Estoy aprendiendo

I have been living in Costa Rica for over a year now (actually around a year and a half) and my Spanish skills are still pretty sad. I am able to hold conversations and discuss my research with Spanish-speaking scientists, but I am far from fluent. This makes sense since I spend most of my time on a station run by and populated mostly by English-speakers. English is the language of science and although researchers here come from many countries all over the globe (USA, England, Germany, France, Bulgaria, Colombia, Peru, Panama, to name a few), everyone is able to speak at least rudimentary English. It is really difficult to practice Spanish when I have a constant crutch of English to fall back on.

When I worked in Santa Rosa National Park for 2 months a while back, I became better in my Spanish speaking abilities. This was basically because no one there spoke English. I would converse with the cleaning ladies and over time got a bit better…until I came back to La Selva! Oh well, I am trying to get better now by practicing with a Rosetta Stone program (level 2!). I am not sure if it is working and I think the best way to learn is immersion, but that’s not going to ever happen here!

Mega Man

Have you ever played the game Mega Man on the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)? I haven’t played much myself, but I love its sequels Mega Man II and III. Mega Man II was one of my most favorite games on the NES. The plot of the game is pretty neat: A scientist (Dr. Light) has invented robots with artificial intelligence to help humans complete housecleaning, laboratory, and industrial tasks. However, Dr. Light’s assistant (Dr. Wiley) grew jealous of his advisor’s success and reprogrammed most of the robots for the evil purpose of conquering the world. One robot (Mega Man) escaped reprogramming and volunteered to destroy the other robots and prevent Dr. Wiley’s world domination. At first, Mega Man can only shoot little bullets, but as he defeats each boss robot, he acquires that robot’s special powers (e.g. time stopper from Flash Man, leaf shield from Wood Man, bubble lead from Bubble Man). For each game, Mega Man ultimately faces Dr. Wiley and stops him from taking over the world.

The original Mega Man game is infamous for its difficulty, but Mega Man II and III, while hard, were not impossible games to beat (I beat both). There have been many many more titles in the Mega Man series (more than 10 I think!) but I have only played the first three. Ah, the original Nintendo -- here is a little picture I drew of Mega Man shooting from the second game:

Forest sights

Yesterday afternoon I went to check one of my seed dispersal depots to track down some dispersed seeds and I noticed something. Hmmm...there is a HUGE tree that fell over...hey...where is my cage? Oh, there is a huge branch crushing one side of it...and it was only missed by the HUGE tree by about 5 cm. Hey, where are my uncaged seeds...there are a few...the rest are...UNDER THE TREE! I got them out and moved them away from this new log. This morning I can't go out to my site because they are chopping the tree with chainsaws and putting guide-wires into other trees to keep them from falling now. It is too dangerous to be around that. What wacky fun! I am just glad that the tree didn't land on my cage, or a peccary, or me!

Yesterday I found some beautiful orchids in bloom. There are tons of orchids all over the trees here in the forest, but these are actually growing on a stump in the lab clearing!
This morning I also saw a really pretty male Curassow (Crax rubra) sitting in a sun beam and warming up. These birds are so cute with their fluffy feathered heads and they are really big -- turkey-sized (but probably bigger!).

Last night

Last night there was a going-away party for one of the researchers here. Carlos and I went over to the party (it happened to be next-door...nice and convenient!) for a pasta and salad dinner. The food was good and for dessert we had flan. It was really fun to hang out with the gang of researchers from the station and everyone had a good time.

After coming home, we watched the movie Sicko directed by Michael Moore (of Fahrenheit 9/11 fame). It was a well-done, but super-depressing movie. I have always been appalled by the health "care" system in the states, but to hear some of these stories was horrible. I may want to eventually live somewhere that is not in the US -- wow, it is definitely a worthwhile movie to see. But be forewarned, it will make you angry and want to move to France. Let's go -- they have good cheese!

Rats!

