to eat dinner then I'm gonna call my sister.

12/13/2018

I woke up at 5:30 am to beat everyone to the showers, and had breakfast.  Then my partner and I went to canopy gaps in the secondary forest, and took density readings through an app that gives us the percentage of open sky we see. Also identified the number of cecropia and banana plants in each gap.  After that we tagged along with another group and helped them set up a camera. Then we were done for the day because it was getting humid out.  Then we went out to the lookout tower and ate dinner, after we had a cultural exchange it was awesome!

December 12th, 2018.

It was the first field day we had here in Costa Rica, we hiked around 7 miles looking at different canopy gaps and started to identify some pioneer species.  My team and I went up into the primary forest and found some recent gaps in the forest.  Then I climbed the observation tower and just looked at the gorgeous scenery around me. 

12/11/2018

I woke up at 5:30 am and showered, I almost went into shock from the warm water stopping but now I know how the showers work.  We had breakfast and went on a tour of the beautiful botanical garden around the center, I've seen so many new plants and it was all so interesting.  After break we went on a huge hike in the woods, and went to a beautiful stream and looked at  a lot of cool sights including trees, and insects.  We also introduced ourselves to the group, it was so cool listening to what all the other Native languages sounded like compared to my own.

12/10/2018

This was the day after arriving, we had a good breakfast at the beautiful hotel and loaded up on the bus.  It was a grueling 9 hour drive, but completely worth it the most gorgeous sights I've saw in my life. I took A LOT of pictures and everything was gorgeous all of the towns, villages, and trails we went on.  We arrived at the research center just in time for dinner and it was freaking amazing so delicious.  I crashed out pretty hard after dinner.

December 9, 2018.

Sunday December 9th, 2018 was my travel day to Costa Rica and I left for the airport at 4 am in the morning.  It was my first time flying ever, and I didn't sleep the night before because I thought I could sleep on the plane.  Well it turns out that sleeping on the airplane is by far the most uncomfortable thing ever.  Anyways my ears popped really bad on my flight to Georgia and took maybe 10 minutes to equalize.  We did have about an 8 hour lay over before our flight to San Jose.  My ears popped extremely bad on that flight and I went through customs with one ear basically but the flight and stuff was extremely worth it.