Day One: Off to San Jose!

Hi everyone! My name is Stephanie and our tropical ecology class has just completed our first day of our exciting journey!! We spent almost all day traveling today and since I was the only student conscious for the entirety of it, I was nominated to fill you all in on how it went. For our 7am departure from Logan International Airport in Boston, MA, we all arrived bright-eyed and bushy tailed at 4:30am. The general consensus was that wake-up happened at 3am. After spending much time in lines and going through security we attacked all of the food vendors, threatening riots if there were no bagels. Thank goodness there were bagels...
The first exciting flight was a very turbulent hour and a half adventure to Philadelphia. We were there for approximately 5 minutes when we were told it was time to board, even though we were supposed to have nearly an hour layover. Oh well! The second flight was about five hours and for the most part people slept. During the moments of wakefulness, Jared played a successful game of peek-a-boo with the child in front of him, a lot of people read books (I saw that copy of The Hobbit Marci), and I watched the emotional roller coaster that is The Lion King. It was a long flight, but we eventually landed in sunny San Jose, Costa Rica!! We got off the plane right onto the Tarmac which was a different sort of experience.
The weather was a balmy 80 and very windy. Our van driver got us all safely to the Don Carlos Hotel, where we will spend the night tonight before going off and doing something more thrilling tomorrow. A group of us decided to go explore the nearby park, so off we went on a mini adventure. We, of course, got distracted by old timey pianos and odd looking statues, but we got there eventually. Our amazing Professor Hope regaled us with different tree names, though I might say we were mildly disappointed when he mistook an Australian Pine as a true pine tree. I will never believe a word he says again. There was some play time involved with all our learning. I climbed a tree and so Pat decided to join me. We were informed it was a fig tree and it would just be plain wrong if I didn't share that!

Sadly, Emily couldn't quite get the hang of climbing it, so we came down and played with other plants. Like the bamboo... Jared was one with the bamboo...

Well, at least the police thought we were hilarious to watch. After our jaunt outside, we all came together for a lovely family meal at the hotel restaurant. No one was willing to try the strange Fanta flavor, but I tried the Coke float and it was pretty good! 

Throughout the day, people were exchanging our dollars into the Costa Rican colones and if you give them a $20 bill, you get back a lovely green bill with sloths on it!! That's pretty awesome!!! 

This means that tomorrow, we start the day "early" at 11am for our departure to Monteverde where we will begin our work in the forest and enjoying our time in this beautiful country!

More to come from other students! I promise it will get more entertaining as we start going out of public view... But we shall see! Lots to look forward to! Stay tuned!