Tortuguitas!

Hello all! This week I posted signs at the school and made an awkward announcement to all of the students to invite them to come to the library. Something like, "Hello everyone, I am working at the library at the Turtle Refuge and love visitors and can help with English homework and I have games and I have books and on Saturdays there are art projects and a movie and I hope that everyone comes because the library is fun and I like people visiting and I can help with homework and English." They looked dubious that anyone as grammatically challenged as I could help with any sort of homework, but I assured them that my English was better than my Spanish. And now kids come, almost every day! After school gets out at 3, there is a group of high school kids that comes for English lessons; just lessons, not homework. We've been working on the basics, like the alphabet, simple sentences, animals, body parts - a big group of awkward teenage boys sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" on Thursday, it was great! Also, last night something wonderful happened! I was on turtle patrol as usual with some other guys that work here (Greddy, Fran and McDonald) and we found a nest of hatchlings just starting to come up out of the sand. We were all excited, and then we looked around with our flashlights and found...HUNDREDS of hatchlings! Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds! We counted over thirty nests just in a small portion of the beach, with 50+ babies from each nets. It was incredible! It was all of the hatchlings from the September arribada, and Greddy said that I was lucky because it was the largest number of hatchlings that they've seen all year! We stayed there for over five hours, chasing off vultures, crabs, and one ENORMOUS toad that was hopping about and gobbling up baby turtles as fast as he could. The only problem was that we stayed on the far end of the beach for too long and the tide came up, which meant that the river that we have to cross to get back to the Refuge (usually knee high during low tide) was over chest high and we had to swim across, clothes and all. And there are CROCODILES in that river!! Not going to lie, I was completely petrified. Then, this morning, things were pretty slow at the library because kids won't show up until later this afternoon for the movie, so I decided to go for a walk down the beach. And I found MORE babies hatching out of a nest on the beach! Nobody was there and the vultures were going to town, so I had to run around wildly throwing sticks and shouting to get them to go away. Eventually someone saw me prancing around like a lunatic and came over to help me. The turtles must have been partially dug up by the vultures or something, because they hardly ever come out to hatch in the middle of the day because it is way too hot for them, so the babies were having a lot of trouble making it to the ocean because the sand was boiling hot. So I gathered them up and sprinted back and forth to the wet, cooler sand to help them make it. I hope that they're ok! It certainly is an uphill battle for the poor little things. Since these babies hatched during the day, I finally got to take some pictures! Hope you enjoy them. More on facebook! Love you all! Happy Halloween!

Hey everyone! Just a quick update to say that everything went really well yesterday - almost 20 kids showed up! The power went out (not unusual, the power's usually out one out of every three days), so we couldn't show the movie and the kids were forced to be creative. Yay! We did puzzles, drew pictures, played some games, and read books! Well, really, they just looked at the pictures, but hey, books were open. The cook for the Refuge even made everyone crepey things with delicious delicious jelly! Also, more kids showed up today, so we've been doing more drawing and games. I told the kids that they could come in here anytime to get help with English homework and lots sounded interested, so I may be doing some tutoring as well. Hurrah!

DINOSAUR

Hey everybody! Everything is going well - I'm manning the library by day, turtle wrangling by night. Last week I took a little vacation to Nosara with the other girls that are working here, and I took a surfing lesson! And I wasn't even eaten by a shark! Success! We also went to a rodeo, but I didn't really like it. I felt bad for the bulls the whole time, though at least they don't kill them or anything here. Still, they just seemed bored and irritated. It was quite an experience, though - the whole arena was built out of this horribly rickety wood and everyone was quite intoxicated and hanging off of the sides and falling into the arena. Anyone was allowed to charge on in, so all sorts of drunk people kept stumbling in and shouting at the bull and then running like mad. On the home front, not a soul comes into the library here (well, once two Australian tourists came in) so I've been reorganizing all the books. Fascinating, right!? I've also been composing letters begging for more novels to send to various libraries and universities around the country, because right now all of the books in Spanish are educational books on turtles and legislation. So I don't really blame the youth for not leaping at the chance to read the "Manual de Procedimientos para la ejecución de Plan de Manejo." Bleh. Also, today, I've set up a movie day (I wanted a reading day but the woman who supervises me here says that if I advertise it as a reading day not one person will show up) and I put up a poster in town, so I hope someone shows up. I tried to go announce it at the school, but apparently the teacher had decided to take a vacation this week, so classes were off. Hint hint, Mom! I'm hoping to ambush whoever comes with books after the movie ends. We'll see how it goes! But, the big news is that last night there was a LEATHERBACK TURTLE on the beach laying eggs!!! It was completely incredible! We were all sitting around waiting to go out on our normal turtle duty when we got a call from André, who was already out patrolling, and he said that a tortuga baula had come up on the far end of the beach. We all ran literally over a mile down the beach to see it, because they're really rare and endangered. I couldn't BELIEVE IT when I saw it! It was absolutely enormous! It was one of the top ten coolest things I've ever seen in my whole life. I wish I could've taken a picture to show you, but it was laying eggs and we're not allowed to take pictures because it might bother them. It was over six feet long and like four feet across, and its head was much bigger than mine. It grunted like a dinosaur, too. I asked how much it weighed, but to understand the answer I would've had to understand some horrible conversion and also numbers in Spanish, so I can't tell you how much it weighed. I'd estimate ten billion pounds. It dug a mammoth hole for its eggs (I could've fit in there with room to spare), but we caught all of its eggs in a plastic bag, because a lot of people had come out on the beach to see it and they're very worried about poaching, because again, tortuga baulas are endangered and their eggs are valuable. After it lay the eggs and everyone was marveling at the turtle, André pulled me aside and asked if I'd like to go on a secret mission, and of course I said yes - I am nothing if not a queen of espionage. He had hidden the bag of eggs under his coat and we walked a long ways down the beach (making sure that no one was following us) and then dug a hole and I got to put all of the eggs (68) into the hole. We covered it back up and camouflaged the hole and sauntered back all casual like in time to see the behemoth working her way back to the sea. The tracks that she left looked like a tractor had driven up on the beach. Whew! It was absolutely epic, even the weather - it was clear with trillions of stars right above the beach, but farther out on the ocean it was really stormy, so there was tons of flashing lightning. Amazing! It felt unreal. Anyway, I'm still pretty pumped about it. I hope that you're all doing well! Love you! Oh, the pictures are of me looking dorky with our surfboards and then someone else's picture of a leatherback so that you can get a sense of it.

