Day 3 Update (Posted a little late)

We had a busy Sunday, filled with lots of adventures.  We're late posting a blog update because of a rare area-wide power outage that started mid-afternoon yesterday and wasn't resolved until 10:15 last night.  Don't worry, we were all safe, in cellular communication, and in the end, it just added to the adventures of the day. Students are in class right now, analyzing some bacteria colonies that they have cultured for statistical significance.

Dr. Pinto is using a microphone to talk over the rain on the metal roof!

Last night, we had a candle-lit dinner, cooked over fired ovens by the students during a cooking class.  Thankfully this was all part of the plan and didn't require power, though the candle-lit approach wasn't part of the plan!  During the shifts of the cooking class, Anna Strobel wrote up a short post about our day:

"Today in Costa Rica, we went out onto the main road to collect the fungus gardens. I was a part of the “cacows” group. Our group found a small colony on the side of the road and we set to work. When we first dug into the colony,  we found some kind of abandoned tunnel, but after digging for a little longer we found the queen in her chamber with the fungus garden. With steady hands we were able to remove the entire garden along with the queen. After that we split into two groups, one going off to zip line. I was part of the zip line group. When we went zip lining I decided that I would take off my glasses out of fear that I would lose them. This was not a good decision. It was, obviously, hard to see without my glasses, but with the help of Vicky and Olivia I was able to traverse the course very well with only a couple of slips. On our way to our next stop, the butterfly house, a storm hit, a tree fell and took down a power line. We did eventually make it to the butterfly house but we are still without power. So we walked over some distance and made dinner from scratch. The meal was rice, chicken, and tortillas with starfruit juice.

                      That’s all for now, but I’m excited for what’s to come, see y’all soon!

                                         - Anna (has Minnesota become part of Canada yet???????)

So yesterday was a packed day! Each student group harvested their first leaf cutter ant colony, many capturing the queen so the colonies can potentially be sustained in the lab for years to come. They all visited the Mariposario to see how the butterflies are cultivated, went to the zip line, cooked dinner for the group at a local cooking class, and returned to Finca La Anita to settle their ant colonies before heading back to the cabins.  The girls had an extra adventure because their cabins are required an electric water pump but I can tell you they had a great time walking to the other cabins for showers and water and luckily the power came back on my 10:15 just before bed.  Quite an amazing feat on a Sunday given the size of the tree that took out the lines.

I'm hopeful that we can get students to take over the blog posts later today and on subsequent days but given the adventures of yesterday and science work they are focused on right now, it wasn't the right time to add that to their workload! Stay tuned for more directly from them. Don't worry if posts around up right now time.  We've been quite busy and there's open not a spare moment to write.  

- Hannah Sullivan

Look for a photo update shortly! I wanted to get this off before slowly uploading those.