Well, yesterday I totally forgot to write a blog post! So much for NaBloPoMo -- to make up for it I will try to write 2 today. Yesterday afternoon Carlos and I had to make a trip to town to pay the electricity bill (exciting, no?). We brought all the numbers on the newly-installed meter with us to pay and of course, since this is Costa Rica, they couldn't find the account...using their numbers...from the meter they installed...hmmm. What they needed was the name that the account was under -- our landlord. I had his first name and his first last name, but not his SECOND last name so of course the lady could not find the account...hmmm. I should know by now that logic really has no place in this country. Silly me! We are going to send someone to town to try and pay again today -- we shall see if it works.

To cheer ourselves up, we went to the ice cream parlor. Yay -- ice cream!

A moth

Last night Carlos and I found a really nice moth in our room. It kept flying up to the light then spiralling down. Finally I guess he got tired and he just rested on the DVD player. He kept so still that I was able to sketch him in my notebook. This moth is a member of the family Arctiidae so we named him Arcty.
After I finished my drawing, Carlos put him outside so that he could be happier. Bon voyage Arcty!

Animal watching

I know I've said it about a million times, but there are so many animals to see here! I get a little complacent sometimes seeing 20 species of beautifully-colored birds each day during lunch but this place is great. I am trying to take my camera everywhere with me (even to the comedor for meals) so that I can take pictures of all the beautiful critters I see on a daily basis. Here are some photos I took yesterday.


The first is of a bird called the Green Honeycreeper (Chlorophanes spiza). It was so hot yesterday that this guy didn't mind me getting close to snap a photo. Carlos and I also found another 3-toed sloth snoozing in a tree really close to the lab clearing. He is actually still there now (I can almost see him from my office window!) and still sleeping. In the picture you can see that one of his back feet isn't even holding onto anything -- it is very tiring being a sloth.

Thanksgiving -- the aftermath

Well, today is the day after Thanksgiving and the food last night was great. There was a ton of turkey (10 of them imported from the states, to be exact!), mashed potatoes, gravy, cheese platter (woo-hoo!), cranberry sauce, fresh fruits, stuffing, sweet potatoes, ayote (like a pumpkin) pie, wine, and a bunch of other goodies. My favorites were the mashed potatoes with gravy, ayote pie, cheese platter, and cranberry sauce. I can’t believe it -- they actually had cranberry sauce -- and it was the kind from a can! That is my favorite! I ate a lot of food and had a good time with all my friends. There was also a fireworks show and lots of decorations for Christmas. I had a really good time and although I would rather be home enjoying Thanksgiving with my family, it was nice to have something here to celebrate.

Thanksgiving

Hey, today is Thanksgiving day -- happy Thanksgiving everybody! Although Costa Rica doesn't celebrate it (duh), La Selva has a delicious Thanksgiving feast each year since most of the researchers here are gringo. It is also a nice chance for the ticos to learn about our holiday. There will be a big party on station tonight around 6pm with tons of delicious turkey, potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc. I was here for it last year too and it was a nice, relaxing dinner. They even have candles and tablecloths! I will bring my camera with me tonight so that I can take pictures and I will be sure to post them tomorrow. To everyone in my family: eat lots of green top salad for me!

Trits

A couple of days ago I bought an ice cream from the gift shop (can you believe that we have ice cream on station...in the rain forest -- awesome!). There are many different types for sale, but this is one of my favorites. It is called Trits (pronounced “treats”) and comes in a little ~3.5in diameter cup with a lid. When you remove the lid there is a nice graham cracker-type cookie on top. Trits is basically a big cookie sandwich with a cookie on top and bottom with vanilla ice cream and chocolate fudge in the middle. You can pop the sandwich out of the cup and eat it like that or use a spoon!

