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.