Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving turned out to be really nice. It was strange to be celebrating without my family because I had never spent a Thanksgiving without them, but being around my friends here definitely made it easier. 

Veritas University threw a Thanksgiving dinner for all of the American exchange students, and the food was DELICIOUS! I was really impressed. We had turkey, green beans, garlic mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and rolls.

 After eating, we had a latin dancing party! I am really thankful for times like these in my life. It was just pure fun. An open-mouthed-smile kind of night. One of my favorite parts of the night was seeing my 70-something year old cooking teacher dance. She was amazing! She has some moves!! I hope I'm dancing like her when I get to be her age.

 So now the Christmas craze is in full swing here. :)

Puerto Viejo

I was really excited to get to visit the Caribbean coast! Puerto Viejo is a small, laid-back tourist destination, less than an hour away from Panama. 

Our hotel

I woke up early one morning and spent a couple hours reading in this green hammock in the hotel's courtyard. It was so nice! A bunch of the people who went decided to stay in a hostel, which was awesome, but I opted for the private rooms with bug nets.

Here are some pictures of the hostel that most of the kids stayed at, it's called Rocking Jay's. I'd never seen anything like it:

Costa Rica's national slogan, used for pretty much every situation

On Saturday, after an awesome breakfast at a café called Bread and Chocolate, we rented bikes and went on a long ride out to 3 different beaches. Even though it poured on the way back, it was one of the best days ever.

This creeped me out a little:

It was a really fun weekend! 

But the way back was not the smoothest. On the bus ride back on Sunday afternoon we were stopped at a police check point and everyone who did not bring their original passports was told to get off the bus. Pretty much everyone I was with only brought copies of our passports, as our school advised us. 

So we got off the bus, and luckily took all of our things, because the bus that we had just paid for did not wait. The policemen were saying they needed to call the embassy and make sure we were all here legally. We were stuck in this small town, about an hour ride away from restaurants and hotels, and we had to get back for class on Monday morning. 

When the policemen started letting other buses and cars go without checking, we started to suspect they wanted a bribe from us. But we all waited it out, and eventually the policemen said they would just call the embassy and check on a few random passport numbers. Luckily for us, an empty tourist van came by and we were able to get out of there and back home after waiting 4 hours at the checkpoint. 

Overall, it was a great trip, with some pretty interesting experiences at the end. :)

Marine Biology Field Trip

This weekend I had the best biology lab of my life! I got to geek out the entire weekend about biology and animals. We took a 2-day field trip to a small fishing town called  Cuajiniquil, on the northwest coast of Costa Rica.

The area is beautiful, warm, and very rural. It was interesting to stay in an area that has an economy based on something other than tourism.

Fishing boats

The black flags on fishing boats signify that the fishermen use an extremely destructive process to catch fish, in which they use large nets that catch big areas of animals, a lot of which are useless to the fishermen.

The class met Saturday morning and we took a 4-hour bus ride to the town. After lunch, we took boats straight to the beach. We swam and hung out in the sun until around 5 pm, when the tide was at its lowest point. With the low tide, we were able to explore the intertidal zone and find all the animals that are living there. I absolutely loved it. 

When you first look at the rocks, it looks like nothing is alive, but the closer you look, and the more rocks you look under, the more you find out that what seemed like a dead area is teeming with life. The organisms are really good at hiding because they need to in the exposed tidal pools.

So here is some of what we found (and were able to hold!)

My professor holding a puffer fish

Chiton and Sea Cucumbers

Sea Urchin

Tunicates

Crab

Brittle Star

Sea Snail

Hermit Crabs

We looked around the tidal pools until the sun went down then took a boat back to our hotel in the dark. The hands-on experience was awesome. It was really cool to be able to identify the organisms we have been studying in class. 

The next morning we got up early to go snorkeling in a coral reef! We took motorboats out to the reef and snorkeled for several hours, taking notes on these underwater notepads they gave us. We suited up in wet suits to avoid getting stung by jellyfish (which wasn't very effective--I still got stung several times). (Here come some embarrassing pictures)

A sea egg

Haha, anyway, it was a great trip. I think I might have caught the research bug-- It would be so cool to do some research before I apply to medical school, even if just for a summer.

I'm just over halfway through the semester!