CTSCostaRica2024

 Day 9, Hello everyone!!  This is Belle, Sophia, and Charlotte, reporting from Costa Rica, near Santa Cruz. After departing Finca La Anita, we began our journey to Hotel Tatanka! After around 2 hours in the van we stopped at the "MegaSuper" grocery store to get some snacks. After a bit longer on the road, we came across a flooded road that we couldn't cross. We decided to wait out the flooding, and went to grab something to eat! Where everyone got a yummy slice of pizza! The flooding died down and we were able to make it to our destination.  After arriving we got suited up to head to the beach down the road, where we learned about the different tracks turtles make, asymmetrical, and symmetrical.  A leatherback turtle from nose to tail is as tall as Alex! Then, we got to enjoy the beach, play in the water and explore the sand. The waves were big but the water was very refreshing. We headed back to the hotel to eat dinner. Dinner was soda, beans, rice, chicken, and sal...

Hello! My name is Cassidy DiRemigio and I would love to tell you a little bit about a day in the life in this beautiful Central American beach town. Our amazing trip is now coming to an end but we are not sad that it's ending, but happy that it has happened.  Today we had an eventful day, starting off by heading over to surfing lessons where Danny and his crew threw us into the picture perfect ocean and tried to help us catch some waves! I did struggle to stay on the board but it was a great experience and I learned a lot (and a couple of us nearly died).  The group was delightfully surprised when we were greeted with pizzas stacked high, waiting to be eaten for lunch. We also had the opportunity to go to a local ice cream shop were I enjoyed some homemade walnut and caramel ice cream! Back at out hotel we all jumped into the pool to play many rounds of Marco polo where Alex entertained the teachers by swimming aggressively towards his victims. Towards the end of the day every...

heyyy guysss i know its a late report but i guess we'll talk about day 7 so basically on this day we woke up had a amazing breakfast like always at Finca la Anita then we headed to the bus to get to the lab.  Today was a day of full science, with our final presentations happening tomorrow. Most people had some stuff to get done so we were all busy doing our work like finishing the trial or working on our presentation slides, we all had something to do!! We left for lunch and again it was soooo good, had some time to rest after which is always nice, (we like to take naps a lot). Then we headed back to the lab and got to work again! We had dinner, then MORE lab time. We had to stay extra late because everyone still had work to do, but it ended off being worth it because we all had such fun (i think??). But anyway me personally, i was happy to get it over and done even though it was fun!! sending lots of love to all!!! -Brooke b and Dorothy

Today, we presented our final presentations after our days of testing and refining. The presentations went well for everyone and everyone's experiments were quite intriguing to see. We are proud of everyone's hard work throughout the trip, even if some of the experiments didn't work how they were expected to. Everyone's hard work was clearly visible through their presentations and the amount of information they knew about their topic.  After these presentations, we had the most time to ourselves that we had had yet. It was a huge change and well deserved rest from all of our researching efforts.  We capped off our night and stay at Finca La Anita with a cooking class in the village at Aricelli's Cafe Campesito (https://www.facebook.com/CafeCampesinoCL/) that we all felt was a good ending to the trip throughout our connections with the people and our fun celebrations. Making tortillas ^^ Much Love

Hi parents, this is day 6 and we did some really cool stuff. We woke up this morning, had some really nice breakfast, and headed to the activities. We split into two groups. While one group was doing the community tour, the other group went for the horseback riding.  We got maps for the community tour that would guide us to different parts of the village and do our tasks of getting cheese and eggs. The horseback riding was fun. Pablo taught us how to ride horses and we went up and down a hill. It was reeeeeeally cool. We got to see an amazing view and took a picture together on the horses. Then we had some ice cream and headed for lunch. After that, we did some really hard work with our groups in the lab and made a lot of progress. We had dinner afterwards and headed to our cabin after this long and wonderful day.  Good night parents By the Texans and the adapted Texan

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay of blog posts, some of us have been feeling under the weather so we've been getting lots of rest😙. On day five we had another amazing hike through the rainforest where we got to swim at the bottom of a waterfall! Afterwards, Pablo surprised us with popsicles from the local megasuper that we ate on the ride back to Finca la Anita. We spent the rest of the day conducting preliminary experiments and carrying out our devious science plans back at the lab. Sending lots of love from Costa Rica!🩷🩷🩷

Hey guys, today in the morning we saw the mariposas from the ladies in the village. They were supposed to have some blue butterflies by they had all died because it was too hot.  Then we got to look around the town. There's a little convenience store that we got some snacks from. Then we went to the lab and started on our scientific propositions. After that, we went to get lunch and then went back to the lab for more scientific propositions.  We were at the lab for all of the afternoon making sure that our propositions were good. We got dinner and then went back to lab to present our proposals and it rained really hard and was very loud.  There were SO MANY bugs at the lab, we saw a queen bullet ant. Now, we are back typing our blog................ Thanks for reading, we miss you and the internet. Bye!      Dorothy & Luke T

 Hi everyone!! This morning we woke up very early to the rain, and headed to breakfast, which was amazing! Then we headed to the lab and began our first field adventure, and we dug up our first leafcutter ant colony! We learned how to hold them, dig up the fungus garden, and much more.  After we headed back for some lunch and downtime, we returned to the lab to give the ants we collected a nice home, finish our experiment from yesterday, and planned our experiment for tomorrow. The rain was on and off today, and the sound of the rain was awesome. Also today is my dad's birthday, happy birthday dad I love you!! -Charlotte Lots of love, we miss everyone! - Brooke B. & Charlotte

Hello Families. Though we long for sleep, we must appease your worried minds, so we write to you of our travels. First we toured the cacao factory, and learned all about the history of cacao in central and south America. Then we sampled many delicious chocolates with no milk, as milk ruins everything and has no place in chocolate. Instead, we drank ground cacao with warm water and sugar, it was pretty good.  After a tasty lunch we went to the lab for the first time, watched several clips about ants, and where divided into groups. No one knows how, the scientists wrote various symbols next to our names, stared for a few minutes, and poof it was done. We started our first experiment to practice the scientific method, testing different environments for bacteria.  Then we took a bus back to the cabins, hung out with friends for a bit, and enjoyed dinner with caramelized bananas and cacao as dessert. The scientists then divided us into two groups. While half of us braved the danger...

 What is up Gang!! We are writing this the patio outside of the chocolate factory!! You might be wondering how we ended up in this situation.  First we flew to Houston where we the airplane ran out of space so we had to check our bags😾 But it worked out for the best, because we didn't have to lug our luggage. While waiting for our second flight Evie had the (probably) the best bagel of her life. (we think she is bluffing) Then we hopped on our 3ish hour flight where we experienced the most extreme turbulence of all time, and some epic clouds.  Next we embarked on our journey with trusty Gonzalo!! He drove us through some beautiful mountains, grass, rolling hills, a lot of cows, and geothermic vents.  Then around dark we arrived at FINCA LA ANITA!!! We ate dinner and had an amazing mystery dessert.  Once we were settled in our cabin we fell asleep to the sounds of all the bugs and birds! When the sun rose we could see how pretty the farm is! Anyways! We are abou...

 Just a few days until we are on the plane for beautiful Costa Rica! Check back here each evening, starting June 21, for that day's field research and excursion experiences.