Estación Biológica, Monteverde

This post is a week in the making, but we finally made it to Monteverde Biological Station! This place will be our home until mid-March, which means lots of lectures, Spanish classes, nature hikes, downtown adventures and much more!
So that first day we arrived (I want to say Saturday?) we just got settled into our rooms and had a small orientation lecture before dinner. The station is super nice, and it has that homey feel to it along with being a great place to learn and study.

Biological Research Station - Monteverde, Costa Rica

The classroom in the station, where we do all lectures and is a great place to study.

It's been about a week since we arrived, and we've already done so much! That Monday after we arrived, we went for an orientation hike through the forest on the mountain behind the station. It was such an awesome hike - basically this meant decreasing levels of oxygen paralleled with increasing amounts of mud. But nonetheless, it was an amazing hike. Our goal was to hike through some of the trails, reach the top of the mountain, and do some species reports at the top...

The road less traveled..?

All of the mud

That afternoon we walked to our Spanish class, which will take place at the Spanish Immersion School in Monteverde. We have class Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 2:30 - 6:00 pm and Fridays from 2:30 - 5:00 pm (so much Spanish). Oh, also, this is what the place looks like: 

Spanish Immersion School (CPI) 

It has a hot tub, ping pong tables, workout room, yoga, cooking classes, and so much more. Its basically like going to Spanish class in a resort and spa. Anyway, the first day of class was spent taking a placement exam (written and oral), and playing some games with the professors. In total, there are 5 classes, each with no more than five students. My class has four, which is so nice. We get to talk a lot with the professor which helps improve conversational skills. I definitely wish we had classes this small back home, I would learn so much more. 

After Spanish class, we came back home (we get the option of taking a personal bus, as the walk back to the station is up a very big hill and it's dark) and had dinner. Every day after dinner is free-time, which most of this past week was spent studying the plant and animal species for the big exam on Saturday.

Tuesday was the first "official' start of classes at the station, which meant Tropical Community Ecology with Alan at 8:00 and Tropical Diversity at 11:00. Tuesday we spent in lecture for maybe an hour, and then went outside and did a lab. This lab entailed separating into groups of 2-3 and going into the woods and identifying different species of vines that can be found on the trees. After we could identify them, we were to choose 2 species from two different families, take a sample of 30 trees, and determine whether those 30 trees had one species or the other, both, or neither. Once we got back to the classroom, we performed a Chi-Squared test to compare expected values with our observed values. It was a cool little activity, and it allowed us to practice our statistics, too. 

After the activity, we went straight into Tropical Diversity at 11 until lunch. After lunch, we had a small break until Spanish class at 2:30. I learned more in that Spanish class than I did all last semester at school. Even though we were only reviewing preterite and imperfect verb tenses, it was just so much better because the professor was so much more engaging. We sang songs, talked about random things in Spanish, and just had a good time doing it. This is such an engaging Spanish class, and I'm so happy that it's an immersion school! 

After Spanish class, we got back to the station and had dinner and then most of us spent that night studying for the exam again. 

Wednesday was Humans in the Tropics day, but I'm going to talk about this in a separate post (so stay tuned)! 

Thursday was basically the same as Tuesday - we had Tropical Community Ecology in the morning at 8, but this time we learned about weather systems and how the rotation of Earth around the sun, along with its tilt, affect the weather in tropical habitats across the globe. We did a bit of a simpler lab - we separated into groups and used a globe, flashlight, and laser pointer to figure out how the seasons and all that works more in-depth. It was really interesting (and rather easy - thank you AP Environmental Science)! Tropical Diversity lecture followed at 11 again, but I can't remember what we talked about... 

At 2:30 we had Spanish again, which was just as awesome as Tuesday! We talked about prepositions a little bit, went over homework, and reviewed a little bit for the quiz on Friday. 

Friday - The schedule was a little backwards compared to Tuesday and Thursday. We had Tropical Diversity in the morning at 8:00, and promptly did a little lab outside at around 9:00. It was a really cool lab - in groups, we went out into either the forest or in the open area around the station and, from a sample of 20 trees, we recorded the number and types of lichen species found on each. It was a pretty cool little experiment, and it reminded me a lot of one I did in AP Environmental Science my senior year of high school, where in order to look at species diversity, richness, and evenness, we went out to the parking lots and counted the number of each make and model of car - they both essentially showed the same thing in terms of locations with more species richness and evenness.
We had Tropical Community Ecology after at 11, followed by lunch. Spanish was at 2:30 that afternoon as usual, and we had our first quiz of the class which luckily was super easy because I did minimal studying. Class only went until 5, which was awesome because that gave me more time that night to study for the Lab Practical exam Saturday. I spent all night studying, going over plant and animal species one last time...

Saturday - doomsday.

Just kidding it wasn't that bad. We had the lab practical exam at 9, which turned out to be slightly better than I anticipated. It was split into 3 parts: a table portion, a field portion, and a slide portion. The table portion consisted of tables covered in samples of plant and animal species (or stuffed animals). We had to answer questions about those species, which was probably the best way for me to take an exam. The field portion consisted of walking around the garden identifying species (by far the hardest portion of the exam. The slide portion was a slideshow of pictures and questions about species. I can't even explain how happy I was to finish that practical - definitely shed a few tears of joy :)

That night we "celebrated" by going into town to watch Alan's band perform at a local bar... they were pretty good :)