12/19/19 Thurs. Today we all packed up and left our bags in front of the Rooms for the staff to pick-up and drive to the bus up the hill at Wilson house. We loaded on the bus and started back to San Jose’ via the coastal route. Highlights included stopping for lunch at a town called Dominical which is right on the Pacific Ocean overlooking the beach. Open air dining with no walls. I had a Quesadilla which was very good. Then it was time to hit the beach. I waded in the Ocean and it felt so good. I walked down the beach to an area where a river entered the Ocean. There were some shorebirds fishing near the current. I saw some fiddler crabs carrying their shells. We took some pictures by some large tree trunk that drifted a shore. Some of the group met a young boy who was encouraging them to do cartwheels and make a human pyramid in the sand. I took the pictures as evidence. I grabbed a smoothie (banana, strawberry, pineapple and granola) before getting back on
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12/18/19 Weds. This morning after breakfast I visited with students on their poster projects. I got interviewed by the videographer, Lucas. I then walked to the gate of the field station with one of the students, Leslie, from White Earth Tribal & Community College and we visited with a woman who sells her crafts on the road there. Then I went up to the Wilson House where the students are staying and visited with Alwin (one of the students I mentor) to see how he felt about the poster presentation coming up in the afternoon. Alwin said him and Jacob had practiced and felt ready. Then I went down to the room to shower since in the morning the shower temperature was too cold. It had warmed up to around 34 degrees Celsius by 11 which is warm enough to shower in but not hot. The water is heated by a solar system on the roof that feeds several rooms so when the rooms are all full the water does not heat up as much and since it was cloudy all day yesterday the temperature wen
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12/17/19 Tues. Monday evening, we did a sharing or talking circle with the whole group and the tribal people from Panama. Everyone talked about what they were grateful for and it was very special. Today was spent working on the Poster Presentation of our team’s research. There was a large downpour of rain around noon which stopped by 1:30 and then started again around 5 and continued all evening. We had a dry week thus far with some afternoon showers of 20 min. just a few times. This afternoon around 1:30 we met with the visiting Panama tribal people and had a demonstration by the woman of how the leaf fibers extracted last Weds. were used to make string and then how the string was woven into hand bags. We also had a presentation on the environmental issues that face the Panama tribal people. They too have large foreign companies who are mining on the land and polluting it and a dam was built that flooded their land and they were not provided with compensation or electri
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12/16/19 Mon. Today I met with my team of students (Jacob and Alwin) to analyze our stream data. We used Excel to create charts and graphs of the data that we can put into our Poster Presentation. Each team has to do a Poster Presentation Weds. this week on their research project. Unfortunately, Alwin is pretty sick and got the sore throat tonsillitis thing that is going through the students here. I am hoping I don’t get it too. This afternoon we witnessed a ceremony to get permission to generally gather medicinal plants. It was performed by the tribal elder and his fellow tribesman from the Ngo’be -bugle’ tribe which is a tribe that was combined into one by the government from the original Ngo’be tribe and Bugle’ tribe. The elder sang a song in the bugle’ language because all the songs of the Ngo’be have been lost. How sad to lose the songs in your native language. The elder is a medicine man and he took us through the greenhouse here at the station and showed u
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12/15/19 Sun. This morning when I woke up some of my tattoo had smeared to another part of my arm and onto the other arm but it still looks ok. I graded some more this morning. One group hiked to town and several groups rode in around 11:00 with the program coordinators. I rode with the 11:15 group and we all went to a little restaurant called Lilliana’s which had the best pizza. All of us got pizza because we hadn’t had any yet the whole time we’ve been here. Then we explored town in a few smaller groups. There were a lot of little shops, supermarkets, appliance stores, car, motorcycle and bikes for sale. The traffic is fast and they have the right of way not pedestrians. You have to watch out. My group had a midafternoon snack at the crepe and coffee shop. The crepe I ordered had bananas, a custard-like filling with ice cream and whipped cream on the side. We all had a bite and shared it. At 3:00 we got one of the first rides back with the program coord
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12/14/19 Sat. Saturday was a rest and recovery day with no hiking. Worked on grading in the morning since this last week was our finals week at the college. In the afternoon the Embara tribesman showed us how they make tattoo ink and gave us all temporary tattoos (should last a week). He took this fruit that grows on a palm-like tree and peeled it with a knife before it was ripe, when it was still green. Then he put it in a rag and squeezed the fruit’s juice out. The juice looked grayish. The pulp was whiteish. The tribesman showed us some tools or stick-like flexible structures that are made from plant material that he uses to apply the juice to the skin. The juice is applied to the skin and looks light gray when it goes on but darkens by the next day to black. The tribesman let us tell him if we had a preference for a design. I requested something associated with water. My tattoo has a river winding up my arm that branching into two below the elbow. The rive
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12/13/19 Fri. Today was our last and what I think was the best field day. My Team, Lucas the videographer and I hiked with another team part of the way on the Water Trail. The teams split up at the Culvert Creek and our team headed down the stream part way, then up on the land part of the Water Trail to where we had to go off trail to find our sampling site. The sampling site was the confluence (junction) of our unnamed sampling stream with the Culvert Creek. Before the confluence the unnamed stream had a big waterfall. About twice the height of me with my arms up. It was beautiful. We did our sampling in this little canyon at the falls and below. I slid down the side of a big rock that was really slick and the guys helped pull me back up to the top of the rock. I wasn’t hurt but then just laid down on that side of the rock to finish our invertebrate ID so I wouldn’t slip again. We then hiked further down Culvert Creek to try find a different section of the Wat