Yesterday

Yesterday was a pretty full day. I had my interview with the Brazilian journalist after 1pm and it went really well. The guy is a professor of journalism in São Paulo and even had a video camera with a microphone and everything. The interview was easy but it was strange to be videotaped. I talked about my research (in layman terms -- that's hard!) and showed him my seeds and described how agoutis and peccaries are affecting different seed species. The interview was pretty short (only about an hour) and the guy was really nice.

Last night we also had a pizza and cookie party to welcome back my friend Arietta and to say goodbye to another researcher who leaves today. The pizza was really great (someone had made the dough from scratch!) and the cookies were good too. Carlos and I went home stuffed.

Right now it is raining really hard so I am going to enter data and try to wait it out before I go to the field...maybe the forest will flood again!

Town

Carlos and I reaaaaaally need to make a trip to town. We have no food in the house. I think our fridge currently contains the following: half a box of milk, 2 tortillas, a blob of rice pudding, mustard, ketchup, and water. Isn’t that pathetic! It is such a pain to get to town though. We take a taxi back and forth so that we can bring a lot of groceries at one time (we try to get food only once a month or at least enough for 3 weeks).

The town’s name is Puerto Viejo, Sarapiqui and it isn’t much. Puerto is about a 5-minute cab ride from the station and the town is actually pretty well stocked for being out in the country. There are 3 banks, 3 grocery stores, 2 ice cream stores, and a bunch of “junk” stores. Everything is located along a single road that passes through town. We usually buy our food at the market called La Viña -- this store probably has the biggest variety of food. As for meals, Carlos and I don’t have the widest diet breadths. We usually eat: masamun curry (I brought some curry paste from the states and it lasts forever), spaghetti, patoux chinois (mashed potatoes, ground beef, and sweet corn all mixed together), quesadillas, tostadas, soup and salad, nachos, sandwiches, tonkatsu, and coconut chicken wraps. We don’t get any “exotic” food items here (there are only 2 types of cheese in the store: squeaky and cheddar) so it’s hard to think of meals to eat. Good thing I love noodles!

I don’t think Carlos and I will be able to make a trip to Puerto today but tonight we are going to a dinner on-station to welcome back a couple of long-term researchers. Yay, we get to put off town for another day!

Free days!

I forgot to mention something very important in my last post. Whenever I give a welcome talk I get compensated by the station -- they give me 2 free days! Not bad for only an hour of work.

Tomorrow I have an interview with a Brazilian journalist (I was asked by the station to do this, Carlos is giving an interview too). In return for this, I get another pair of free days! Woo-hoo! I have absolutely no idea what questions he will be asking (or if the interview will be in English...though I can't imagine that it would be in Portuguese!), but I will be sure to post about it tomorrow afternoon!

Charla and some rain

This afternoon (about an hour ago) I gave a welcome talk (a bienvenidos charla) to a group of students. The station director put Carlos and me in charge of this whenever she or the normal staff who give these talks are unavailable. This was my first one and it went really well...almost fun! Hehe, the talk was about an hour long and consisted of a pretty basic introduction to La Selva, the forest, programs, and research that go on here. This group of students (undergrads) was from Illinois and they were pretty low-key.

Oh yea, the forest is closed AGAIN! Wow, two floods in almost as many weeks. I am going to get as much writing done in the office that I can before taking the boat home. I think the last one leaves at 6pm. It's a bummer since that means I can't bring my computer home to work more. C'est la vie -- that's what I get for living in a WET forest!

The Mole

Today, for some random reason, I really feel like watching one of my favorite TV programs: The Mole. This was a reality game show centering around a group of people (usually ~12 individuals), one of whom is a saboteur -- the mole, who was hired by the show’s producers and is trying to undermine the group’s efforts to win money in contests. The goal of the group is to work together at these physical and mental games to win money (which one person only will win at the end) and also to determine who is the mole. I liked this show since people were removed from the show based only on their own lack of knowledge about the mole (not based on conniving and vote-mongering like in shows such as Survivor). At the end of each show, all contestants would take a quiz, answering detail-oriented questions about the mole. The person who gets the most answers incorrect goes home.