Ostional!

Hello everyone! I’m all settled in Ostional! After a harrowing morning of rickety buses and confusing transfers on Saturday, my host mom Marylin picked me up at the bus stop (that is, the only restaurant in town) and introduced me to the rest of the family: her husband Jose, whom everyone calls Pablo for some reason, her five year old son Brilles, and her adorable two year old son Albaro, or Borrito. The house is pretty similar to most houses I’ve seen in Costa Rica, though as an added perk the doors are open at all times, which means that chickens and turkeys (which are absolutely hideous animals, I might add) are free to gobble about as they please in the house (under my bed, for example), as well as pumas and anacondas, as far as I can tell. I truly love chickens, so this is quite exciting. Also, I’ve seen lizards of all size in their backyard, ranging from the miniscule to the positively dinosaurian. Iguanas over three feet long! We just don’t see that in Minneysohta! Saturday night, Marylin, Brilles, Borrito and I went for a walk on the beach and GUESS WHAT WE SAW!? BABY TURTLES CRAWLING UP FROM A LITTLE HOLE TO MAKE THEIR WAY DOWN TO THE OCEAN!! It was completely incredible! Although everyone but me seemed bored, I guess that happens all the time here. Borrito accidentally stepped on one and it stopped moving, so I picked it up and mourned for it, but then it started flapping its little flippers and waving its wrinkly baby head from side to side, so I quickly put it down and cheered it on to the sea. And guess what!? It was the very first of its brothers and sisters to make it to the ocean! The very first! Squashedness and all! When it got caught up in the first wave, I was so proud that I cried a little bit. Apparently Ostional is a big deal in the turtle world; one of only eight beaches in the world where turtles come for arribadas, which are times when as many as a million turtles (give or take some huge number, I don’t really understand numbers in Spanish) come to the beach and lay a billion (again with the numbers) eggs. There is supposed to be one in late October, I can’t wait!! On Sunday, I asked my host mom if I should go look at the library and start working, and she said absolutely not, Sundays are for soccer. So I spent Sunday watching soccer games in the field outside of my house, swimming in the ocean, playing with Brilles and Albaro and lying in the hammock reading. A taxing day. This morning, I went to the library to start working, and they seemed completely unaware that I was supposed to come, but pleased to have someone to help. The public library is a room in the building where the Refugio Nacional de Vida Silvestre de Ostional is (basically turtle refuge), and right now no one is working there; if someone comes to check anything out (which apparently never happens, reading doesn’t seem to be a priority here), a biologist comes and helps them out. Tomorrow, I’m going to start going through all of the books and organizing them, making lists of the titles, authors, etc. and putting stickers on them to identify them, because right now there is no system. It sounds quite daunting, but there are only two shelves of books in the entire library. It’s sad – I have more books in my room at home than the entire Ostional Public Library. In addition to working at the library, I’m also going to work with the turtle project several times a week. Tonight is my first shift, eight to midnight. I guess I’m going to be measuring turtles, counting eggs, and recording other turtley business. So that’s my life here so far! My Spanish continues to be somewhat sketchy – I realized yesterday that the word I’ve been using the entirety of my time here for puppy actually means sponge cake. There’s no Internet Café in Ostional, but there is Internet at the science center for the turtles, where the library is, so I should have access to Internet most days. I’ll keep you all updated! Love you all!
P.S. It is extraordinarily hot here. Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. Like Hades, but full of crazy animals, oceans and gorgeousness.
P.P.S. The pictures are my house here, the library, and the beach

To Ostional!!

Hello everyone! Just wanted to write a quick note to let you all know that tomorrow I'll be leaving San Jose (at 4:30 in the morning!) to go and work in Ostional, Costa Rica. Ostional is a small town on the Pacific Coast that is famous for all of the sea turtles that come to the beach to lay their eggs. I'll be working in a small reading library, teaching little kids to read, trying to collect resources and setting up book clubs and stuff. Cool, right!? Also, adding to the awesomeness, my host father is one of the directors of the Biology project there to work with the turtles, so I can also help out with sea turtles!! From my understanding, I'll get to chase away predators and examine turtles to check for tumors. I won't actually know exactly what I'll be doing until I get there, but I'm pretty excited about it. I may or may not have access to Internet, so we'll see! Love you all! Also, I didn't take that picture. It's from Google. But I probably WILL take that picture! Hurrah!