Day 4

Hola Friends and Family!

We started off our morning with a quick hike into town where we got to visit the local butterfly garden. Did you know that a Caligo butterfly can look like a owl and a snake at the same time? The butterfly garden is run by local entrepreneurial women who talked to us about their business and expansion plans in coordination with SOC.  We had a chance to purchase some of their handmade goods (jewelry and keychains). The profits support their families and other women starting businesses.  In the butterfly garden we learned about the different species and their care, stages of development and export possibilities.  

We spent the majority of our time in the lab today working on figuring out our final projects.  All four groups came up with very interesting questions.  Ranging from ant behavior to bacterial growth.  We began developing our big projects.  Tomorrow we will run trials to hone and perfect our experiments (which you will learn about after we are back).  

As an extra special treat, we had a coffee break.  This included hot chocolate, coffee and pineapple empanadas.  

The last part of the day as a group we presented our experimental design plan to the rest of the groups and all of the chaperones/experts.  We were able to answer questions about our plan and get need feedback to better sculpt our plan. 

*P.S. We love you all and look forward to hearing from you!

Isabelle and Abby's group
Group photo (before the day began)
Shot of the lab from the deck.
                                                                   Aidan's group!
                                                        Butterfly Garden.
                                                            Amelia and Kenya's group.
                                                               


Kally's group.

Comments

  1. Jeff SehmerJuly 25, 2023 at 8:46 PM

    Glad to hear you are very active and got to enjoy some coffee today. Sounds amazing.

    Been a rough day here back at home. Abby’s sister took a shower and it started raining from the light fixture below in the kitchen. Major water damage. Get to call the plumbers tomorrow and assess the damage. I would rather be with you all in Costa Rica! And I certainly could use a hug!

    ReplyDelete
  2. G&GLJuly 25, 2023 at 9:04 PM

    👏🏼 Local experience.
    Love Lepidoptera!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJuly 26, 2023 at 4:33 AM

    I’m sure Kally is totally enjoying the butterflies! What a beautiful experience! Love the boots!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Paul LanzJuly 26, 2023 at 2:47 PM

    Thanks for all the updates and photos! Love the wellies Isabelle!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 5

Image
Thank you everyone for your encouragement! It has been so good to hear from you! We started off the day with a quick hike to the local village center and learned the history of La Colonia Libertad, after which we went on a scavenger hunt around the town to meet with some of the locals and their small businesses. Our big event of the morning was a horseback ride up and around the volcano of Santa Maria, where the heavy rain and beautiful eucalyptus trees paled in comparison to the views of the mountain-top canopies. The rain felt like a cool refresh to our sore legs after hiking and being on horseback! We then went back to the lab to begin the first preliminary tests of our final project's research, which looked different for each group.  Las Hormigas (Isabelle and Abby)- today we collected our first samples of bacteria that will be used for treatment exposures and hopefully inoculation. We also were able to isolate sheep ants from their colonies which will be used in said treatment...
Read more

Day 8

Image
Hola friends and families! As you heard from the blog yesterday, we finished our big experiments! We then presented today in front of the big group after a quick pep talk from Dr. Pinto. We were all pretty stressed earlier but after a lot of hard work and determination we all finished. We all learned so much from this experience (both about science, ourselves, and each other) and look forward to sharing it all with you guys when we get home. To finish out our last full day at Finca la Anita, we had an amazing lunch of fish, garlic mashed potatoes, and fresh salad. Then we had a couple hours of down time to pack up for our move to the beach tomorrow! Tonight we will go to a Costa Rican Cooking class. Until Tomorrow! Boarding the bus to the lab for the last time. Group Photo at the lab Another group photo at the lab The Tree-Huggers Presenting (Amelia and Kenya) Las Tortugas Presenting (Kally) Las Hormigas Presenting (Abby and Isabelle) The hawksbills presenting (Adian) Golden Orb Weaver...
Read more

Day 3

Image
 Hola friends and family! Today was another amazing day!  We started with a delicious breakfast and then took a bus out to the research facility. We learned more about Atta and Acromyrmex ants and we got to do some hands on learning with their colonies. We split up into our research groups and carefully dug into their mounds. We were all able to discover and remove the fungi the ants were harvesting for our future observation. After lunch half of the group attempted to return to the research facility but our bus broke down halfway! Everyone got to take a fun unexpected hike. By the time our lesson was over, the bus was fixed! We were all starving and had an amazing dinner when we returned to La Anita. After that we got to do something we were all looking forward to, the night hike! We saw some incredible insects and learned even more of the abundant secrets of the rainforest. We look forward to a long night of sleep tonight before a full day of science tomorrow, goodnight! Fro...
Read more