This game involved a lot of thinking and detective-work on the parts of the players and it just looked like a really fun game. The challenges that the players participated in were usually elaborate, well thought-out and fun-looking. I really wanted to be a contestant when this show was on the air, but I was under 21 at the time and thus ineligible to play (boo). The show only ran for two seasons in the US, but it is a big success overseas in Europe and Australia. The first season of The Mole took place in France, Monaco, and Spain while the second season was held in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and Italy. I have both seasons of the show -- the first on DVD and the second on my computer. I think it is unfortunate that such a clever game was discontinued after only 2 seasons (4 if you count the two seasons of Celebrity Mole that followed the original) while boring shows highlighting manipulative people (like Survivor) have lasted for about 20 seasons!

Clean desk

I just spent an hour or so cleaning up my desk and office -- it really needed it! Stuff just ends up getting piled on top of everything and you lose stuff in all the strata! Here is a picture of what I see when I am at work in my office with my computer and field book in the center and lots of seeds, specimens, toys, pens, and pencils all over the place. I even have a little wood-carved agouti given to me from Panama -- can you find it? (It's about 5in tall).

Camping

I haven’t been very often, but I really like camping. On our road trip this summer, Carlos and I are planning to visit a lot of national parks and camp as we pass through them on our drive. We will buy our gear in Seattle before we set out on the road and I have been looking into tents etc. So far, we are planning on camping in: Olympic National Park (WA), Redwood National Park (CA), Yosemite (CA), Sequoia and King’s Canyon National Park (CA), and Grand Canyon National Park (AZ). These are the big parks we will visit on our road trip, but once we are back in Miami we will go camping in the Everglades, Canaveral, and the Keys. Northern/Central Florida also has some really nice places to camp in Payne’s Prairie (where I’ve been before) -- you can even see wild bison there. I am really excited to start camping more this summer and if anyone has more suggestions of cool places to camp, let me know!

PS. For this trip, we are going to buy an annual pass from the National Park Service. This will give us unlimited access to all the US National Parks for a year and it costs $80. That seems pretty expensive now, but entrance to all those parks really adds up (entrance for Grand Canyon National Park alone is $25!). Besides, it is good for a year and I am sure we’ll be visiting a lot of the Florida parks when we get back to school. Yay, national parks!

Katydid or leaf with legs

Here is a cute picture of a walking leaf...er...katdid that I saw this afternoon on the bug cloth in the lab clearing. The bug cloth is basically a big white sheet stapled into a frame that has a black light on at night to attract pretty insects. It works really well. Anyway, I see these little katydids all the time in the labs, but this guy is especially cute in his leaf mimicry -- he even has little veins, spots, and imperfections to mimic a real leaf. Amazing!

Dwarf manatee

Have you heard about the dwarf manatee species (Trichecus bernhardi) that was recently discovered in the Amazon? It is so cute -- an adult is about the size of a baby manatee from the more common species (Trichecus manatus); adult body length of the dwarf manatee = 130cm. This species was discovered in the Brazilian Amazon by dutch biologist Marc van Roosmalen and colleagues. I think this little fella would make a good pet! Manatees are awesome animals and living in Florida I am pretty lucky to see them in the wild. I have seen them mostly near Cape Canaveral in northern Florida, but they also live in the many canals that criss-cross through Miami.

Monkey bridge

This is so commonplace to me. This afternoon, while walking back to my office from lunch in the dining hall, I saw a big commotion up in the trees near the bridge (which I was walking on at the time). It was a big troop of howler monkeys eating leaves in one of the Inga trees! I have been crossing the bridge many times when these monkeys were crossing too. They just walk along the cables and I try not to bug them...like ships passing in the night. I also try to dodge their poop. Heehee, I have shared the bridge with a bunny, porcupine, olingo, kinkajou, and a coati. Think of it as an aerial highway for the arboreal (and some terrestrial) mammals!

