Will Farkas
5/29: This dreaded day was one of our travel days, getting around 2 hours of sleep and then going to another country with a big group of strangers. Worried was an understatement. Relieved to finally arrive, I quickly found out that some flights got delayed, and we waited at the airport for a good three hours, our first exposure to the painstaking heat and humidity of Costa Rica. I thought we could only go up from there, but from the bumpy and dark three-hour bus ride to what seemed like a never-ending walk to the river station with all of our luggage, I was mistaken. The first day was something to remember.
5/30: Our first full day was also quite eventful. But what stuck out to me was how much our tour guide knew about everything in the forest. Having pretty much no interest in anything that crawled or flew around in the forest, I didn’t have high expectations going into the walk. I didn’t have my notepad for our walk; I just listened to everything he talked about. I sat down to write my first journal before going to bed, and I went through everything that stuck with me from our walk. Surprisingly, I remembered a decent amount and actually sparked my interest in those creepy crawlies in the forest (besides the shower incident). I recalled facts about the white bats, poison dart frogs, the golden orb spiders, the whiptail lizards, and the leaf cutter ants, just to name a few. I was actually interested in what they did and why they did it. It was just mind-blowing to me that nature was so intricate and complex. This was also our first exposure to a full day of food here at La Selva. I was pleasantly surprised; everything was so colorful and seemed so natural. All the meals were very balanced nutritionally. But my favorite part by far was the fruit. I really enjoy fruit. At home, I eat at least a carton of blueberries after breakfast, a mango or orange or apple (or all of the above) after lunch, and whatever fruit my mom cuts up after dinner, pretty much every day. Eating so much fruit at home, I really enjoyed the richness and all the different varieties they offered here.
5/31: On our second day, we essentially had the whole day to ourselves, besides a quick conversation with the professors about our research project ideas, and an after-dinner “speed dating” activity to potentially find our partner. I used most of this day to settle in as best as I could into the jungle. I was able to sneak in a much-needed nap, set up my hammock, read some (I quickly learned that it was way too hot for that), and even go through a quick HIIT workout that felt like being in a sauna. Even though I was able to do basically whatever I wanted that day, our solo talks with the professors really resonated with me. Looking at it from their perspective, going through 18 individual talks sounds draining, but from my experience of the talk, they were both fully engaged. And even though I was trying to tie my finance background into my project, they helped generate ideas to enhance and incorporate into my project. The talk wasn’t only to bounce ideas about our project; I felt like it was some time to connect with our professors, which was something I was definitely not used to but greatly appreciated.
6/1: This was our very, very early bird hike day. Waking up as early as we do here was another transitional challenge. I am used to waking up between 9 and 10 pretty much every day. Compared to most of my friends, that’s on the early side. But here we were dealing with a whole different playing field. Waking up at 6 every day, and on this day particularly at 5:20, is definitely not a walk in the park. Writing this now, I am starting to get used to it, and it is teaching me to appreciate the morning since it makes my day feel a lot more fulfilling. Back to the bird walk, like the bugs, I also wasn’t the most interested in the birds, especially because of how excruciatingly early it was. But I eventually came around to appreciate it. The whole time, I didn’t spot one bird, and I was very impressed by how good our tour guides’ eyes were, spotting birds here and there. Although we didn’t really get to see the full bird, a few green macaws were definitely the most interesting to me. Not really sure why, but they were just the only birds I vividly remember seeing and talking about. We also saw a sloth, and I was again surprised how well our tour guide could spot different animals since the sloth just looked like a bush. I am still convinced the sloth he pointed out was a bush.
6/2: This day was also pretty eventful. We had our final proposal presentations and a night hike. We essentially had the whole morning to prepare our presentation, and I feel like we did a decent job. I’m just happy we chose a different template than 80% of our class. I enjoyed the process of fusing both of our initial project ideas into one. I felt like using both of our ideas, we were able to build on one another to create one main idea. After our presentation, Dr. Wasserman suggested we add another aspect to our project that I really liked. We would compare the storage and sequestration of the trees in both the new and old forests and find the transition between the two as the trees grow older.
6/3: This was our first lecture day. We had two: one from Dr. Libby and one from the PhD student. I really enjoyed Dr. Libby’s lecture. He was able to tie some financial and political aspects into agriculture. We talked about ‘crop dumping,’ and I do think we need to scale back. But I think it is an insurance policy for the farmers of the US. I essentially see it as weighing the needs of people from our country compared to the people from other developing countries, which is a hard choice to make. Moving on to the PhD talk about the pesticide use around younger girls, I definitely had mixed feelings about this talk, and my main question was, ‘Wouldn’t using fewer pesticides invite more insects that are predatory to agriculture, driving down productivity and, in turn, promoting poverty?’ Also, I had the best pineapple I’ve ever had, but financially, I don’t see how organic farms are able to come even close to the corporate farms.
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