Another semester...

Sarah: Our students arrived a little over a week ago and we have had a good time getting to know them and seeing them adjust to their semester abroad experience. There are 5 students right now who will stay for the entire 16 weeks, and another 3 that will come down partway through and stay for about 9 weeks. We had a full day of orientation last week before their classes began on Tuesday. We are in full swing now, and they have Spanish classes every day, they are working on developing their research projects that they’ll work on the entire semester, and they have been going through some readings for an Applied Cultural Integration class. On top of that, all of them have at least one independent class from SNU to work on throughout the semester.

To get the students out of their comfort zone and get them interacting with the community, we have set each one of them up with a family here in the valley. They’ll eat dinner with their family a couple times a month, and conduct a series of interviews with them for a class that allows them to get to know that family on a personal level.

This past weekend we took the students into San Jose to familiarize them with the city. One of the highlights was going to a church service all in Spanish. The worship was led by our friend Alex Grant, a former staff member of LASP, who is a very dynamic Afro-Costa Rican and had a lot of fun dancing around and singing upbeat songs.

It has been a lot of fun to have the students around. Even though they are busy with classes and work, we still find plenty of time to play games in the evenings!

These pictures are of the completed newly-painted bodega (kitchen) and our library/common room with new furniture. All of these were taken before the students arrived, so it looks nice and new and fresh. :)

Crunch Time

Sarah: This is the time of the year when it gets pretty fun for David and me. During our rainy season is our slow time, and a time for us to continue to work on projects. Now we only have on week until the next group of students arrive to participate in our QERC semester program, and we are frantically trying to finish up a lot of these projects and program development to be completely prepared for their arrival! It is an exciting time of year – lots of tourists in the valley, many of whom come by our facility to learn about what we are doing here, and long days full of sun. Our “summer” has arrived.

One of the bigger projects we have been working on is transforming our bodega. This small building used to be a garage/storage area, but with our semester program last year it was turned into a small kitchen/eating area for our students. We were thrilled at that point to see it come together and turn into a kitchen, and this year we are taking it a step farther. To take away the feeling of it being a garage, we have torn off the garage door and built a cement wall and put in a door. Once that was complete, we began the task of priming and then painting the walls and the floor. Naturally, projects take a lot longer in Costa Rica, especially when our resources are a 2-hour drive away. We have made plenty of day trips into San Jose and will make at least a couple more before the students actually get here. We have already run out of both primer and paint and need to get some more before finishing that project. However, it is already starting to have a different feel as we can cover up the oil stains and cement walls.

Besides the bodega, there have been a number of small projects we are trying to complete before next weekend, and a lot of large projects that have to do with program development to create the best possible semester for our incoming students. We are excited with how it is all coming together.

On another exciting note, last week as we were driving into the valley it was already dark out. David and I both noticed what looked like a pair of eyes on the road, but were slightly confused because the eyes seemed pretty high off the ground. As we got closer, the shape became a little more focused, it was indeed a very large animal. Right in front of us was a tapir! I wish I could better describe what these animals look like – but they are sort of a combination between a large black bear, a small elephant, and a hippo. We knew they were supposed to be in our valley, but probably only a small handful of people have ever actually seen them. We were extremely excited to see it for a brief moment before it crossed the road and continued down a trail.

Christmas Winds

David: Merry Happy New Years Christmas! We are experiencing some Christmas winds. Our Christmas winds did not bring new and exciting love to us like it did for our friends in “The Holiday”, most importantly Jack Black, but it did bring my little sister Jenna. As Sarah had said, Jenna dropped down to Costa Rica for a short stint after serving at an orphanage in Guatemala called Casa Bernabe for two weeks. She got here just in time to spend some relaxing days at QERC followed up by a Christmas day trip to the beach. Christmas morning was extremely rainy and windy at QERC but by the time our 2 hour trip to Playa Dominical was over we were watching the sunset over the Pacific in 80 degree weather. Playa Dominical is an interesting and entertaining hotspot/ laidback town for expatriate surfers and vacationing Costa Ricans. We were able to find a nice little hotel to stay in and enjoyed the waves and fresh waterfalls the next morning. All in all we had little time with Jenna but it was very special to have her to ourselves for Christmas.




This time of the year usually is the windiest but last night and today we have had gusts of wind that were very, very powerful. Here is a good example. We have a 9th grader from Houston, Texas who is fulfilling an internship experience by doing a three week research project in partnership with QERC. His name is Zach and he is attempting to see if any morphological changes can be seen in amphibian species inhabiting areas affected by deforestation. Pretty good for a 9th grader, I would say. Anyway, we were heading up into the forest today to work on his survey quadrants when we heard the thunderous sound of a very large tree toppling to the ground and ripping down everything that was unfortunate to be in its path. In these tropical forests, tree falls like this open up the under story to sunlight which encourages pioneering plant species that love sunlight. The small little habitat created attracts all kinds of organisms that prefer this type of environment. So, a natural tree fall is great for biodiversity but bad for researchers that happen to be in the vicinity of a tree fall. Needless to say, a little while later my caution got the best of me and we decided that our work in the forest could wait for another day with less wind.

So…. Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to all of you that keep up with our lives. We appreciate knowing that you care about what we are doing and experiencing.