Future travels

As usual, I am thinking about all the traveling I want to or will be doing in the future. For some reason, I really want to visit Japan. I guess I have always wanted to go there, but for some reason it was never one of the places at the top of my travel list. Greece, of course, is probably my top choice if I could go anywhere. I would really love to visit the ancient sites and nature reserves on the mainland and then spend some time hopping around the islands and beaches. Unfortunately, both of these trips will require a LOT of funds (especially with the dollar plummeting as it is right now). I wonder if I can start getting paid in euros? I am also thinking about a trip to Portugal, Spain, and France. That would be a really great trip and I am definitely going to be in France (Montpellier) in 2010 so maybe I can put that together for then. I know 2010 sounds like a long way off, but that’s when the 5th International Symposium on Seed Dispersal and Frugivory happens (and I will definitely be presenting my research there!).

As for the more recent future, this June I will visit Paramaribo, Suriname for another tropical biology conference (and a little sight-seeing of course) and I will also have my 2-3 week road trip from Seattle to Miami. I will probably also present at the Ecological Society of America conference this August and I think it is being held in Milwaukee, Wisconson. Hmmm...I’ve never been there before, maybe it will be fun? What is there to do in Milwaukee?

Those are my plans for now, but who knows what the future holds? Mwahahaha!

Blog banner

I have been thinking of making this blog look a little nicer -- it is pretty plain right now. I drew a sketch last night of a mouse and it turned out pretty nice. I can't get to a scanner right now but I am going to play with it to try and make a new banner for my blog. I am not really sure how to do this, but once I get it finished I don't think it'll be too hard to figure out. I am kind of running low on topics to write about every day so they might start getting a bit more random...hee. In the meantime, here is a sketch:

This is a mouse opossum (Marmosa mexicana). I've seen a couple here, but they are pretty rare.

Ice cream

I just got back from a short trip to town and while I was there I had some ice cream. Costa Rica can make really good ice cream, but they are missing a lot of good flavors. I usually get ron con frutas (rum with fruits); it tastes nothing like rum and the "fruits" are those little cubed jelly thingies that get put into fruit cakes. It tastes good, but sometimes I miss the more gringo flavors like mint chocolate chip, cookie dough, almond, rocky road, or even the more strange ones that most people never eat (cotton candy, cake batter, pumpkin, root beer). They do make flavors here that I rarely see in the states: guanabana (soursop), cherimoya, pitahaya (dragon fruit) and they are really good!

The forest is closed...again!

Wow, the forest is very flooded, and hence closed, today. This happened previously in July after a night of continuous, heavy rain. The same thing happened last night as Carlos and I were on station until around 9:30pm eating pita-pizzas and cookies with friends at a goodbye party for a couple of researchers. The night was really fun and you could tell that the frogs outside were loving the rain from their loud constant chorusing.

It was still raining this morning and we had to take a motor-boat onto the station since the road was totally flooded. Today is not a very productive field day (I went into the forest even though it was closed, but didn't get very far because of the floods!), but hopefully I can get a good chunk of office stuff/writing done.

PS. This is a picture of a bridge on the path to the river station...usually the water level is at least 10m below the bridge but now it is only mere centimeters underneath it!

Agouti of felt

The other day, while working at home, I took a break to make a felt creature. I was on a roll making these back in September when I received The Cute Book from my mom for my birthday. It had been a while since I made anything so I thought I could make a little (cute) felt agouti. It wasn’t that hard to make and I think it turned out pretty nice. Agoutis don’t really have blue eyes though...hey, creative license!

Argh, peccaries...

