Today has definitely been the busiest day so far. I think I'm going to do this schedule-style, accompanied with comments. Otherwise I'll forget things.
6:30 - Another delicious breakfast. Gallo pinto (rice and beans). Fruit. Simple and good.
8:00 - Our first real activity related to biology, a hike into the forest adjacent to the garden. We get into the primary forest, then spend twenty minutes doing solo observations of the forest structure in our notebooks.
10:00 - Small group discussions about what we observed, and providing a brief definition of rainforest structure. Did you know there are plants that start life rooted in the ground, climb up treetrunks, slough off their original connections to the ground, and at some point drop new roots from the trunk down to the ground? This is cool.
11:00 - Look around for a soccerball to play with on the small field in a corner of the garden. No success.
12:00 - Hungry. Lunch. Yum. (more fruit)
12:55 - Go for my first run here with another student, Mike. We trail run through the jungle bit, then crisscross the garden trails. Sprints, core workout. Wash all the sweat off and get to class just in time...
14:00 - Plant taxonomy lecture, then workshop. We basically go over all the ways to describe vegetative structures. We're going to learn how to identify most plant families that live here. You generally don't do genus or species because it's really difficult, and there are just too many of them.
17:00 - Soccer ball appears from somewhere. Twelve or so of us head off to play soccer. Score a couple goals, play until dusk and dinner and get really sweaty again.
18:00 - Dinner, then shower.
19:00 - Lecture on modern Costa Rican history. We talk about CAFTA for about half of it. Costa Rica actually just put CAFTA into effect the first of this month, after a national referendum last October, which was the first referendum held since before WWII. It passed by a very slim margin.
21:00 - Read Plans and write this, surrounded by twelve other students hooked up to their laptops.
The soccer was great. So was the hike. We get a day off on Monday. What should I do?
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