Saturday, August 28, 2010

Monteverde Institute Day 2

We headed back to Monteverde Institute for a full day of activities; we were going to learn how to make guides to different flora. Willow Zucholski (I'm not sure if I spelled that right, but she was little, probably Polish lady who has done research in Costa Rica for a looong time) was our lecturer, and she has published guides to Costa Rican flora. Jeanne and Kathryn brought their books to get them autographed by her. With a name like Willow, I thought she'd be tall and long and 'willowy', but she wasn't. Just goes to show that names can be deceiving. She showed us, along with Rafa, our facilitator, how to take pictures of flora and create field guides that others can use! I really like this idea...I wish we had an environmental class at North, so I could take the kids out into the prairie and we could make our own guides...it would be so cool. We went on a fun hike...I love the hikes...then took our pictures back to the Institute to make our guides. In the real world, we would have actually found the names of the flora we took pictures of, but since we were on vacation, having a good time, we made up names...my flower had berries and was called "Julianna berrius"! :)
We had the opportunity to go to the Monteverde Cheese factory and actually ended up having ice cream! Very good and very satisfying after having fruit and rice and beans for the past few days! Later that evening, we had our final lecture from Korey about the data we'd been collecting all over the country dealing with water quality, sound quality, light quality, and soil quality, and then we had a nice discussion about the NSTA trip and what we all thought of it. I'm really looking forward to getting more involved in the International Committee which I have been appointed to. Hopefully, we'll be able to continue trips like this.
Had some good conversations after dinner with our drinks, and learned from Mike that "too much sex can make you deaf!" Huh?

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