This morning I went out to check on some seeds I had put in the field a couple of days ago. These seeds were in a cage that allows only agoutis (not peccaries) to enter and get the seeds. Well, as I walked up to the cage it didn't look quite right...one of the poles was falling over...hey! The pigs had gotten in. They basically dug up one side and charged their way in. Oh yea, and they ate all the seeds -- bad! Those were for the agoutis. This is really a pain because now those data are worthless, I have to prepare more seeds, and fix the cage. Grrrr...I like peccaries, but sometimes they can really get on my nerves!

Sushi

I really like sushi. I’m not really hard-core into it like a lot of people, but I think it is a really nice combination of delicious sticky, vinegary rice, fresh seafood, veggies, and nori (seaweed). I used to hate those dried seaweed sheets, but they actually work really well with sushi. My favorite types of sushi are:

1. Crab Rangoon. I talked about this type of sushi previously when I ate it at Lan in Miami. It is comprised of crab, cream cheese, and crispy won ton strips rolled up in rice and nori.

2. California Roll. This was probably the first sushi I ever tried and the combination of avocado, crab, and cucumber wrapped in rice and nori can do no wrong!

3. Ebi. This is simply a big shrimp sitting atop a blob of rice. Shrimp is the best.

4. Tropical Roll. This may be a specialty found in Miami. This roll has cucumber, red bell pepper, and mango wrapped together in rice and nori. It sounds weird, but the flavors and crunchiness go really well together. (This one is also super-easy to make at home).

5. Inari. This consists of a fried bean curd pocket with sushi rice inside.

6. Kappa-Maki, a cucumber roll. This roll only contains cucumber surrounded by rice and nori.

There is a lot of sushi that I have to try still, but I like almost everything that I’ve tried so far!

PS. These pictures are of various sushi-themed objects that I have in my office: a pack of tissues my sister gave me for my birthday (these are too cute to ever use) and a stuffed felt ebi sushi that I made.

50th post

Cool, this marks my 50th entry in this blog! I have tried to keep up with posting about once per week and it looks like that has definitely been happening. I don't have much to write about today because I have to go to town soon and stock up on groceries then go back and clean the house with Carlos. Blah. Then, today will be a day of working at home -- mostly writing the methods sections of my thesis chapters and reading more papers! It should be a pretty laid-back day...

Theobroma cacao -- chocolate

I found one of the coolest fruits in the rain forest the other day: a ripe Theobroma cacao fruit! This is the same fruit that contains the seeds used in making chocolate.
Here are the fruits on the tree (the fruits grow directly on the trunk)

This pod is about 18cm in length (it’s pretty big!) and contains many large (1-2cm long) seeds covered in slimy white pulp.
What a lot of people don’t know is that the pulp (called an aril) is really delicious too and no, it doesn’t taste like chocolate. To me the aril tastes like a combination of a sour banana + pineapple + Monstera fruit (which is another fruit that people in the temperate zone might not know the taste of). Theobroma pulp is really good, but I like the pulp of its smaller-fruited cousin, Herrania, a little better.
I have never used the seeds to make chocolate, but I think it is a pretty labor-intensive process. I brought back some dark chocolate squares from the states (called Cacao Reserve) -- there are nice imprints of cacao pods on each chocolate. Hmmm...I saw 3 more fruits on a tree this morning and, if the squirrels and parrots don’t eat them all, I will be able to eat delicious cacao all week!

PS. I am actually eating the cacao pulp while writing this. Hee.

Halloweenie

Woo-hoo, my first post of many for November, NaBloPoMo month! I was going to write a post about a cacao fruit I found, but I want to take a picture of it’s innards so that will have to be for tomorrow. Instead, I will talk about yesterday -- Halloween! There wasn’t much going on here, but I made a super-fast costume of a vampire agouti... basically I drew an agouti head on a chunk of cardboard, colored it and gave it some fangs, then tied it around my neck -- VOILA! Heehee, a lot of people think that the red stuff dripping from the agouti’s fangs is blood, but it is just raspberry juice. Hey, agoutis are frugivorous (fruit-eating) after all!