Here Comes The Rain, Rain Rain on My Face, Singing the Rain

David: Think of every song title containing the word rain, then arrange them as a “Rainy Day” play list on your itunes and play them all back to back and they length of the play time would not out last the length of time it has been raining here. We are finally getting some typical October weather in the Talamanca Mountains and that means that it rains hard and long. It can rain in the morning, afternoon, and night. The rain has no consideration in keeping a schedule. It actually kind of feels like winter even though everything is green. We have had some life around QERC the past few days which. Anthony Chamberlain, the director of the Latin American Studies Program, and his family stayed a night here. Their oldest son was with a youth group retreat at a Christian adventure campground here in the valley and he decided that he wanted to baptized in the Savegre River, brrrr. So the Chamberlains came to see the baptismal service. It was great to have some guests here, even though they were not here to use the facility in a scientific way. We enjoyed getting to know the Chamberlains better and witnessing a baptism service.

The day the Chamberlains left a professor from New Hampshire who is in Costa Rica on sabbatical stopped by to check out our facilities. He is collecting aquatic plants for InBio in an attempt to make an aquatic plant field guide of Cost Rica. It was a pleasure to talk with him and about his work. He also is a professor with Au Sable.

And finally, we have our first real group coming in today. It is a very last minute contact that worked out perfectly. We have been getting ready for them and are excited to have this place being used.

Besides the spike in personal contact with people, this week has marked the beginning of some new projects. I have been working outside on a few things including making some stairs that will make access to the river easier so that water quality testing is doable from our property. Sarah continues to grow more confident in her cooking. She is doing a fantastic job. She also has made very good headway on organizing the research papers that are here and in need of order so that future researchers and members of the community can have easy access to the work that has been done. Once they are organized we will scan than to make a digital library and have them bound in hard back and work on a visual presentation that will summarize the larger projects so that the people in the valley can come in and see what has been accomplished here. This is one of the more important goals for us; for the community to have a connection to what is happening at QERC. Of course, filling the hummingbird feeders is one of the more taxing duties that I have throughout the week.